If a stranger asks you for the time, look around to make sure no one’s recording on a cell phone...because you might get happy slapped, that is, slapped by a stranger while the event is recorded, only to be later uploaded on the web. This anti-social phenomenon is the subject of Montreal director Christos Sourligas’s latest film.
Happy Slapping, shot entirely on iPhone mobile devices, debuted on August 21 at the Montreal World Film Festival. A gripping patchwork of video, it was shot by its young stars, with some coaching by director of photography Luc Montpellier. The film is about bullying and the quest for fame an age of incessant digital communication, but it’s neither preachy nor predictable.
In the film, five tough-talking suburban teens pile into a parent’s shiny new SUV to head into the city seeking not just thrills but the fame that goes
with recording their thrills for an internet-based show called RAMPNIT3S run by a shadowy figure named Kendo (Tristan D. Lalla). Kendo tells his
audience: “Do it up nice. Get that glory.”
The iPhone never lies–as the tight cast (all are members of acting union ACTRA) and their footage often feels like a documentary, though it was scripted. “Keep filming” the teens repeat to each other all night as they try to record actions audacious enough to make it onto the show. The (mostly) sexy young things also put lots of social pressure on each other.
While searching for the guts to capture dramatic happy slaps and action– as well as a gang name (everyone calls them the No Names)–each teen’s private problems sneak into the margins. Wiggy (Alex Harrouch) competes with his violent, older brother. Tiki (Laurin Elizabeth Padolina) avenges her father for not standing by her in a grown-up crisis. Belle (Erica Deutschman) jokes about pills and porn, but seems lost. Rotund Boomer (Jesse Camacho) is the technical wiz, but the butt of constant jokes. Slick Princeton (Jaa Smith-Johnson) reveals his hoop dreams are shaky.
The on-the-go film couldn’t be more different from forty-one-year-old Sourligas’s first film, the emotionally raw, low-budget romance Elephant Shoes (2004), which featured a one-night stand. This time, Sourligas hit the streets of Montreal; he intentionally didn’t highlight the local landmarks, wanting the setting to remain what he calls “Generica America”. Meanwhile the relentless rap soundtrack comes courtesy of co-writer Andrew Farrar, who is the rapper Annakin Slayd (who also has some Greek roots). Farrar cameos in the film as a creepy bartender with an unwholesome influence on the teens.
As with the spooky 1999 film The Blair Witch Project, technology, adrenaline, and narrative are intertwined. But what’s scary here are not some woodsy goblins out there, but what the teens will sacrifice for digital fame.
Sourligas says the film in no way glorifies happy slapping. Instead he says he wanted to expose the phenomenon and “get people talking, engaged in conversations, trying to practice mindfulness and compassion first to themselves, which than translates to others.” He invested 100,000 Canadian dollars of his own finances, including part of his severance pay after he was laid off from a television job after twelve years. The total budget was $250,000 for the film shot last year.
In an age of sexting and social media predominance, the theme–bullying–is timely. But some things never change. Sourligas explains: “We tend to think bullying happens in school yards, and there has to be physical violence, which is a total cliché. Most bullying is emotional, verbal, psychological… Parents do it to their kids, siblings do it to each other, we do it to our romantic partners, our friends, our employees. In fact, the five main characters don’t realize this, until their night and their lives unravel during their evening of rampages. They quickly learn their lessons (at least most of them do). So, all this bullying has gotta stop...this is why I made this movie.”
Armed with their weapons of choice, cell phones, Happy Slapping’s young heroes are both victims and perpetrators in a wired world.