In Praise of: The Weed Eaters on Tour

I actively avoided seeing The Weed Eaters at last year’s NZIFF, put off by the quotes: “… riotous NZ horror comedy. Four holidaying friends come across a strain of weed that gives them the most extreme case of the munchies ever recorded”.

A no-budget horror-stoner-comedy? A wry take on the horror genre by a group of first-time filmmakers, wherein the one and only joke, like so much drug humour, is: “Bro! We were so high”? Already, The Coed and the Zombie Stoner rears its annoying head.

However, I would have to see it due to the book (plug!) and the makers were on tour with it, so no more excuses. Off to Dunedin’s Rialto Cinema with a couple of mates to get this over with.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

The Weed Eaters turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in a cinema. The cast and crew of this $20,000 feature made a fittingly DIY, cardboard-and-string evening of fun for the throngs of Dunedin-ites who attended. In fact, part of the pleasure was seeing a cinema more packed for this than any non-festival movie I’ve been to in ten years.

Through no fault of our hosts, it was a slightly awkward start with cowriter-director Callum Devlin striding in with a six-foot papier-mâché fork over his shoulder like a domestic Poseidon to typically befuddled and awkward South Island applause (when will the South ever learn it’s fine to show appreciation for things?). However, the audience came around soon enough, and if nothing else, the film itself got us pumped.

There is a school of thought that critics must approach every film with as few preconceptions as possible, thereby having a completely unprejudiced experience and conveying their most honest opinions. For years, I kidded myself that I adhered to this. As you’ve already read, I don’t.

In fact, The Weed Eaters was an ideal example of the joy of pre-judging movies, being proven wrong, and getting to see a film that is far funnier than past experiences would have one assume. I was cheerfully surprised and delighted at just how likable it was, and how smartly the team had navigated its ambitions against the budget they had to work with.

Often, with micro-budget fare, you find yourself making excuses for cinematic shortcomings, with the best will in the world. Not here.

Like 2023’s The Paragon, the production played to its limitations and allowed us to be immersed in the story, even pricing in a moment of pleasingly revolting gore reminiscent of Zombie Holocaust.

When the lights went up, and the applause died down, the cast and crew joined local ex-mayor Aaron Hawkins for a Q & A, a meat raffle (I technically had three chances to win, being joined by vegetarian friends. Didn’t.) and a screaming competition.

In the foyer afterwards, the queue for the toilets was bottlenecked, with another for photos with a hand-painted NZ backdrop and the aforementioned fork. The crew hung around for chats before we all dispersed, and they went on their way farther north to continue the tour, like the troopers they are.

What we got was a really fun night at the cinema. Something different, something that gave you far more immersion in the whole experience than 3D or nachos on demand.

Touring films go back to the birth of cinema when medleys of moving pictures were presented as part of an evening’s entertainment.

The first films shown in New Zealand were part of a similar variety night at Auckland’s Opera House in 1896. One-reelers were presented by impresarios who kept or discarded them as they saw fit.

F.W. Murnau’s 1925 silent, Tartuffe, depicts a cinema showman who travels around on a horse and cart fitted with a projection booth wherein he shows films to punters in their homes, like an old magic lantern show. It’s these baby steps in distribution where cinema already began to split away from theatre, but retained certain elements of the theatrical experience. Bear in mind how much ‘theatre’ and ‘theatrical’ remain in movie discourse.

Perhaps one of the most surprising things about the cinematic landscape post-pandemic is that, for all the modern possibilities of distribution, films like The Weed Eaters are returning to their earliest origins.

Side note: in this country, Rudall Hayward spent the 1920s travelling from town to town, making entire films to be shown at the end of a week, adapting the same screenplay to suit local idiosyncrasies.

The modern resurgence of touring perhaps begins with the 2008 financial crash, which saw the collapse of many independent distribution companies. The rise of streamers and smartphones added to the plethora of screens we can access, and cinemas floundered and flailed, upping their prices. At the same time, similarly freaked out studios doubled down on more and more pandering blockbusters to lesser and lesser box office returns.

Underneath all that, the independents suffered challenges on all fronts, but makers touring their films (and putting on a show as opposed to just post-screening chats) have slowly returned with smaller films like Bypass, Hundreds of Beavers and The ParaPod Movie.

Independent filmmaking is ludicrously hard as is, decimating time, money and years of people’s lives. Add to that, these films are lucky to see the inside of the cinema for which they were intended.

Adding tour dates, competitions, and spot prizes on top of that is a big ask, but all I can say is: it paid off with The Weed Eaters. It won’t work for every film, but the history of cinema and cinemas is wedded to showmanship and gimmickry.

If you’re reading this and you’re one of those bastards in the arts with money, loan out Callum Devlin’s prop and fork out some proper money for some other filmmakers to do likewise because the box office doesn’t lie. Dunedin doesn’t come out for indie fare, but they came out for The Weed Eaters, and they’re not the only ones.

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