Most super heroes have an alter ego, someone to play their part by day. Batman has Bruce Wayne, Superman‘s got Clark Kent and Spider-man becomes Peter Parker. Alternate identities are a way of separating the normal that blends in with the rest of the world from the heroic, the part that might brand them a freak or draw undo attention to them. Mark Vistorino doesn’t bounce bullets off his chest, shoot webbing from his wrists or save puppies from the bottom of wells. He’s a self-made hero. Or at least a self-promoted hero.
Introduced initially as a way to drum up his business of taking head shots for would-be movie extras, Vistorino got himself a loud jacket and some super snapping paper and became Flyerman. Watch out you flyer hander-outers of the night and evil sandwich board hooligans.
Flyerman is a sad portrait of one man’s obsession with becoming someone he is not. Or is Flyerman the real Mark Vistorino? Either or, this is one legitimately tormented soul who gets it from all sides, whether it’s his parents, executives who hear his outlandish pitches or from total strangers who see him on the street.
Whether you think Vistorino is strange or not really is irrelevant when watching this documentary directed by Jeff Stephenson and Jason Tan. Like a few other documentaries made in the past few years such as Vinyl, Cinemania and Word Wars, Flyerman is made interesting largely because of the eccentric nature of its subject matter. Vistorino held my attention through the entire film simply because of his bizarre appearance and over-the-top personality. And let’s face it, flashing jackets are so out there, how could you not watch? But then is it really anything more than a freak show? Watching Flyerman, I was often thinking about how lucky I am not to be obsessed like Vistorino. It was the same way with the record collectors of Vinyl, the film fanatics in Cinemania and the Scrabble players of Word Wars.
Flyerman is made all the more sad when Vistorino comes to the realization that what he is doing is actually fueled by some sort of illness. There he stands before the camera, crumbling over his disappearing identity as though Flyerman was inside him and trying to take over like one of the demons in The Exorcist. By this time, circumstance has taken over and Vistorino is set for life and finances are no longer an issue. He can do whatever he likes and not have to worry about scraping together the funds to pay the bills. Yet there he stands wondering which side of his personality will win out – the human one or the hero for the promotional world.
Flyerman isn’t a movie without its bumps. Sometimes the pacing is a little off and there are instances of Vistorino’s actions being included in the final cut simply because it’s crazy and not so much because it adds to his story. But the documentary is ultimately successful because of the way it questions the idea of identity. Where Word Wars and Cinemania highlighted just the ‘freak’ aspect of its subjects, Flyerman digs deeper. It starts out with the focus on what makes Vistorino unique but by the end it evolves into something deeper and ultimately more disturbing.
Flyerman Gallery
Flyerman Trailer
