denmn

It's tricky reviewing a friend's movie.

Luckily, David Meiklejohn's new documentary, "My Heart Is an Idiot," is really good.

Whew.

See, in the interest of full disclosure (and to make myself seem cool), I should say that Meiklejohn and I used to work together at Videoport. (I still do.) Meiklejohn made this movie, which follows Davy Rothbart, the founder of Found magazine, on several speaking tours as he tries to sort out his complicated love life.

In the "self-indulgent, yet ultimately winning search for love" documentary genre, "MHIAI" falls comfortably somewhere between Ross McElwee's whimsical classic "Sherman's March" and Eric Schaeffer's nakedly revealing series "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single." Rothbart comes across both as a shaggy hipster doofus and a genuine romantic, a manipulative exhibitionist and a yearning dreamer.

Meiklejohn adds some inventive touches (model vehicles on a hand-drawn map, an old tape recorder visualizing an awkward interview) and, as part of Rothbart's (and the film's) quest for answers, the star gathers advice from an eclectic selection of people (Tommy Chong, Newt Gingrich, Ira Glass, Zooey Deschanel) alongside the gradually revealed entanglements of Rothbart's love life.

It's a thoughtful, consistently surprising film destined, I'm certain, for national recognition. Its Maine premiere Monday at the Nickelodeon Cinemas in Portland will have both Meiklejohn and Rothbart on hand to field your questions. I talked with Meiklejohn, who just returned to town after a cross-country series of screenings (see myheartisanidiot.com for details).

There's a "whoa" moment a half-hour into the film which forces us to re-evaluate our impression of Rothbart. Was that revelation always part of your cinematic plan? The documentary was originally just about Found, but we gradually realized it was more about love. Davy saw he was too close to the subject, so it became my project. So it was my decision, for dramatic reasons, to introduce that revelation at that point. It definitely shows how there are aspects of Davy that are compartmentalized, and not necessarily in a healthy way.

What drives people to relentlessly exhibit their personal lives? On one hand, it's admirable how open Davy is about his mistakes, in his life and his work, the things he might be ashamed of. I'm not saying it's entirely noble, but it definitely makes for good art.

What's next for the movie? This tour is like a mating ritual, with me trying to seduce distributors, to create momentum that will put the film on their radar, which will hopefully lead to a cinematic and DVD release.

All right, so what have you learned about love from all this? It just reaffirms how important honesty is, both with your partner and yourself. I thought I knew that before, but seeing what they go through in the movie really drives that home. Nobody is infallible when it comes to love. Davy's a great example of that -- no matter how pure his intentions.

Sometimes, or is it all the time, it seems like the people in charge of selling a movie are working directly in opposition to the original intents and artistic dreams of the actual creative people who make movies. I know that it's the job of distributors to get people to watch a movie they're putting out, I guess by any means necessary. But if they create an ad campaign, a movie poster, or DVD box art which is deliberately misleading as to the actual content of the movie, isn't that just going to either tick or turn people off? Seriously, if you create a sexy, silly cover for an ambitious, serious film, either you're going to a.)disappoint the people attracted to such a cover when they don't get what they were looking for or b.)keep people who would actually like such a film from ever renting it, or c.) both. For example, this film. I didn't watch it, and had no real interest in watching it, essentially based on the cover art and title. (I mean, sure, I was not exactly jazzed to check out the newest Dax Shepard vehicle either, but more on that later...) The title, the tagline, and the cutesy cover with stars Shepard and Katie Aselton all wrapped up in a blanket and giving us a comically-cute 'oops!' look makes it look like a lowbrow, cheesy romantic comedy, and the premise (unhappy couple decides to give each other the titular 'freebie' one-night stand with someone else apiece) is the stuff of lousy guy comedies (see last year's Hall Pass, etc.) But, since I had an undeniably-too-cool-not-to-tell reason to actually watch the thing (I got to interview star/director/writer Aselton) and I have to say The Freebie is really, really good. In addition to starring in this (and the very funny series 'The League'), Aselton is married to indie filmmaker (and co-father of the so-called 'mumblecore' movement) Mark Duplass, and in this, her directorial debut, she shows a real affinity for that genre's improvisational, conversational and emotionally-raw style, and creates a smart, legitimately moving examination of one couple's misguided attempt to sort out their relationship. Shepard and Aselton play Darren and Annie, a genuinely-happy, compulsively-honest couple who admit, one night, that their sex life has become routine. And so the 'one-night stand' plan. What's truly impressive is how organically the premise gets introduced; the two actors so ably create a very specifically-believable couple that you go along with their reasoning, even though you are pretty sure they're making a terrible mistake. That's a credit to the two actors, in more ways than one. I noticed that there are no writing credits listed for The Freebie on IMDb, and none in the movie itself, and Aselton confirmed to me on the phone (that's the last time I name drop, I promise), that, while she wrote her film's outline, the entire thing was improvised. And, while Aselton's background in the mumblecore genre, and the improv-heavy 'The League' reveals that she's got the chops for such an undertaking (and she is heartbreaking, winning, and lovely), the real revelation is Shepard. You might recognize him from comedies of such variable quality as Let's Go to Prison, Idiocracy, Without a Paddle, and Baby Mama, but absolutely nothing in his previous work suggested he could pull something like this off. As the two go through their painful journey into sexual adventurousness and, maybe, back again, the two actors make us care, and empathize, every step of the way, with Aselton's sure hand behind the camera providing sensitive, sure guidance. I popped this DVD in, honestly, out of a sense of obligation and, largely thanks to how it was marketed, absolutely no expectations whatsoever. I finished it with a continued respect for Aselton, a newfound one for Shepard, and a reaffirmed belief that movie marketing is headed up, by and large, by a team of trained chimps with cocaine habits. Ignore the cover, watch the movie.