May 8, 2008

"Nonsense is better than no sense at all."
- Canadian punk band NoMeansNo

This summer, hundreds of people are planning trips to a sleepy Utah town to fill an RV with popcorn, dress like trees and goblins and hang out with actors-turned-dentists at possibly the stupidest film festival ever.

Propelled by a few years of Internet saturation, "Troll 2" - a 1990 movie actually about goblins and maybe vegetarianism, not-in-my-backyard attitudes and Stonehenge mysticism - will move beyond popular regional screenings to a full-blown weekend showcase. You might remember "Troll 2" from repeated play on HBO in the early ‘90s, jammed somewhere between "Mannequin" and a James "Buster" Douglas fight. Or maybe you accidentally bought it in one of those dollar bins of DVDs at Wal-Mart. Most likely, you never saw it or instead chose to remember something more relevant like the song in that one dishwasher commercial.

For about a decade, Michael Stephenson attempted to eradicate his memory of the movie and his role as "Joshua Waits," the awkward, screeching 10-year-old lead. In his first prominent acting role, Stephenson talked to his ghost of a grandfather, peed on his family’s dinner, threw a Molotov cocktail at a goblin pretending to be a preacher and inexplicably saved his family by eating a double-decker bologna sandwich. If that all sounds ridiculous, it was far worse for a kid going through puberty in suburban Utah.

"People would shout ‘double-decker bologna sandwich’ at me in the halls and I thought I would never live it down," Stephenson said with a laugh of his high school years.

As a quick encapsulation, the movie is about a family seeking time away from the city in some "fresh country air" who is duped by goblins posing as human townies intent on appeasing a maniacally vegetarian witch. And no, it is not supposed to be a comedy or drive-in gorefest.

Yet almost two decades later, it is the genesis for an entire weekend celebration complete with nearly the entire cast flying in from around the United States - with about 600 fanatics expected to join them.

The movie has been bolstered by absolute Internet saturation in the past few years, much of that from Stephenson, who now lives in California and operates his own advertising group. But those fans grab onto the movie, share it with friends at parties and, according to Web site testimonials, shout lines of dialogue to liven up the mood on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Without getting too philosophical, Stephenson pointed to the expansion of the movie far past its original and intended appreciation as similar to the main element in the sociology book "The Tipping Point," where some ideas and artists are lauded because they originate in sincerity at the fringes.

And it’s in that honest quality where the movie really shines, beyond the camp of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or the unwatchable nature of anything by Ed Wood.

"The acting is bad, yeah, but I’ve heard people say that it’s actually not a bad movie, because it doesn’t fail to entertain ... ," Stephenson said, later adding that recent packed screenings of the movie back up that theory. "How can you say that 400 or 500 people laughing their heads off in a theater is a bad thing?"

The raw, unintentional silliness of the whole thing easily lends itself to questions of how it ever passed the point of being a screenplay (called "Goblins") or how every adult on the set didn’t bust a gut at the sight of the costumes (also used in a few of the Italian director’s earlier barbarian films). But once you’re past the tipping point - as Stephenson is, as he’s in the process of putting together a documentary on "Troll 2" and has brought many of the actors "back into the fold" - then you might as well just laugh.

The festival is set for June 27 through June 29 in Morgan, Utah, a town of about 3,000 and the site of the majority of the filming. Along with screenings of "Troll 2" and the other unrelated movies in the "Troll" (ahem) franchise, there are events connected with the story line, like filling an RV with popcorn (it was part of a love scene!), a double-decker bologna sandwich eating contest, partying with the oddball cast and crew (few still act, and one is a practicing dentist) and in the joy of taking over a tiny town for a preposterous purpose. Who needs Sundance?

To learn more about "Troll 2," a documentary about the hysteria surrounding the movie in the last 18 years and the upcoming festival and other showings, go online to: www.bestworstmovie.com.