Melbourne-based one-man film crew Tom Meadmore has made a documentary about two people close to him: his boss Tony Jackson and his girlfriend Amanda Medica. Everyone here is pursing some kind of ambition, and each is hoist on a petard of their own making. Jackson fronts a profoundly mediocre pub-rock band called Speed Orange when he’s not directing corporate films for Lonely Planet with Meadmore as his editor, but he’s bedevilled by unrealistic expectations about his band’s potential. The seemingly more promising Medica, a folky singer-songwriter who earns most of her money by waitressing, lacks the grit and commitment needed to become a professional musician. And Meadmore, who dreams of being an auteur like Quentin Tarantino someday, is under the delusion that the squabbles between him and his subjects are of interest to anyone other than themselves and their friends. Banal navel-gazing exercises like this evince precisely why the media today, awash with self-published digital works, need gatekeepers like record labels and film distributors.
