The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies: Featuring Dave Anthony, Lord Carrett, Dean Haglund, Allan Havey, Laura House, Jackie Kashian, Suzy Nakamura, Greg Proops, Mike Schmidt, Neil T. Weakley, and Matt Weinhold by Graham Elwood & Chris Mancini

Author:Graham Elwood & Chris Mancini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2012-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

DOCUMENTARIES

By Graham Elwood

What makes a good documentary? Is it a bunch of dumb whores in a stupid town yelling about why they are the best wife in the lot? Or maybe a cooking competition with fancy suit wearing shitheads judging a bunch of nonsense that would never influence anyone’s decision on if a restaurant is good or not? Perhaps it is some family of rich, vapid dummies whose only talent is how to correctly wear blood diamonds. Oh wait, I’m talking about the reason I canceled my cable. Reality TV has nothing to do with documentaries.

A good doc (the hipster shorthand in film-land) is when the audience is taken into a world that most of us know little about, and we learn by going along on the experience with the subjects. We try to answer the questions: What would I do? How would I react? This is when the power of documentary filmmaking is at its zenith. For example, Murderball is a doc about wheelchair rugby leagues and how much it means to people who cannot walk anymore. In watching a film like this, we are taken not only into an unfamiliar physical world but an emotional one. This genre, when done correctly, documents honestly and accurately what is happening.

When interview and editing tricks are used to push some agenda, then you have reality TV or propaganda films. Yes, the filmmakers’ opinions are going to get involved to a certain extent as nothing is truly objective. But when politics, greed, and ego get tangled (see Michael Moore), then you have the American Corporate media and its two party puppets, like I learned about when watching Inside Job. Oh yes, America we will let you “play” voter and get all wound up about the next election like fans of professional wrestling. I sat in the theater laughing during this film because it was so flagrant how the big corporations have fucked us. Like a mob guy pulling a $20 bill out of my wallet saying, “What are you doing with my money in your pocket?” Actually that is an insult to mobsters. Or see how things get covered up and distorted for political reasons, like when I watched The Tillman Story, a movie which gave me even more respect for Pat Tillman, all the while making me want to riot in the streets.

Making a documentary is a challenge like no other in filmmaking because most of the time you have no idea what is going to happen. And after it does, how do you piece it together? A doc is made in the editing room, far more than a scripted film with its predestined beginning, middle, and end. A doc is an Everest-sized mountain of footage from which you must carve out a story. Documentaries offer a wonderful or horrifying look into something that we could never really understand on our own or from a distance. The act of intimately watching other human beings go through something makes us find the often surprising connection to our own lives.

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