CREDIT: NEW LINE CINEMA
Filmmaking is only sheer determination and a camcorder away, as made evident in Be Kind, Rewind.

We’re all suckers for things going meta. Retrospective examination done right can be both profound, yet funny, a look at flaws, imaginings, and archetypes, all through the lens of self-parody. Musicians talking singing about recording the very album you listen to, Vonnegut writing the story as he witnesses it in Breakfast of Champions, and of course, the movie about a movie.

A couple fun ones about the state of the industry include…

Lost in La Mancha (2000)

Originally starting out as a simple 20-minute ‘making-of’ promotional piece for Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Don Quixote, the independently- produced film inevitably spiraling out of control is all recorded in this feature-length documentary about crushed dreams, compromised hopes, and just how much at the mercy we are of the weather. It serves both as a cautionary tale, and as a look for the uninitiated at just how high the stakes are in every movie production.

Modern Romance (1980)

This rom-com starring Albert Brooks in his comedic heydays involves a young film editor with a serious case of oneitis for his onagain- off-again girlfriend. Although the romantic comedy aspects of the film haven’t aged as well (bordering on cheesy sitcom-ness), the parts of Brooks’ at work are not only funny, but a really cool insight on the post-production aspects of pre-digital filmmaking. Finding a new sound effect, for example, involved stopping everything, pawing through a physical library of tapes, just to find the right one. Its archaic nature only makes it more historically interesting.

Bowfinger (1999)

Bowfinger is one of the last great Steve Martin comedies, before his early 2000’s fallback on mediocre family dramedies. The story of a B-list movie producer, Bowfinger, and his attempt at making paranoid action movie star Kit Ramsey – played by a very self-deprecating Eddie Murphy – be in his film, whether he’s actually aware of it or not, the film is by no means an accurate depiction of how a movie is made; Bowfinger’s plot revels in the unrealistic ridiculousness of the plot. Despite this, Bowfinger still explores the nature of making a movie when the money is especially tight.

Be Kind, Rewind (2009)

This movie is outright far removed from being about anything Hollywood in general…but it’s still a film about making films. When two video store clerks accidentally magnetize their entire stock of rental tapes, it’s up to them to remake the contents of every film they own, in their own, no-budget fashion. Also known as that Mos Def and Jack Black movie, the lack of attention the film received was quite disheartening. Be Kind, Rewind, is a film that encourages amateurs to go out and do things, even having a marketing campaign around sweding movies – remaking popular films in a zero-budget, short-format internet videos. Rather than being about filmmaking specifically, Be Kind, Rewind is about how creativity can be born in unusual ways.