Inside OutBack on the red line, we're back at Davis Square to see SPEW at the Somerville Theater which probably seats 120 and is 80% full. This is a lot better than turnout for Shakespeare Behind Bars. Again, this is probably due to the earliness of the screening.

First up is the short film called Inside Out, which starts with no sound. This is the first mistake encountered at the festival. The director, who's sitting in front of me, leaves the theater pissed. They decide to start the movie over, which is a good idea. Unfourtunately, this time we're treated to sound but no picture. But luckily (or in retrospect maybe unfourtunately) the third time's the charm.

The movie starts on impaled doll heads in a grassy front yard. The director narrates saying that she travels a lot, and has seen a lot of strange yards "and am often amazed at the people I meet and the stories they tell."

If only she let them tell their stories...
Like a woman who owns and runs a tattoo shop (which she inherited), drives around looking for road kill, which she then uses to decorate her yard using creepy dollhouses.

We are treated to a half dozen people like this, who's houses would make (and have made) a good table top book. Too bad it didn’t stop at the book. The director feels the need to involve herself like a Michael Moore on a mission. But instead of Roger Smith or President Bush, she's on the hunt for strange front yards which… have already been found. She uses the hunt for the already found front yards as a excuse to find herself. And she forces us to watch her find herself.

She tells stories about her life and the lives of the characters who appear on screen. You wonder why she's telling their stories when she probably has their interview footage. She also breaks the third wall and talks to the camera. This is done with extreme close-ups on parts of her face which are shaky and annoying.

In Florida, this older guy carves sculptures out of wood, but we no longer care. The handheld camerawork is annoyingly jarring, taking the audience out of the story.

Using found objects to make their own art, Dick and Jane’s Spot is really cool. Jane explains how people are outraged at a telephone pole she decorated, they scream its a naked woman but she calmly reasons "its just a telephone pole."

One yard looks like an alien maze. The older gentleman that owns the house tells the director that if she wants to shoot she has to work with him. He will only communicate with her if she speaks into this toy microphone set-up.  Each creation only costs 5 dollars or less and only takes 5 hours of less. That's the limitations he puts on himself. All the people she interviews seem to be at least a little bit crazy.

This short was almost 50 minutes long which I didn't expect. I came for the film SPEW, which is listed as a feature in the program guide, but as it turns out is 5 minutes shorter than the short (Inside Out) that preceded it. How can this be? If anyone working for the programming department for the IBBF can explain this to me, please drop me an e-mail as I’d love to hear the explanation.

At the end of Inside Out, the director tried to relate all of this to a necklace her father made her as a kid made with human teeth. How this relates I have no idea. How this got into the festival? I looked back at the audience who were all in disbelief.