Project Description

"The Hunt for Good Americans" is a filmic exploration of the American creative spirit. The film is a satirical portrait of American culture and the various stereotypes which make up our vast landscape. Two grown women navigate this journey having not yet lost their "inner nine-year-old", and with their fearless naivete, they learn lessons from their adventures along the way.  The goal of the film is to encourage dialogue among a divided country of varied people and to promote creative expression.

Protagonists:

Abby and Tori, protagonists in THE HUNT FOR GOOD AMERICANS, have been friends since age thirteen when they attended Westover School, an all-girls boarding school. They aim to inspire young girls’ imaginative nature, something they were able to hold on to since highschool. The protagonists are fanciful, youthful and curious women who choose to let their experiences and interactions be their education on their colorful journey. The protagonists are unified by their desire to find love. As the film progresses, they become more attuned to reality, their naivete fades, and they face the world the only way they can, with humor and friendship. Their energy is sustained through connections made with strangers, and as moments come and go, they build a network of kinships along the way.

Other Characters:

The people in the film are not actors, they are people the duo met along the road, who play bit parts in their film. Some of the characters are well-known in their areas of expertise. For instance, they cast Sam Bassett, a Hotel Chelsea artist as 'The Lightning Wizard', Lord Whimsy, a novelist, as 'Agent Wheelsworth', Tim Kreider, a writer and cartoonist as 'Mr. VIP', and Buick Audra, a country singer-songwriter, as 'Thunder'. They also found a real cowboy, a prostitute, a Navy jet pilot, a Native American Indian, Blues musicians, Elvis, and so many more. Using a vast array of people they met on the road, Abby and Tori were able to cast their own film, costuming the characters as they saw fit and incorporating them in their fairytale.

Genre:

The Hunt for Good Americans is a fun, light-hearted, fairy-tale which follows two young women on their cross-country artistic investigation and profile of American characters.  The film's tone and particular style is magical realism. It is a visual poem. The journey is nonsensical where the girls magically appear in each new setting. The story follows its own road. Abby and Tori seek out the creative counterculture of America, proving beauty comes from within and the most important qualities are wit, curiosity, spirit, humor, and color.

Philosophy:

Abby and Tori also came up with "The Nine-Year-Old Theory" where they believe that at nine years old, we are the most who we are. A nine-year-old has not yet lost their imagination and is simultaneously entering into the adult world or 'reality'. It's that mid-point where they are more aware of the outer world, but they are still so much a part of their inner world. They acted and scripted the entire film using this approach. Playing "dress-up", casting their "friends" in their "backyard play", rhyming everything like a Dr. Seuss book, and using their imagination to travel to far-off lands, never having to wonder if any of it makes any sense. Because in your imagination, you can travel anywhere, meet anyone, and be anything. They believe that a lot of the innocence of childhood has been lost to mall culture, video games, and billion-dollar movies and wish to bring forth a film that is less polished and shrink-wrapped. The philosophy of THE HUNT FOR GOOD AMERICANS is evident in all aspects of the production: When you have very little, you can rely on creativity and imagination.

Script:

The entire script is rhymed poetry and was also written on the road as they met their characters along the way. For example, 'Mr. VIP' says this as the girls try to pass through the 'Underground Tunnels' to get to 'The Labyrinth':

The film is a fairy-tale-esque, existential journey, starting out in the realm of the abstract where they ask their teacher, 'Professor Popover', the meaning of love. His answers leave the girls puzzled, so he sends them off to 'The Labyrinth' where they meet the 'Lightning Wizard' who gives them the first clue, to seek out the lesson of The Wheel.

The story-line continues this way where they meet people along their journey who give them lessons to live by and clues for the next place to go. They go to whimsical places and darker places with various characters interwoven throughout. The setting is the United States, with key landscapes of known American sites such as The Utah Salt Flats and Mt. Rushmore, but the names of these places are fictional in the story.

Aesthetic:

The film is also stylized in highly creative fashions which are a key component of their vision. The costumes are all thrift-store finds which match each other by color or print and also often matching their environment. This goes along with their "dishtowel philosophy" that one can still be fashionable and stylish without having to succumb to the rampant materialism in our American society, proving even dishtowels can look glamorous. The most important qualities are what's holding up the clothes. They feel that young girls, especially, feel inadequate with superficial pressures of having the perfect, new handbag and hope to influence popular culture in a positive way.

They traveled in an old car and dressed in thrift-store clothes to demonstrate that wit, imagination, and individualism, rather than material wealth, can be the hallmarks of our society. Abby and Tori began this project with the idea that fashion can be created out of the old instead of the new, and that the human spirit in America is noble, adventurous, and multicultural not an invention of the media or the Hollywood moguls.

Timeline and Logistics:

The film’s funding is also authentic in its approach. The fundraising efforts have included public performance and grassroots campaigns. They dressed in "dishtowel couture" to their fundraising events in New York and Los Angeles and raised a minimal $5000, supporting the original goal, the antithesis of consumerism. The girls then traveled cross country shooting the film from July through December 2009. Making a film on a small budget is further proof to the young people of America that the value and importance of a full life is resourceful energy and artistic expression.

Along with the film, Abby and Tori wrote essays and poetry and photographed themselves along their road trip as another way to document the journey. They wish to publish a book to go along with the movie with their writing and photographs, emphasizing the philosophy of the film in alternate mediums.