I should have been surprised that this documentary exists, but I guess I wasn’t really. Amused, certainly, but not surprised. And if you’ve been paying attention around these parts (y’know, at all) then you’ll be even less surprised -- and possibly even more amused -- that I decided to watch it. The absurdity of the claims made on the back cover was quite enough for me: about the “Forks Outfitters employee who gets mistaken for Bella” and “self-described Jacob’s grandfather” and “the vampire transplant who plays the real life Alice”. (Um… what?) Of course I had to watch it!

Now, if one wanted, one could conceivably make a Grand Tour of all the literary supernatural hotspots that the great US of A has to offer. Not only Forks, Washington, but New Orleans (Lestat!) and Shreveport (Sookie Stackhouse), Louisiana; the Twin Cities, Minnesota (MaryJanice Davidson); St. Louis, Missouri (Anita Blake); Madison, Wisconsin (Garnet Lacey); Chicago, Illinois (Chicagoland Vampires, The Vampire and Dresden Files); and Denver, Colorado (Kitty Norville). Sadly, Caldwell, New York, from J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood doesn’t actually exist, nor does Fell’s Church, Virginia from The Vampire Diaries… but, wait, Falls Church, Virginia does! Wonder what a documentary about that oh-so-mysterious commuter-laden residential suburb of Washington D.C. would be like?

Well, unless some enterprising soul replaces the “a” with an “e” and lures unsuspecting CW viewers in with offers of Vampire Diaries tours taking in Elena’s house and High School, then it would be nothing like Twilight in Forks. Twilight is Big Busines in that small upstate Washington town, and don’t they just love it?

We open with a woman clearly delighted to be a part of this hysteria. Her name is Charlene Leppell, she owns a local flower shop, and she recounts a tenuous tale of an old journal bearing witness to the oh-so-astounding fact that a Cullen family had once lived in the town. So, there really was “…a Cullen connection to Forks, which is a little bit eerie.” Oh, yes. Eerie. What’s more, the house on which Stephenie Meyer based the Cullen house really had been owned by a doctor, who had four kids… and one of them was adopted! “So, you better watch out,” she simpers coyly.

And that simper had me grinning like a lunatic, ‘cause… yay! This movie was proving to be all I had dreamed it would be! It’s Trekkies, but with Twi-hards! Awesome.

We move on. Oh, that’s not the last we see of Charlene and her wide-eyed ingenuous wonder at vague coincidences that she speciously suggests as evidence of vampires among us, but we also meet many another Twilight aficionado (or Twilight profiteer) in the following hour and a quarter. From the (cute) guy who gives the “Dazzled by Twilight” bus tour to the Chamber of Commerce officials to the purveyors of Twi-rock that are The Bella Cullen Project and Mitch Hansen Band, we meet many a satisfied entrepreneurial soul who has launched a career or otherwise made a living for themselves via Stephenie Meyer’s fantasy world. (Also, there’s the “the vampire transplant who plays the real life Alice.” I totally get that now.)

We meet some internet folk like Twilight Lexicon’s founders, the kid from TwilightGuy.com, and a bunch of suspiciously blond Twi-Moms who made some of their "best friends ever" through that well-known site. And we also meet John Granger, self-proclaimed “Forks High School Professor", and oh man, I like him. I like him because he uses words terms like “heart resonance” and “apotheosis” and “spiritual experience” when discussing the teen vampire romance of Edward and Bella (although he uses “literally” in an annoyingly non-literal fashion), and he defends Stephenie Meyer’s writing talent. He quotes Stephen King, who is famously anti-Meyer, as once saying: “If my book sells, I’m a good writer.” (Er… maybe he’s paraphrasing?) But on that basis alone, Granger points out, “Stephenie Meyer is a great writer.”

(Thank you, Forks High School Professor guy! That’s what I’ve been saying!)

We also get a lot of opinion from MTV News’ Larry Carroll, who presented their Twilight Tuesdays, and who certainly knows on which side his Bella Burger (oh, yes, Forks has them) is buttered. “The Twilight fans are a very special breed,” he says, without an ounce of irony. And he hopes that “Fifty, sixty, seventy years from now, the [Twilight] fanbase is still as pure and sweet and welcoming as it is now.”

Oh, come on, Twilight Tuesdays dude! Fifty, sixty, seventy years from now, we’ll either all be staging guerilla attacks against the machines that have enslaved us, or be addicted to Government-controlled mood-altering drugs and eating Soylent Green. There’ll be Trekkies and Warsies in the future, yes, but Twi-hards? Perhaps not so much.

Although, I’m sure the examples shown in this film would vociferously disagree.

There’s simpleton Tamesa (whose stories are on a par with Charlene’s for their rambly pointlessness); there’s a couple of sweet and earnest twenty-somethings, Robyn and Jennie, who just really love love; and there are the essential teenage girls, best-friends Lindsey and Tomoko, who could squee for their country on an international level. Lindsey looks a lot like Amy from The Biggest Loser Season 4 (the after shot, of course!) and Tomoko, is just really, ridiculously pretty and engaging as she embarrasses herself mightily. She tells this story of seeing Robert Pattinson: “He walked up to us and I was like: ‘Hi, can I get a picture?’ And he was like: ‘Oh, sure, like I’m Robert Pattinson, I’m really hot. No big deal.’” Which is cute, right? And then she goes on to say she thinks “… it could be real.”

(Oh, Tomoko. You’re adorable. I want to adopt you. Plus, you’re a walking drinking game: we take a shot every time you say the word “like”… and are in a coma moments later. Oooh, and another fun drinking game! Take a shot every time someone says “It was really funny.” I dare you!)

There’s even a very enthusiastic, hair dyed “blond like Carlisle” Twi-Dad. Oh, Twi-Dad. I know it’s wrong, but you concern me greatly. Don’t you know the only justifiable reason to bleach your hair is ‘cause of Spike? Get yourself a leather duster, and keep away from the children!

I really hope Twi-Dad hasn’t taken this disturbing advice from Twilight Tuesdays dude to heart: “Right now, if you’re a 17, 18, 19-year old guy, and you’re not into Twilight, you’re an idiot. Because all you need to do is just tell a few girls that you dig Edward Cullen and you’re gonna have so many dates to the Prom, it’s ridiculous.”

(Way to ick things up there, pimp MTV hook up artist. Forks High School Professor guy is so much better than you!)

But let’s take a look at the town of Forks, Washington, in which we -- and Stephenie Meyer -- lay our scene. Forks is pretty. La Push is gorgeous. (And, yes, we do spend some time “on the res” with some Quileutes, including “self-described Jacob’s gradfather”, and I totally get that now, too.) Forks “…was a small town almost on the brink of failure…” but now business is booming; they have between 350 - 450 visitors each day to their Visitor Center, and the town is really into being “The Twilight Zone”. (Heh. Clever.) There’s a parking spot reserved at Forks Hospital for a Dr. Cullen. There’s a motorcycle parked outside the Black residence. Bella’s Chevy is on display, she and Edward have lockers at the Forks High (the Principal of which looks very young and kinda like Peter Brady), and Forks even celebrates Stephenie Meyer Day: it falls on Bella’s birthday, of course.

Not everyone is best pleased by their notoriety, but by and large, Forks is ever so grateful to Stephenie Meyer for making them famous and bringing in those tourist dollars, what with the closing of their mills and the damage those darned Spotted Owls have done to their logging industry. And the Twilight fans seem ever so happy there is a Forks. “Why people come here… I don’t know,” my new friend the Forks High School Professor says with a chuckle. I do! It’s the same reason Trekkies make pilgrimages to Riverside, Iowa, birthplace of Captain Kirk. ‘Cause we’re all insane.

So watch out, Falls Church, Virginia! It’s entirely possible you might be next. And if someone’s smart, they’ll found a town in Lousiana and call it Bon Temps, like, right now. And then open up a bar called Merlotte’s.

  -- Rachel Hyland

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Further Reading

Geek VS Geek:
    ♦ The Twilight Saga Movies: Team Awesome by Rachel Hyland
    ♦ The Twilight Saga Movies: Team Awful by David Baldwin
The Hollywood Geek: Better Than Buffy, why True Blood rules and Twilight sucks, by David Rosiak
Geek Speak's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner review, by Rachel Hyland
Geek Speak's Twilight Series review by Rachel Day

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MOVIES