Back in February it was announced that Mr. Potato Head would soon become known as simply Potato Head. Hasbro, the company that manufactures the classic toy, decided to go totally woke and neuter the spud, saying it needed a modern makeover. The announcement drove Fox News hosts into apoplectic fits.
So the title of one of the Lighthouse International Film Festival’s headline films, “Potato Dreams of America,” was intriguing. Had Mr. Potato Head turned into a gender-neutral actor?
Potato is the Russian-American film director Wes Hurley, born Vasili Naumenko and nicknamed Potato by his mother. The Seattle-based filmmaker/writer/actor is best know for his 2017 short documentary “Little Potato,” co-directed by Nathan M. Miller, which won the SXSW Documentary Short Grand Jury Award along with 26 other film festival awards throughout the world.
“Little Potato” was an autobiography that told the story of Hurley’s early life in dreary Vladivostok in the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union. He didn’t have an easy childhood. His mother, who had divorced his wife-beating father, worked as a doctor in a prison where officials threatened her when she wouldn’t write up murders as natural deaths. They thought Russia would change when the U.S.S.R fell apart, but they were wrong. Corrupt politicians and street gangs made Vladivostok more dangerous than ever. It was especially dangerous for young Vasili because he was slowly realizing he was gay in a country where queer-bashing is almost as popular a sport as soccer and ice hockey.
Vasili found escape in the American movies that finally hit Russian TV after the fall of Communism. Meanwhile his mother, now named Elena Bridges, also dreamed of moving to the United States and decided to go the mail-order bride route.
She ended up marrying a fundamentalist Christian in Seattle, and she and her son moved there when Hurley was 16. But then there was a totally unexpected development: Elena came home one night to discover her husband in drag – he was actually a closeted transgender.
Hurley surely did become an American. He quickly learned the old vaudeville trick that when the audience laughs when you slip on a banana, you make sure to slip on the banana again.
He followed up “Little Potato” with the virtual reality piece “Potato Dreams.” Now he’s directed “Potato Dreams of America,” a scripted autobiographic dark comedy feature that had its debut at this winter’s SXSW in, unfortunately, a virtual format. Like “Little Potato,” “Potato Dreams of America” has earned good to great reviews. A common complaint? The film is too short at one hour and 35 minutes. In other words, reviewers were begging for more.
That said, it may be accurate to say “PDOA” is two films in one. Indeed the headline for a Variety review said, “Queer Coming-of-Age Tale Is a Film of Two Very Different Halves.”
“The question of how to convey characters speaking a language other than English in a fully English-language production is one that many a director of an exotically-set Hollywood production of Lumpy Europudding has faced over the years,” wrote Guy Lodge in that review. “For those who simply cannot resort to subtitles, the artifice of heavily accented English dialogue is a stilted standby. ‘Potato Dreams of America’ finds an unusual way around the problem, though it takes some time for its cleverness to emerge.”
Hurley was more than familiar with the problem. In “Little Potato” he said all the American films he watched in Russia used the same dubber, apparently speaking while holding his nose to disguise his voice from authorities. So in “Potato Dreams of America,” he used a brand new device of his own invention.
In the first part of the film, which was set in Vladivostok, he had his actors speak in what Lodge described as “broad, brash American speech.” When the story line moved to Seattle, the characters who started off in Russia spoke “the faltering, Russian-accented English of nervous new emigres.” Talk about an unexpected reversal.
It wasn’t just accents that changed when the film moved to the U.S. Even the movie’s music flips a switch.
“Catherine Joy’s score – taking over from composer Joshua Khol, who scores the Russian sections – likewise adopts a softer, sweeter tone,” wrote Lodge.
This entry in the “Potato” epic sure sounds pretty tasty, like a baked tater drenched in sour cream and freshly ground pepper.
“Potato Dreams of America” will be screened in drive-in fashion at 10:20 p.m. on Friday, June 4 in Beach Haven’s Veterans Memorial Park. Producer Jonathan Duffy will be attending.
Tickets, which can be purchased online at lighthousefilmfestival.org, are $35 a car. Remember, In & Out passes will not be accepted.
Hey, you’ll be able to feast on snacks in your car. Perhaps potato chips are in order.
— Rick Mellerup
June 01, 2021 at 11:04PM
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'Potato Dreams of America' Follows in Footsteps of 'Little Potato' at LIFF - The SandPaper
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