January 24, 2004
It's *finally* out
I was at my favourite video store yesterday, and there I saw it:
waydowntown is finally out in dvd
If you've never seen nor heard of waydowntown, then you're completely missing out. As a corporate grunt movie it's on par with Office Space. Set in Calgary, where the downtown core is connected by a series of tunnels and catwalks, four recent graduates, now cubicle warriors, make a bet to see who can go the longest without setting a foot outside. Despite the scale of the interlocking system, the confinement has some serious negative effects on the four.
This film had a serious impact on me a year after I graduated with a business degree that had proven itself nearly worthless. The rigours and doldrums of cubicle working as portrayed in the film made me think about going back to school and doing something different with my life (although I hadn't yet found an office job which I had been looking for). Since then I've worked retail (which, in a corporate run store, is just as bad, if not worse than cubicle slogging), I worked in a small office which was easily the worst job ever (yes, worse than Wal-Mart!), and where I'm currently working, an open-concept, progressive corporation that treats its employees with respect and emphasizes team development.
There was a problem for a number of years as the production tried to find a distributor to release it in the States, which they nearly did, but it fell through. In the meantime, the video was released but the DVD rights were tied up, although a DVD was released in Region 3 or 4 (the Australian region code). But it's out now, and you can buy it from Amazon.cawaydowntown
Woohoo.
Posted by graig at January 24, 2004 10:55 AMent
It sounds...interesting. I know some people here in T.O. who hardly go outside in winter: they have the subway in their building at home, and the supermarket too, and only get outside to run from the subway station to work and back.
Posted by: Eva at January 24, 2004 12:14 PMI don't remember the movie nearly as well as I remember the rest of that day.
-It was the middle movie of a Munich games Hostage Crisis film/Waydowntown/Shadow of the Vampire trifecta we saw at the film festival.
-The first film was very thorough yet thoroughly tactless and rather tasteless near the end.
-Shadow of the Vampire is one of only two vampire movies that I will ever like (From Dusk Til Dawn being the other).
-we saw those films with two humourless ladies. Oy vey. It wasn't just that they didn't get "it"...they just didn't seem to be into the whole "fun" aspect. If what Pablo Nuruda says is true about laughter being the language of the soul then I fear what deals those two have made.
-While standing in line I christened the phrase "...and then I ate the horse!". That got a laugh from the spinsters. I used the term a month later with the same girls and got nothing though:( I guess there is a shelf-life for Iron Chef jokes at Tim Horton's expense.
-I need to see Waydowntown again because I have all these memories of office scenes from movies and I think they originated in this film.
Ahhh good times.
Posted by: ryan at January 24, 2004 3:12 PMYAY!!!!
Posted by: Carla at January 25, 2004 3:00 PMI love Office Space, and I've been meaning to see waydowntown for eons. Cubicle warriors unite!
Posted by: jen at January 25, 2004 5:58 PMI saw this when it was out at the theatre and it was pretty cool. Being an office drone, imagining how long I could last (not very!), and having spent some time in Calgary to be somewhat familiar with its downtown layout. You could do the same thing here if you live and work in the PATH.
Posted by: Tanya at January 26, 2004 5:22 PM