![\"bowling\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/bowling.jpg\")
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Michael Moore, being repulsive. That was not intended as a dig at his physicality. He’d be repulsive even if he looked like Kat Dennings. Okay, maybe not then, but you get the point.<\/em><\/p>\n What is a documentary?<\/p>\n I know that may seem like kind of a ridiculous, pretentious question to ask, especially right off the bat of an essay or whatever, but I don\u2019t mean it like that. I\u2019m absolutely serious, and it\u2019s an entirely valid question. What the fuck is one? I don\u2019t think we really know. I mean, we know \u2018em when we see \u2018em I guess. Basically, they\u2019re movies about real life. Nothing staged. Except interviews, of course. Interviews are, by their very nature, extremely<\/i> staged and controlled and can very easily be manipulated by both the interviewer and the editor, but those get a pass, I guess. (As do dramatic reenactments, which can be very misleading, but are thought of as okay for some reason.) I think we can all agree though that documentaries definitely<\/i> must not have a script that people are following. That\u2019s for sure. Well\u2014except of course in the case of a sort of monologue through-line or whatever. The documentarian gets a pass on having a script. Even if it\u2019s way subjective. Man, this is getting contradictory. And confusing. And gross. Basically, documentaries are the most repulsive genre. No other genre or sub-genre of film\u2014other than I guess fake snuff tapes\u2014contains shit specifically designed to deceive you. (Yes, all art \u2018deceives\u2019, blah blah blah, but let\u2019s not get existentialist here, you know what I mean.) Isn\u2019t that kind of fucked up? Isn\u2019t that something we should talk about, and take very seriously?<\/p>\n Look, I\u2019m not saying I don\u2019t like documentaries. I watch them often. Though personally, I stay away from the more blatantly biased stuff. I tend towards human stories, particularly ones with a fly-on-the-wall element. Some sort of palpable distance between the subject and the observer. Sure, I\u2019ll watch a doc about a fucked up thing going on in the world once in a while (the Paradise Lost Trilogy<\/a> is fucking amazing) but I pick them very carefully. I always read up on them to make sure they\u2019re to be trusted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny to me that we rate movies for content\u2014G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17\u2014but we don\u2019t rate documentaries for truthfulness. Shouldn\u2019t there be some independent group that just fact checks documentaries all the time, and rates them based on how trustworthy they are? I mean yeah, people do that here and there online by themselves, but there\u2019s no official group that does it. Often times, you\u2019re not even sure if you can trust an internet dude alleging that a documentary is full of lies, because it\u2019s really just some stranger. You have to then fact check everything they<\/em> say, because who the hell knows what their<\/i> agenda is? That\u2019s a whole lot of work just to watch a damn movie. Which is why most people just watch a thing and take it as gospel and move on to the next whatever.<\/p>\n A week or so ago I saw a YouTube clip<\/a> that featured Kevin Smith giving his thoughts on the notoriously lie-filled 9\/11 conspiracy documentary Loose Change<\/a>. He states that he thinks it\u2019s a gripping, well-made film, but also admits that he has no idea if it\u2019s true or not. I believe that\u2019s a good, safe way to approach documentaries\u2014skeptical, but also appreciative of just plain good artistry. It\u2019s totally okay to appreciate the beauty of a thing even if you don\u2019t agree with what it promotes. For example, personally, I think the Westboro Baptist Church signs (GOD HATES FAGS, et al.) are all really well designed. I disagree with every damn sign, but I love the colors and font choice and layout. Yes, they\u2019re fucking awful people, but come on, you gotta admit, they\u2019re tits at graphic design. But I digress.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve made two documentaries. Nancy Ivers: 21L<\/a>, a short, and Rehearsals<\/a>, a feature. Both are highly \u2018experimental’, but to me, they\u2019re pure, whereas most documentaries just plain aren\u2019t. Some might look at them both and say they\u2019re \u2018just a bunch of footage\u2019 (cough, Greg DeLiso, cough) but personally, I\u2019d rather more<\/em> documentaries were like that. I like looking at real things and being given the freedom to draw my own conclusions. I don\u2019t like, nor want, ‘help’. That’s like being told what colors to use in a coloring book\u2014or worse, buying a coloring book with the pictures already colored in for you.<\/p>\n Nancy Ivers: 21L is pretty straight forward\u2014it\u2019s just silent fly-on-the-wall footage of a painter getting ready for, and then having, her first gallery show. I was hired by her to film her however I wanted, and that is what I came up with. It\u2019s meant to be shown on a wall, like a moving painting. Filming it and editing it was a lot of fun\u2014I got to find all my little favorite moments of people just being themselves (most of them completely unaware I was capturing them) and collage it all together. I\u2019m quite proud of the result.<\/p>\n Rehearsals is pretty similar, but more ambitious and time consuming. Fly-on-the-wall footage of a bunch of aspiring actresses, collaged together to form a day in the life of one<\/i> aspiring actress, each actress essentially ‘playing’ a different aspect of the ‘woman’. It\u2019s not for everyone, but for those it is<\/i>\u00a0for, it\u2019s hypnotic and lovely. If you have a taste for minimalism, and for pretty shots of pretty girls, you\u2019ll dig it.<\/p>\n Maybe you\u2019re like me, and wish documentaries were just simple and not a fucking headache. If so, check out my stuff. And definitely check out Foreign Parts<\/a>, which I talked about in my Netflix Longies #1<\/a> post. It\u2019s probably the purest example of a \u2018pure documentary\u2019 in recent history. For older examples, check out the works of Frederick Wiseman<\/a>. They\u2019re hard to come by, but highly worth digging for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Moore, being repulsive. That was not intended as a dig at his physicality. He’d be repulsive even if he looked like Kat Dennings. Okay, maybe not then, but you get the point.<\/em><\/p>\n What is a documentary?<\/p>\n I know that may seem like kind of a ridiculous, pretentious question to ask, especially right off the bat of an essay or whatever, but I don\u2019t mean it like that. I\u2019m absolutely serious, and it\u2019s an entirely valid question. What the fuck is one? I don\u2019t think we really know. I mean, we know \u2018em when we see \u2018em I guess. Basically, they\u2019re movies about real life. Nothing staged. Except interviews, of course. Interviews are, by their very nature, extremely<\/i> staged and controlled and can very easily be manipulated by both the interviewer and the editor, but those get a pass, I guess. (As do dramatic reenactments, which can be very misleading, but are thought of as okay for some reason.) I think we can all agree though that documentaries definitely<\/i> must not have a script that people are following. That\u2019s for sure. Well\u2014except of course in the case of a sort of monologue through-line or whatever. The documentarian gets a pass on having a script. Even if it\u2019s way subjective. Man, this is getting contradictory. And confusing. And gross.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18],"tags":[1467,1466,1471,1463,1464,926,928,1473,1474,1469,1462,1470,1288,844,1468,53,1472,104,185,1475,1465],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysessays","tag-2016-obamas-america","tag-an-inconvenient-truth","tag-cody-clarke-rehearsals","tag-documentaries","tag-documentary","tag-foreign-parts","tag-frederick-wiseman","tag-god-hates-fags","tag-kevin-smith","tag-loose-change","tag-michael-moore","tag-nancy-ivers-21l","tag-netflix-longies","tag-paradise-lost","tag-paradise-lost-trilogy","tag-rehearsals","tag-rehearsals-cody-clarke","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-westboro-baptist-church","tag-what-is-a-documentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5190,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions\/5190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nOn top of all this, we as a culture have I guess decided that propaganda counts as documentary. Enough people voted with their money by seeing Michael Moore\u2019s stuff and An Inconvenient Truth<\/a> and 2016: Obama\u2019s America<\/a>\u00a0that now we just accept that stuff as part of the genre\u2014even though they, and many others, are highly biased and full of inaccuracy and manipulation. Like I said\u2014propaganda. But hey, it\u2019s all for a good cause right? That is, if you agree with the cause of course, and believe that the trampling of objectivity is an okay thing so long as said cause gains new followers or whatever. Ends justifying means and whatnot. Sigh.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n