TheWarrenReport

By Warren Etheredge
Guest Columnist

This is not a political statement: I blame Michael Moore. Not everyone is a critic. Nowadays, everyone is a documentarian.

Got a consumer grade DV camera and a grade-school grasp of a subject? Well then, why not make a movie? You needn’t bother with facts or a passing knowledge of camera technique. Just point, shoot and blab. You don’t even need to interview experts, just espouse your own crudely-formed, rudely-stated notions.

While many debate the meaning of documentary, few question the aesthetics. Maybe it’s time to set aside semantics and focus on the art. Below, the cons and pros of contemporary non-fiction filmmaking.

The Aristocrats, a film about one dirty joke, was well-marketed. Reviews shrouded themselves in tittering approval of First Amendment rights or in family-valued scorn. However, most critics overlooked how amateurish the production was — sloppy camera work, absence of color correction; questionable pacing and construction. Instead, the movie was championed and challenged for its raunch with little regard to its content’s delivery. Conversely, Sarah Silverman’s cunningly-captured Jesus is Magic makes us laugh more heartily and suggests there is more to blue humor than pure shock. Sure, it’s a concert film, not precisely a doc, but its truthfulness overrides the distinction.

Robert Greenwald produces for the converted. Unprecedented: The 2000 Political Election; Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War; and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism all drive their messages home with the grace of Lizzie Grubman maneuvering a Humvee through Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Mr. Greenwald may believe his docs offer incontrovertible proof, but it is doubtful those who’d argue would ever watch his movies, much less be won over by his ham-handed approach with the Avid. Isn’t the purpose of such art to engage the otherwise oblivious and spur them towards new thought? Directors shouldn’t announce their findings; audiences should be allowed to draw their own conclusions. It’s hard to argue with Frederick Wiseman, who, true to his surname, allows battered women to defend themselves on camera in the heart-breaking Domestic Violence. Wiseman, a stalwart of the cinema verité scene, reminds us that flies on the wall still catch more than those that constantly circle dung.

In My Date with Drew, Brian Herzlinger has not crafted a movie so much as he’s videotaped a very expensive headshot and resume. My Date is tedious—a vanity project wrapped in a high (yet low-brow) concept that features neither pathos nor payoff.

One needn’t be beautiful to make love with the camera, but one ought to be as charismatic and well-informed as Morgan Spurlock. In Supersize Me and his subsequent TV series 30 Days, the mustachioed auteur pulls focus with both charm and insight. It’s obvious he cares for causes and commoners as much as himself. Spurlock’s hand-held shots seem driven by design rather than most doc DPs’ reliance on sloppy-cam as an offshoot of their cinematographic indifference.

The moral of the true stories is this: substance and style are symbiotic. A tri-pod is as beneficial as a "get;" a narrative arc (see: Morris, Errol) as significant as Final Cut software (see: Tarnation). Film remains an art form, even if its genesis might be reality.

Warren Etheredge is the curator of the 1 Reel Film Festival (at Bumbershoot). He is also the founder of TheWarrenReport, which produces and organizes year-round screenings, screenplay readings, classes and workshops in Seattle, Portland and throughout the Northwest. Recently, he was named president and CEO of Lockspring Pictures.