We Are Wizards

By Sonia Aurora

Last weekend my friend Gabby and I went to see a documentary in NYC called We Are Wizards. Although I’d heard nothing about it, she mentioned that the movie was about Wizard Rock, people who had come together, inspired by Harry Potter, and created bands that essentially sing about or as characters of the books. Seeing as the 2 of us, along with the rest of our Potterhead friends, had not only done the midnight book releases of Books 6 and 7, but also gone to see the Wizard Rock duo The Moaning Myrtles, it stood to reason this type of movie would be our cauldron of tea.

Well.

Ok, I’ve confessed time and again that I am a geek. This past week I made up a little ditty in my head while in the bathroom that was pretty much “I like to poo” in a sing-song voice. Yes, I am weird, and I love it.

But sometimes weird teeters on this plane that makes me nervous. It’s that line that makes me embarrassed to confess I am running on fumes today because of the midnight showing of Twilight. This documentary was that line, and it was crossed.

I can’t say it was all bad. The film follows a family of Wizard Rock musicians, as well as interviews members of Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Hungarian Horntails. There is a partridge family of wizard rockers, and what I loved about the crazy 7 year old with no guitar playing skills is that he was allowed to just be, allow his imagination and creativity to take flight. More children should be raised this way, with that freedom.

It also follows the story of Heather Lawver, who started The Daily Prophet website and then when Warner Bros reared its ugly voluminous legal head, formed PotterWar and fought against the Goliath for the right to have a fansite, and WON. Her’s was the most compelling of all the stories, if nothing else to know that when this battle started she was only 16 years old. We learn that she also gets diagnosed with Dercums Disease, and has channeled her passion for Potter into race car driving now.

I could get past the guys who can’t play instruments or sing (goodness knows there are enough signed bands on labels who reap the rock star rewards). I even chuckled at the inserts of bad 50’s film footage as stand in for the fact that the filmmakers didn’t have the rights to use actual Harry Potter footage.

But for me, there were two glaring and inescapable bad apples:

Brad Neely. Ah, Brad Neely. I wanted to like this guy, this character, even tried to tweak him in my perspective as the villain of this docu-story but he just annoyed me. What he does is this Mystery Science Theater 3000 type of Paul Lynde nasal voiceover to play in spite of the actual dialogue of the films. Sounds clever and underground and sort of Dark Side of the Moon meets Wizard of Oz cool. But as the film moved along, I found more and more reason to dislike him.

He’s never read the books, see, but he fancies himself enough of an expert hipster that claims the authority to bash and curse his way through imitating what he thinks Harry, Ron and Hermione really want to say. This alone got under my skin because if you’re going to condemn something, you need to educate yourself about it. Draw the fans in with your sarcasm by throwing in the tidbits from the books that get denied entry in the films, and you’ve got my attention. But to just poke fun at something you only half-know, well, you just irk me then, my friend.

He cursed a lot, which doesn’t really bother me in other context. I’m no prude to the embellishment of the 4-letter word. But somehow, in the milieu of Harry Potter, it just seemed very wrong. As adult as the books become, it is still about a boy growing up. And kids love this. So do adults (present company included) but something about his constant cursing just made me snippier and snippier. I wanted to whack him in the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper by the end of it.

And what was with the trees? I understand independent films and documentaries have limited funds (I’ve tried and failed making 2 independent projects on the basis of money both times, so I know). But I have to say about 1/3 of the movie just popped in tree imagery, forest, woods, even in cartoon fashion, as filler. Not transition, not as moving the story along. As “let’s stick this here ’cause we need to do something while we prep for the next scene” kind of stuff.

Understand that I wanted to like and identify with this movie more than I did, and I came away disappointed, and a little ashamed that I would be caught having seen it. As a geek, I prefer to hold my head high, knowing I might be teased but also knowing I can blend in well enough and revel in my quirks. This time, I pulled the proverbial hood of my robe tighter around my face so I couldn’t be seen. I love Harry Potter and so much associated with this; this film made me sad that these are the projects I’ll have to endure to get my fix now that the books are done.

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About Sonia Aurora: Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia’s dream is to write life-changing films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K (Featured on ifilm.com & Coming Soon to YouTube!). While Sonia waits patiently for the Studios to call, she continues her selfless, humanitarian efforts (think Mother Teresa) through her scripts, short stories and sewing (a true triple-threat!), knowing all the while that someday her efforts will indeed save (or at least mildly tweak) the world. She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend’s or Bruce Campbell’s. And, in the interest of time, she’d like to start thanking the Academy now.