The Parking Lot Movie

Has anyone heard of this movie? It is full of social commentary and comes from an unusual perspective!

Here's a brief synopsis:
Some guys work as parking lot attendants in Charlottesville, VA. They enjoy the job because they look at it existentially and try to find purpose in this superficially simple job. They deal with a lot of people who park their cars in the lot and then have to pay. Some of the interactions are positive, some are not. The guys comment on the kind of cars people drive and what that means about them, and what the car symbolizes in society, and therefore what a parking lot attendant actually means. The guys come to resent most of who park and find a lot of injustice. They deal with both the feeling of being a "gate keeper" and conversely the feeling of being on the losing end of  a class warfare battle, as many who use the lot feel a certain entitlement.

I found this a fascinating societal study. People who these parking lot attendants might interact with normally in other social settings were treated as subpar in the parking lot. People fought over small fees of $1 or $2.  People made condescending remarks to them along the lines of "it seems you're stuck in a rut" or "My son/daughter is graduating today; if you got your act together and did the same, you wouldn't need to be here."
The attendants made interesting insights about the car as a huge factor in the American identity--just another facet of our day-to-day. They comment, "we own it, but it also owns us" meaning that in many ways, the car can actually become a hindrance (ie when we need to find a place to park it). The attendants found the job to be a constant power struggle--they could put cones into the lot to keep people from parking in certain places, in exchange people would argue with them over payment, drive off without paying, or be little them. This goes back to the sense of entitlement that many car owners they encountered felt. One attendant commented (about the thought process of an SUV owner), "I bought this car, there must be a place to park it. Like it comes with it's own parking space." There is a lot of resistance toward paying the parking fees. Another attendant said when people asked why they'd have to pay he'd began explaining capitalism.
It was clear that the people using the lot felt they were of a higher social status than those working in the lot. It was also clear that most felt inclined to act upon this. Often it was subtle, a patron might use a certain tone of voice, but other times it was blatant. Friday and Saturday nights, for instance, the gate was broken at least one time per night. Others argued they "didn't know they had to pay" (despite driving through a gate and taking a ticket) and others argued the sense of having to pay for a place to put the car.
Each attendant had a different group of people they disliked most--the frat boys, the alumni, the SUV drivers, UVA parents, etc. These attendants all made connections between this seemingly simple job of working at the parking lot and society and justice at large.
Watch the trailer here!
Then go watch it.

My favorite: "What if Rosa Parks had a car?"


--Megan