Illegal Use of Joe Zopp

Hometown Movie without a Hometown!
Illegal use of Joe Zopp is no Clerks nor is it an El Mariachi which were both made with budgets under $50,000 dollars. It takes place in the pseudonymous town of "Purewater." There are not any landmarks which are honestly depicted. The motel, the street names and the businesses are not promoted, even the protagonist changes his name to "Pseudonym. Why is this important in a narrative film? It is vital for an independent film to gather steam on it's way to snowballing into a cult classic and for a hometown film to pick up fans there must be places that fans can visit if only to feel a part of "their" film and that is what a film like "Clerks" gives and "Illegal use of Joe Zopp" cheats the prospective fan out of knowing. I use "Clerks" as an example since it is an independent film which uses actors from the area as does this film. Clerks takes place mostly inside the "Quick Stop Deli" and the R.S.T. video store in the town of Leonardo New Jersey which are all actual places still in...

Can I s**t on a tortilla and call it a taco?
Illegal Use of Joe Zopp is one of the most enjoyable films I've watched in the last year. Combining the best humor of the Coen Brothers with the best twisted plots of, well, the Coen Brothers--without, somehow, limiting itself to a Coen Brothers imitation--Joe Zopp manages to be clearly inspired by great works and, at the same time, completely original.

Joe Zopp is a brilliant young man who, tired of his treatment at the hands of the small town he grew up in, runs away and becomes a street performer in Ohio. Eight years pass, and one day he runs into an old acquaintance who tells him that everyone in his old town thinks that he has been killed in a freak train accident. Naturally, Zopp returns to his town incognito (using the pseudonym Gary Pseudonym) to discover who has orchestrated his fake death and prove his aliveness.

Where the plot goes from there is something else entirely: bizarre all-women suburban neighborhood committees (the P.O.W.s), a cranky hotel...



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