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The landscape for independent films has changed rapidly. On one hand, the opportunity to build a theatrical release has become increasingly difficult, but on the other hand, digital release has given indies a chance to play to a broad national audience at once. Each week, new indie releases will be profiled and because they might not be playing at a theater near you, one highly recommended film available now a click or two away via VOD (whether a new or not quite new release) will be presented for viewing without leaving your computer.

VOD Pick of the Week

Dear Mr. Watterson
From experience and the title alone, I approached Dear Mr. Watterson with a bit of trepidation. I was worried that it would be one of “those” documentaries - one of those documentaries that purports to be about some figure that the director idolized, but turns out to be more about the director himself, about whom I don’t really feel like watching a film. While director Joel Allen Schroeder’s love for the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes obviously inspired him to make a documentary about the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, he largely keeps himself out of the film and places the focus on the art and artist.

Schroeder accepts up front that there is not going to be much from the famously publicity shy Watterson and instead relies on others to paint a picture of the impact Calvin & Hobbes had and continues to have. He starts with his own experience discovering the strip and his identification with Calvin and then lets other fans chime in. This gets a tad bit redundant as people generally express similar reactions, which largely focus on the fact that Watterson was able to concisely explore bigger philosophical ideas concisely in a comic about a boy and his stuffed tiger. Things get more interesting as he turns the film over to a more scholarly approach.

When other comic strip artists and scholars take over, the film provides insight beyond just the “isn’t this a great comic strip,” as Calvin & Hobbes is used to examine the art form and industry as a whole. An exploration of Watterson’s influences provides a bit of historical context. From the very beginning, comic strips were stuck in the high art versus low art debate. While some of the artwork was as detailed and intricate as paintings hung in museums and some of the stories told were as profound as great literature, comic strips have usually been looked down on as lower art.

The commercial aspect of comics partly played a role their status as art. This was something that Watterson and all comic artists had to deal with. Obviously to make a living at it, you have to sell the strip, but beyond that Watterson vigorously eschewed licensing and merchandizing with Calvin & Hobbes as he wanted the work to stand on its own. There has been practically no official merchandise, though that hasn’t stopped a veritable panoply of unofficial merchandise. Profit versus purity is an issue that all artists must deal with and where to draw the line becomes sometimes a difficult question to answer.

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