A Hundred Dollars And A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines In The Northwest U.S.

DVD Reviews | Mar 14th, 2006

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Directed By: Basil Shadid, Rev. Phil Sano, Nickey Robo, and Joe Biel
Studio: Microcosm Publishing
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In this documentary, loads of zinesters, almost entirely from Portland, discuss the usual zine questions: “what is a zine?” “why do I make it?” and “how do I make it?” Its heart is in the right place, but the documentary is so boring, banal and pointless, you have to wonder if anyone but the interviewees would be interested in watching it.

Parts of the problem are the lack of narration, context, or debate; it relies on never-ending snippets of the same-sounding quotes from countless people who all look and say the same thing. Even if the documentary were to be comprised solely of interviews, it would have been more interesting if they had spent more time on fewer people to hear more personal thoughts and anecdotal stories on zining. And it would have been nice to hear from different types of people not just the young fat feminists and older creepy balding guys, but a variety of folks from zine readers to major media representatives to librarians to bands and musicians, all giving their perspectives on the influence of zines. (Oh wait, that’s right, music zines aren’t considered “real zines.” *snort*)

Another problem are the standard and uninteresting questions the interviewees expound upon. Zines are cool, but who wants to hear for ten minutes about how they’re stapled? And sometimes I felt the point of the documentary was to see how many times “DIY” could be mentioned in an hour. At this juncture in time, an interesting documentary on zines should focus on questions of the point of print zines in this era of technology that makes DIY expression and publishing accessible to anyone. How have web sites and blogs affected zines? How has mass communication and emailing affected the penpal culture of zining? Is there any advantage to zining when you could express yourself cheaply and reach more people online? With its lack of any present-day perspective, this documentary could’ve been made 15-20 years ago and would have looked exactly the same.

Perhaps instead of a film, Microcosm should have just compiled a big zine, filled with zinester’s perspectives on zining, alongside samples from their work. That would make a more apropos project, not to mention more interesting to zine fans.

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Audio Commentary
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Rating: NR
Running Time: 71 minutes
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