‘We’re barely above porn’: why would a film-maker choose to make a deliberately bad ‘mockbuster’?

With a tiny budget and six days, Anthony Frith directed a film for the studio behind Sharknado – and then made Mockbuster, a documentary about the experience Directors don’t tend to appreciate having their films eviscerated by critics.

And us critics, well practised in lobbing proverbial grenades from the safety of our pretentiously book-lined, Cahiers du Cinéma-strewn offices, don’t tend to look an artist in the eyes and tell them that their work sucks.

This is, however, exactly what I do to the Australian film-maker Anthony Frith.

I’ve even prepared a zinger for the occasion.

“Your film is a lemon that’s been eaten by a turkey then dumped into a vat of curdled mayonnaise,” I say.

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