
Join Carnival Maestro Todd Robbins and award-winning filmmaker, Nick Basile, on a journey into a world of circus freaks, fire eaters, human blockheads, contortionists, professional lunatics and much, much more.... (Full plot summary below)
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Join Carnival Maestro Todd Robbins and award-winning filmmaker, Nick Basile, on a journey into a world of circus freaks, fire eaters, human blockheads, contortionists, professional lunatics and much, much more.
Leave your thoughts about American Carny: True Tales from the Circus Sideshow.
| User ReviewAllen RI'd forgotten that I'd seen this a few years ago until the final 20 minutes or so as it all came back to me. It's seriously low-fi, but still enjoyable as a primer for modern sideshow culture. |
| User ReviewDrew JThis was a hard one for me. The most interesting thing about it was watching the freaks try to convince themselves (I mean, the audience...Whoops!) that performing in sideshows is meaningful and somehow progressive--promoting gender and social ambiguity--rather than exploiting the culturally marginal to turn a dwindling profit from the normative order. Maybe there is no "good" reason to be fascinated by freaks and deformity. But I am. |
| User ReviewKristal CHow does one make a boring movie about the circus sideshow and its "freaks"? Well, Nick Basile did it. This doc tries to cover way too much ground in covering not only the rich history of the sideshow but in focusing on too many subjects. As a result, we get a movie filled with "talking heads" rather than a slice-of-life, which would have been far more interesting. |