Coming Soon
LOCAL LEGENDS + LOCAL LEGENDS: BLOODBATH
2013/2024
Director
Matt Farley
Starring
Matt Farley
Runtime
75 minutes + 74 minutes
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Many have claimed that Matt Farley is America's most inspiring living artist. Others have responded, “Who?!” LOCAL LEGENDS is his story. LOCAL LEGENDS: BLOODBATH is its brand-new sequel.
Let film critic Will Sloane, one of Farley's preeminent champions, explain the whole deal with Matt Farley and Motern Media: “When I was six years old, I directed a superhero movie with my parents’ video camera called SUPERWILLIE. I starred as the title character, and my dad graciously played the villain, a Freddy Krueger-like character named Claws. A lot of kids make backyard movies like this, and if you grow up to become Steven Spielberg, it becomes part of the story of how you were always destined for greatness. If you don’t become Steven Spielberg, you stop making them. Matt Farley never stopped.
Farley is the owner of Motern Media, which is less a production company than a DIY brand, like Dreamland Films was for John Waters. With his friend Charles Roxburgh, he began making feature-length movies in college for budgets of zero dollars. Now in their 40s, they have graduated to making movies for several thousand dollars. They specialize in comedy horror movies, with the emphasis much more on comedy than horror. All are shot in quiet Manchester, New Hampshire with a recurring troupe of non-actor friends and with special effects that are almost on par with the ones Roger Corman was using in the ‘50s. Farley and Roxburgh are two of my favorite living filmmakers. Their movies may only have a few hundred devoted fans, but I suspect all of them would say the same.
LOCAL LEGENDS is the most atypical film in the Motern catalog – but it may also be the best. An intimately scaled, intensely personal black-and-white comedy in the vein of Woody Allen, it chronicles a New England-based singer/songwriter/filmmaker named Matt Farley who keeps creating in the face of universal indifference. Imagine STARDUST MEMORIES by and about a man who is not famous.
If you consider yourself a creative person, your creativity is unlikely to receive any recognition. Before the internet, your songs or paintings or short stories might have reached an audience of your friends and family, who might have greeted them with polite indifference. With the internet, you might reach the dozen people who follow your Instagram account, and it can be hard to find the motivation to create if there is no audience. If you do experience some recognition (for example, let’s say you host two modestly-successful podcasts), that recognition is probably not proportionate to the work you put in. At some point, if you accumulate enough adult responsibilities – a job, a spouse, children, a mortgage – your time becomes more precious and you start trimming the parts that are non-essential. And even if you do become one of the few who can live off your creativity, you will need to keep the money flowing, which means you’ll need to cater to the market, which will inevitably alienate you from your own artistry.
Farley and Roxburgh are not immune from these dilemmas. They have surely been told that there’s no point making movies if they continue to lose money. And yet… it is still vitally important to keep creating, because if you don’t, something in you dies. LOCAL LEGENDS was released the same year as another great movie about a struggling songwriter, the Coen Brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS. At the end of that film, we realize that even if you have all the talent in the world, it takes luck to become Bob Dylan. The message of the Coens’ movie is: it’s okay to be a failure. It’s a good message in a world that so harshly stigmatizes failure, but I like Farley’s message even better: even when society tells you you’re a failure, creativity has to be its own reward.”
LOCAL LEGENDS (2013)
An endearingly self-aggrandizing meditation on the struggle between art & commerce that wages within the idiosyncratic mind of Matt Farley as he navigates his community of eccentric creatives and vivid personalities. Twice nominated as one of the greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound 2022 poll.
LOCAL LEGENDS: BLOODBATH (2024)
Matt Farley reflects on his artistic philosophy in a meta-sequel that steers into the slasher genre as the manifestation of his business acumen begins murdering everyone that gets in the way of his creative process. Possibly the greatest sequel to a biopic ever made, certainly the most indecorous.
Let film critic Will Sloane, one of Farley's preeminent champions, explain the whole deal with Matt Farley and Motern Media: “When I was six years old, I directed a superhero movie with my parents’ video camera called SUPERWILLIE. I starred as the title character, and my dad graciously played the villain, a Freddy Krueger-like character named Claws. A lot of kids make backyard movies like this, and if you grow up to become Steven Spielberg, it becomes part of the story of how you were always destined for greatness. If you don’t become Steven Spielberg, you stop making them. Matt Farley never stopped.
Farley is the owner of Motern Media, which is less a production company than a DIY brand, like Dreamland Films was for John Waters. With his friend Charles Roxburgh, he began making feature-length movies in college for budgets of zero dollars. Now in their 40s, they have graduated to making movies for several thousand dollars. They specialize in comedy horror movies, with the emphasis much more on comedy than horror. All are shot in quiet Manchester, New Hampshire with a recurring troupe of non-actor friends and with special effects that are almost on par with the ones Roger Corman was using in the ‘50s. Farley and Roxburgh are two of my favorite living filmmakers. Their movies may only have a few hundred devoted fans, but I suspect all of them would say the same.
LOCAL LEGENDS is the most atypical film in the Motern catalog – but it may also be the best. An intimately scaled, intensely personal black-and-white comedy in the vein of Woody Allen, it chronicles a New England-based singer/songwriter/filmmaker named Matt Farley who keeps creating in the face of universal indifference. Imagine STARDUST MEMORIES by and about a man who is not famous.
If you consider yourself a creative person, your creativity is unlikely to receive any recognition. Before the internet, your songs or paintings or short stories might have reached an audience of your friends and family, who might have greeted them with polite indifference. With the internet, you might reach the dozen people who follow your Instagram account, and it can be hard to find the motivation to create if there is no audience. If you do experience some recognition (for example, let’s say you host two modestly-successful podcasts), that recognition is probably not proportionate to the work you put in. At some point, if you accumulate enough adult responsibilities – a job, a spouse, children, a mortgage – your time becomes more precious and you start trimming the parts that are non-essential. And even if you do become one of the few who can live off your creativity, you will need to keep the money flowing, which means you’ll need to cater to the market, which will inevitably alienate you from your own artistry.
Farley and Roxburgh are not immune from these dilemmas. They have surely been told that there’s no point making movies if they continue to lose money. And yet… it is still vitally important to keep creating, because if you don’t, something in you dies. LOCAL LEGENDS was released the same year as another great movie about a struggling songwriter, the Coen Brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS. At the end of that film, we realize that even if you have all the talent in the world, it takes luck to become Bob Dylan. The message of the Coens’ movie is: it’s okay to be a failure. It’s a good message in a world that so harshly stigmatizes failure, but I like Farley’s message even better: even when society tells you you’re a failure, creativity has to be its own reward.”
LOCAL LEGENDS (2013)
An endearingly self-aggrandizing meditation on the struggle between art & commerce that wages within the idiosyncratic mind of Matt Farley as he navigates his community of eccentric creatives and vivid personalities. Twice nominated as one of the greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound 2022 poll.
LOCAL LEGENDS: BLOODBATH (2024)
Matt Farley reflects on his artistic philosophy in a meta-sequel that steers into the slasher genre as the manifestation of his business acumen begins murdering everyone that gets in the way of his creative process. Possibly the greatest sequel to a biopic ever made, certainly the most indecorous.