American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Making Your Own Stuff

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 30, 2014

Tell someone that American Made Movie is about manufacturing and the economy, and they'll probably change the subject (or end the conversation). Who wants to watch a film that sounds like an afternoon's classwork? As it happens, though, the latest project by director/producers Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio is a lively and fascinating experience, because they bring a seemingly dreary but important subject vividly to life. Not only do they employ all the resources in a filmmaker's arsenal, but they also flip the topic sideways to show how remote abstractions—things like "outsourcing" and "trade deficit"—connect to the concerns of everyday people.

McGill and Vittorio are independent filmmakers in the truest sense of the word. In 2001, they founded Life Is My Movie Entertainment, through which they have produced and usually self-distributed seven films to date, both fiction and documentary. American Made Movie has been seen primarily in local screenings booked directly through Life Is My Movie and via video-on-demand. Specialty distributor Virgil Films has now released it on Blu-ray and DVD.

American Made Movie starts from an indisputable fact, namely, that the U.S. has ceased to be a world leader in manufacturing, as it was in the three decades immediately following World War II. We don't "make things" anymore. Instead, we import our goods, because they are made more cheaply abroad. At this point, the discussion usually turns to finger-pointing, but McGill and Vittorio are interested in something else. They want to examine what happens to a country's economy when its manufacturing operations shrink.

Detroit, with its derelict factories and blighted neighborhoods, is an obvious example, but it's also too easy a target. In a much more intriguing display, McGill and Vittorio overlay scenes from a professional baseball game with pointers identifying the countries where the uniforms, shoes, gear and other paraphernalia originated. As their illustrations quickly demonstrate, much of the revenue from that most American of sports is being sent overseas. Even baseball has been outsourced.

Through excerpts from interviews with economists, trade experts, business and marketing people and even a former U.S. Comptroller General, McGill and Vittorio examine the larger impact of the net loss of seven million manufacturing jobs between 1979 and 2009 (during which both total economic output and the population grew). As expert after expert points out, when jobs dry up, there are fewer wage earners with money to spend at vendors and service providers, so that they too lose out. When manufacturing suffers, the entire economy feels the pain. One economist argues that the borrowing frenzy of the early 21st Century was a temporary (and ultimately disastrous) remedy for this shortfall in earnings.

But McGill and Vittorio understand that abstractions and figures don't tell a story; so they present two specific individuals whose experiences are emblematic of these trends. One of them is Merrie Buchsbaum, a crafts artist who creates handmade jewelry and knick-knacks from polymers, many in a stars-and-stripes motif in red, white and blue. Her business took off when a buyer for the Smithsonian Institute spotted her work at a crafts show and placed an order for the museum's souvenir shop. Buchsbaum's work became the best-selling line at the Smithsonian for several years, until a new buyer abruptly terminated her. Why? The gift shop could obtain similar merchandise from China for much less. But as Buchsbaum points out, why would any visitor to the Smithsonian, a fundamentaly American institution, want a souvenir made in China? (There's more to the story, but I will leave that for viewers to discover.)

The history examined in most depth is that of Mark Andol, founder of General Welding & Fabricating, Inc. in Elma, New York. A classic American success story, Andol started a repair shop as a teenager from his parents' garage. He eventually built a company with over 60 employees. But one day he began losing jobs for longtime customers to a competitor who was importing more cheaply made goods, of lesser quality, from China. With profits shrinking, Andol was forced to lay off people who had worked for him for years, who were like family to him, and who were too old to begin again. McGill and Vittorio interview many of these people, as well as Andol and his own family. Everyone speaks frankly about the experience.

Andol's story has a happy ending, which I will not spoil, except to say that it's blessed with a fairy-tale magic that one usually finds only in a Hollywood script. But Andol's story also fits in neatly with the message of American Made Movie. The film's goal is to expand each viewer's awareness of just how much impact each and every purchase you make has on the national economy. It asks you to consider whether "buying American" isn't worth a few dollars more in the long run, as a spur to rebuilding our manufacturing infrastructure. McGill and Vittorio certainly aren't advocating that the global economy be ignored. Indeed, one of their prime examples of international cooperation is Gwinnett County, Georgia, which actively marketed itself to foreign investors, eventually succeeding in persuading German manufacturer Hettich to build a major plant nearby (among others). If more local governments had the intelligence and the political will to undertake such efforts, the U.S. might be seeing greater benefits from globalization. Then again, there's nothing wrong with domestic industry, as demonstrated by Greenwood, Mississippi's active cooperation with native son Fred Carl, Jr. in the founding of Viking Range Corporation, which revitalized the town.

American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Detailed information about the shooting format of American Made Movie was not available, but the film is clearly an HD video production, with Virgil Films's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presumably sourced from digital files. The cinematographer was Alexander Falk, making his first film as DP after working on camera crews for such films as Samsara . The Blu-ray's image is clear, sharp and detailed, with excellent black levels, allowing the widely varying locales to be rendered with precision. The urban decay of Detroit is as depressing as the thriving town of Greenwood, Mississippi is encouraging. The interview subjects are seen in detail, but one of the reasons why the film is so entertaining is because it never becomes a series of talking head shots. Visual interest is maintained by alternating interviews with locations, illustrations, diagrams. The filmmakers never forget that they're making a movie, and the Blu-ray's vivid colors and fine detail are crucial to conveying the experience.

Given the digital origination and the number of static shots, some studios would have tried for tight compression, but Virgil has used a BD-50 and delivered an average bitrate of 25.02 Mbps. If a tiny independent can do so well, why can't some of the majors?

American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is basic and functional, prioritizing voices of the interview subjects and the (unidentified) narrator. Some background noise accompanies the production sound, but it does not appear to have been enhanced or supplemented. The modest musical score is credited to Krister Jonsson, Paul Kelly and Carmen Yates; the latter two contributed to the soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Savages, and Kelly helped score Stone's Any Given Sunday.

American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• 60-Minute Cut of the Film: This shorter version of the film is an option when "Play" is selected from the menu. It was presumably created for TV broadcast and works on its own terms, but the full version is superior.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:14): The major deletions are a segment on Wigwam Mills, an American manufacturer of socks, and an extension of the sequence about the manufacture of the Louisville Slugger bat.



• Additional Interviews (1080p; 1.78:1; 16:01): These are lengthier portions of the interviews seen throughout the film.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:55).

American Made Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

American Made Movie has no political agenda to advance or argue. Indeed, I suspect that the political leanings of its many participants fall at all points along the spectrum. Having recently reviewed a documentary where the filmmaker seemed more interested in buttressing a predetermined conclusion than understanding a subject (FrackNation), I found American Made Movie a bracing reminder of what documentaries can be when they're made by people without an agenda except to acquire knowledge and communicate it effectively. American Made Movie's essential point can be politicized (as can almost anything), but it's one that's hard to dispute: A thriving economy must be based on making and selling tangible goods. Highly recommended.