artist log: zach helm

Stranger Than Fiction (writer)
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (auteur)

Zach Helm is real. With his latest, Wonder Emporium, he's shown us something we maybe lost, a move away from the productized, insincerely sentimentalized gloss of the contemporary children movie -- each contrived moment merely building up to the next shamelessly saccharine scene. Helm has concocted a glimpse into what "cinema childhood" can be -- something greater, something that relates the universe to us, no matter age. Refreshingly classic like children's literature of the past, before commerce got its imposing paws on it, before this hyper-capitalistic beast spotted and removed that last remnant of sincerity - The moral journey being too controversial for blockbusters and mass appeal. Like horror, children fare has the ability to project our carnalities, to polarize us. In horror, we see our true fragility, that paper-thin line separating us from barbarianism and absolute perversion. In children fare, beauty, innocence, fulfillment. Capitalism knows this, reducing both to inanimateness, degrading them to genres of guilty pleasure. Both avenues made into pornos. Respect to Eli Roth and Harry Potter 3, 4 and 5 -- Cuaron, Newell, and Yates.

Wonder Emporium is a rough draft, still raw. From the tone, to the composition, to the acting, cinematic flaws abound. The film is many times dull, the whimsy underrealized. Helm, though, has a depth of storytelling and wordplay more refined than his counterpart auteurs. He is first a marvelous rhetorical mind, and second a visualist. The latter still needing polishing. He's a pop Ashby, except flipped -- Ashby foremost an instinctive visualizer, a channeler. But let's not confuse space and time, Wonder Emporium is Helm's directorial debut. He's a first-round draft pick from paper-whiz university, give him some more p.t. and he'll be a complete dream-teamer. At 32, Helm's just barely getting his wiggle room professionally, but down to his knack for costume/production design coloration, the potential is apparent. He may be one of the most encouraging signs to come -

The man has cross-over appeal. His pieces so far, Stranger Than Fiction & Wonder Emporium, have been peeks into the next evolution of pop: existential, profoundly simple, and most importantly, entertaining. Look at this prototypically, not as a faulty singular work by an individual. Zach Helm is real. He's a romantist. He's Pop New Wave. He's magic. Chauncey Gardener tips his hat.