DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
Morgan Spurlock
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
In addition to the exciting tidbit that Michael Moore's next film will be a follow-up to Fahrenheit 9/11, the most enticing news from the Cannes Film Festival, which just concluded, is about an Israeli documentary called Waltz with Bashir. It's a fully animated film by a former Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, who's trying to reckon with the massacre of Palestinians (and his involvement) during the 1982 war in Lebanon. I've been a strong advocate of the brilliant animated work applied to documentaries by the likes of Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal, P.O.V. 2005). The animated documentary has pretty much become a standard, with the likes of Michael Moore (remember the brief history of America in Bowling for Columbine?) and Morgan Spurlock (Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?) using it to strong comic effect.
But in this, Waltz with Bashir, we see the possibility that a fully animated — from start to finish — documentary could be a success. The reviews have been quite positive. It recalls the recent Persepolis, or Richard Linklater's fantastic Waking Life, a trippy film about a boy in a dreamlike state, that was entirely created with rotoscopic technology in which a regular live-action film is shot in video. Animators then "draw" over the images to create an eerily life-like medium. (OK, so maybe when the same technique is used in Charles Schwab commercials it feels more annoying than eerie.)
Director Folman spent $2 million and four years making the film. First, he conducted interviews, then wrote a screenplay in which he stars as himself journeying back into his memories. The script was entirely shot in a studio (so, for example, when he talks with someone in a car, the person on the set holds a prop steering wheel). He then edited the footage into a full feature and broke that footage up into a storyboard of frames. Then, the animation team illustrated all of the frames. You can check out the trailer — I think it looks phenomenal.
Of course, a film like Waltz with Bashir poses all sorts of interesting questions, like is it a friggin' documentary in the first place if it's all reenacted — and animated, to boot?
I'd say yes, but let's wait to see the film. It's going to be released in Israel in June, and it was just picked up by the guys at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. They released the animated films Persepolis and Triplets of Belleville and I know how smart and savvy they can be with unconventional films, so I've got a lot of hope for this one. It's due for release some time this year.
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
Last week, at the premiere for Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? director Morgan Spurlock asked everyone who had worked on the film to stand up. I'd say a good 20% of the audience rose from their seats. "Wow, that is a lot of people. We should have had a test screening with this audience," Spurlock joked — the point being that the crowd's response would have been swayed by the biased folks amongst them. It was an interesting crack to make — especially considering Harvey "Scissorhands" Weinstein was in the room — because Spurlock actually relied significantly on test audiences after the movie was shown at Sundance.
I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times in which I reported this fact, including how Spurlock removed a jokey, in-your-face animated sequence (which must have cost a ton of money) and changed a pivotal closing song, from the goofy "Why Can't We Be Friends?" to the more thoughtful, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding." Both elements from the earlier cut of the film rang so wrong to me — they made a film that was supposedly about bridging differences between the Muslim and Western worlds feel like a farce. But, thankfully, they were removed, and the film's integrity, I think, restored. (Although, it's true, Spurlock's film does have a scene of an animated Osama Bin Laden channeling MC Hammer, but, hey, it made me laugh.)
I've always been the sort of film purist who believed that test marketing a film was just another tool for the evil corporate machine. I know so many feature directors who have battled with film companies that wanted to water down their films based on test audience results. The only director I recall advocating to me the benefits of test screening was M. Night Shyamalan, who has made some pretty cool movies, but he's got a commercial instinct that I don't entirely trust. Of course, most Hollywood directors use test screenings, and work with them. But they usually don't openly embrace them.
And now, more and more, I am hearing that documentary films are being test screened. And although I initially shuddered at the thought, I'm becoming convinced that it's not inherently a bad thing. (I am not certain, but I recall that the recent Young@Heart was test screened by Fox Searchlight.) Of course, there are different kinds of screen testing. There's the sort that I am sure the Maysles brothers and, heck, I bet Robert Flaherty performed — having a small, close-knit group of people watch their films and letting them know what they think works and doesn't. What I am talking about here is the movie industry standard, the sort that Hollywood uses, in which random folks fill out formatted cards that are then tabulated by marketers.
As of the time that I'm writing this post, I can't say what the box office tally is for Spurlock's latest movie. I can say, however, that the film is a whole lot better than it was at Sundance — and that I think the test screenings really helped. Of course, Spurlock & Co. might have also used some good old common sense: "Why Can't We be Friends?" happens to be the song that plays while the closing credits of Lethal Weapon 4 roll. A room full of monkeys could have told you that that had to change.
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
The hot theatrical doc season begins! The month of April sees two much-anticipated documentaries being released, Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure (on April 25) and Morgan Spurlock's Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? (on April 18). Although both of these are from A-list filmmakers, these two documentaries have a lot stacked against them — both have been getting mixed reviews (although Morris won the top prize at the Berlin film festival), and their subject matters are pretty challenging for different reasons.
In his film, Morris casts his brilliant, quirky and often sobering eye on the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. But with a couple of docs out recently on related subjects (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Taxi to the Dark Side) and with a slew of features about the Iraq War having tanked at the box office (the recent Stop-Loss was relentlessly sold to a young audience by its production company, MTV — to no avail), I don't see Morris's latest effort as contributing to his recent growth in popularity — his last film, 2003's Fog of War, not only won him his first Oscar, but made more money ($5 million) than all of his previous films combined. But does Morris care if he wins a popularity award? Actually, sometimes I think he does.
Now, I know Spurlock cares about his popularity — he is an unabashed filmmaker for the people, and he is really swinging for the fences on this one. His movie is a clear attempt to appeal to young audiences. It's got a nine-foot, animated ninja-fighting Osama Bin Laden flying around the world in no-holds-barred video-game style. But will audiences over 30 years of age get the joke? And if they don't, will kids want to see that weird guy with funny facial hair tromping through Pakistan? It's a tough call. But I have to reserve judgment at this point because distributor The Weinstein Company tells me that the version of the film that I saw at Sundance has changed — I'll be watching the altered version tonight. I'll make sure to let you know if the changes are significant.
But maybe the hottest April doc of all will be coming from a little known British television documentarian named Stephen Walker. His Young@Heart rolls out this Wednesday, and distributor Fox Searchlight has high hopes that it could break through the traditional box office ceiling for docs. I'm talking in the $10 to $20 million range. That's a bold call, I know, but this is the first documentary on their slate in over ten years, so I'm taking them seriously. Even if $2-$4 million is more realistic, it would still be great to see.
If there were ever a documentary that could win over mass audiences, it's this one. The film is about a senior citizen choir that sings contemporary songs originally performed by the likes of Sonic Youth, Talking Heads. and The Clash. It's a trip watching the octogenerians try to wrestle with the songs, but what I slowly realized as I watched the film is that this is a rare look into the lives of older people. I was also enraptured by the dramatic arc of the film. As I watched one, and then two of the main protagonists pass away during the making of the film, I found myself close to tears. Finally, when a heaving, geriatric man hooked to a respirator beautifully sings the sweet Coldplay song, "Fix You," after a friend passes away, I was over the brink. Young@Heart is the tear-jerker of 2008!
According to Variety, the best-selling book, Freakonomics, is being adapted into a documentary that will begin shooting in January for release next summer.
P.O.V. alums Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Boys of Baraka, P.O.V. 2006), Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country, P.O.V. 2006), and noted filmmakers Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) have signed on to direct segments based on chapters in the book. The film will be produced by Chad Troutwine (Paris je t'aime) and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong).
Thanksgiving: a time for family, food, more food and for some, football. But for those of us who aren't interested in football but still keen to sit on the couch and watch TV while digesting our turkey, there are a number of recent food-related documentaries that are both entertaining and provocative.
from Our Daily Bread
Our Daily Bread, the 2006 documentary by Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter, is an elegant, unblinking look at the European food production industry. Made without narration, music or talking heads, the film presents beautifully composed scenes — from the killing floors of poultry factories to the symmetrical, endless farming fields — that reveal where modern food comes from.
