You can’t get much more fringe, than the subject of this droll little documentary.
It’ll be adored by folks who build their schedules around Will Shortz’s challenges as puzzle master on NPR’s Weekend Edition; and by folks who enjoy crossword puzzles; and by folks who get a kick out of anagrams, spoonerisms, Tom Swifties and other forms of word play.
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| Orchestral bassoonist Lori Wike poses with one of her favorite palindromes. |
In short, director Vince Clemente’s new film will go over big with word nerds. And if you do belong to that rather idiosyncratic group, then you’ve no doubt endured plenty of glazed looks and rolled eyes while trying to explain this passion to normal people.
Children generally encounter palindromes at some point during their grade-school years, likely shared by a math or English teacher looking to lighten the mood. Palindromes are easy to define: They’re words or phrases that read identically, forward and backwards. Basic single word examples include TOT, PIP and DAD; common names include BOB, ELLE and HANNAH.
It gets more interesting when multiple words are employed to make a palindromic phrase; classics include MADAM, I’M ADAM (supposedly the first sentence uttered in the Garden of Eden); STEP ON NO PETS; WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW; and my all-time favorite, A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL … PANAMA!
The latter points to a key element of the best palindromes: They should be elegant, and make some sort of sense. Raising a smile is even better. Random assortments of words, no matter how impressively long and perfectly palindromic, are frowned upon.
Most people abandon such nonsense upon achieving adulthood, but Clemente’s film isn’t interested in most people. Having previously helmed one of the best documentaries to cover video games — 2011’s Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters — I can well imagine his wheels spinning anew, after hearing about the First Annual World Palindrome Championship, which took place March 16, 2012, in Brooklyn, New York.
(As it happened, the event was misnamed; although it was indeed the first, subsequent contests have been quinquennial … which is to say, every five years.)
Clemente decided to profile the contestants who would vie for the second bout, scheduled to take place March 24-25, 2017, in Stanford, Connecticut. In a gesture of solidarity, host Will Shortz — you just knew he’d be involved, right? — booked this event alongside the less eclectic 40th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament; this way, the palindromists were guaranteed a full-house audience.
The resulting film was literally years in the making, in part because it was crowd-funded via Kickstarter; and in part because it took Clemente awhile to interview everybody ahead of time, and then again during the two-day event; and in part because then he needed supplementary crowd-funding via Indiegogo, in order to complete post-production.
The result is impressively entertaining — for word nerds, anyway — despite such humble origins.
