Monday, March 31, 2008

Rockets Redglare

After watching Bus 174, I went back to the pile of eBay DVDs, and picked one I had taken a chance on because it was cheap and available. Rockets Redglare is a film that premiered at Sundance and played at Hot Docs. The subject is potentially interesting - a New York comedian and character actor with a funny stage name and a dark personal history. So, what the hell. How bad could it be?

The answer, my friends, is "very bad." I lasted about ten minutes before giving up. There's a lot to be said for the DV revolution, which made the means of production available to just about anyone. The problem is that "just about anyone" doesn't necessarily have any filmmaking skills or talent, nor, most unfortunately, the modesty or self-awareness to realize this.

This film was apparently made by a first-time filmmaker with borrowed equipment. Well, number one, he should have borrowed a radio mic along with the camcorder, and maybe a book on camerawork, so that the interviews wouldn't look as awful as they sound. But the muddy sound and picture aren't the worst of it. In the ten minutes I watched, Rockets Redglare doesn't come across as the least bit interesting. The rambling clips from the likes of Steve Buscemi and Jim Jarmusch don't create a sense of mystery or raise any questions - it's as if we're supposed to be interested in his story just because these Gods of Indie Filmmaking were friends with the guy. And finally, there are the clips from Redglare's mid-80s stand-up act, which aren't the least bit funny. So. Bad shooting. Bad sound. No structure. Boring subject. Eject.

As of today, you can find my copy at a certain used-DVD store I frequent. One film that was available at the store was The War Tapes, a very good documentary about the Iraq war that was shot primarily by the soldiers themselves, with cameras supplied by the filmmaker. The soldiers got fantastic footage - intimate, raw and often heartbreaking. T
hroughout the process, they worked closely with director Deborah Scranton, who was back in the U.S. and communicated with them via e-mail and IM. And they clearly cared a lot about telling their story in the best way possible. That's the film that, from what I've seen, is most emblematic of everything that's good about the DV revolution.


Sunday, March 30, 2008

Bus 174

When I was done with Mozartballs, I went to a pile of DVDs that I'd bought a few months ago on eBay for next to nothing. (Here's a secret that I don't want to spread around too widely: eBay has tons of great documentaries and foreign films that you can get for a song - especially if you can buy a bunch from a single dealer and save on shipping.) The one I was most interested in was Bus 174, a Brazilian film that examines a notorious bus hijacking that was televised live all over the country.

Bus 174 weaves together footage from the multiple cameras that captured every minute of the stand-off, interviews with hostages and police officers, and a meticulously researched examination of the highjacker's life. It starts with a breathtaking aerial shot of Rio, floating over the green of the mountains that surround the city, the mountainside favelas, the famous Copacabana beach, and the middle-class neighbourhood where the stand-off takes place. It's an organic and intriguing beginning that had me riveted. Director José Padilha carefully builds the backdrop for the story: Rio's street-kid problem, the effects of child poverty and homelessness, etc. By the time we get into the hijacking, we have an inkling of what we're in for, but not where we're going. And that's when the film really takes us on a ride.

I won't reveal too much, but the hijacker - who's high, desperate and very angry - turns out to have a history that's both predictable and surprising. The structure is masterful - things that happen during the stand-off lead seamlessly into elements of the backstory, which becomes more and more complex and surprising as the film goes on. And for viewers outside Brazil, who don't know how the story ends, there's edge-of-the-seat suspense.

The film does lose its way a bit here and there. At two hours, it's at least 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, too long. Some points are made over and over and interview subjects are allowed to ramble. This is a common problem with documentaries that aren't subject to the discipline of a broadcast length. I know the disciples of Peter Watkins - who decries the monoculture of "the universal clock" - will disagree with me emphatically. But the lack of any kind of clock just leads to a lack of rigour.

And finally, another thing I found fascinating about the film actually came out in the making-of featurette. To get fresh, insightful interviews from the survivors - who'd been interviewed so much that they had stock answers for everything - Padilha sat them down in a studio with a TV and a remote control. They watched TV footage of the highjacking - which of course they had never seen - and when they felt like stopping the tape, he would ask them questions. It's a great technique.

From the point of view of storytelling and technique, I found Bus 174 one of the most inspiring documentaries I've seen in a long time.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Cult of Walt

As I was writing the last post, I started watching a doc on Bravo about Walter Ostanek, the St. Catharines-based polka band leader. It's called The Cult of Walt: Canada's Polka King, and apparently it got a Gemini nomination for best bio. Go figure.

Why do people bother to make such things? The film has no structure, no style, and worse, no soul. The narration is full of cliches such as "perfecting music that is truly timeless" (to pick one that I happened to hear as I was writing this). It rides along on Ostanek's personal charm and the obligatory bits of polka perfomance. But all it does is keep repeating how great the guy is. There's no insight, no probing questions, no attempt to universalize the story or get beneath the surface. Yawn....

Ostanek has been on my radar for years. More than ten years ago I was hired to write a proposal for a doc series with the exact same concept as the BBC's (and CBC's) "Who Do You Think You Are?" I put Walter in the proposal... and the series didn't go. (Maybe if I'd put in Don Cherry instead...) Around the same time, I saw a lovely film at an early Hot Docs, when it was still held in conference rooms at the Park Plaza hotel. It followed Ostanek and his mentor Frank Yankovic on a tour of the Canadian prairies, and it captured the soul of polka, its players and its fans -- retired farmers who would polka for five hours straight, as long as Frankie and Walter could keep playing. That film made me want to learn how to polka. Watching this newer one, I didn't even tap my toes.

Mozartballs

I got up this morning with nothing on my plate. My better half is away for the weekend, and despite a looming deadline or two I had decided to take the day off. After breakfast, instead of heading out into the sunshine, I picked a DVD from the pile next to the TV, and popped it in.

The film was Mozartballs, by one of Canada's most interesting filmmakers, Larry Weinstein.

Mozartballs was an unexpected contribution to the celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday a couple of years ago. Instead of making yet another earnest bio, Weinstein decided to focus on the fans - Mozart's wackiest, most devoted fans. A woman in Oklahoma who is convinced she's the reincarnation of Wolfgang himself, and her lesbian partner, who is apparently the reincarnation of the love of Mozart's life, one of his generation's leading sopranos. (Hurray! They found each other in this life!) A man who believes that Mozart spoke to him and saved him from suicide. A fellow who writes music "in the style of Mozart" with the help of a computer. And an Austrian cosmonaut who took Wolfgang with him into space.

The thing that most impressed me about this film was how much respect Weinstein showed his wacky subjects. There isn't a single shot in the film that suggests he's making fun of them, and yet the film is full of hilarious moments. In this respect it reminded me of of Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris's great film about a pet cemetery. But just as importantly, the film is beautifully constructed and visually rigorous. It's not just a series of profiles of wacky eccentrics; the characters have an emotional arc, both individually and collectively. By the end of the film, we get it - Mozart helps keep these people alive. May we all have something that we care about so deeply.

Finally, a note about the shooting, by one of Canada's best documentary cinematographers, John Tran. There are two shots I will remember for a long time: a shot starts on black, then pans over to some kids playing in the back yard, seen through a glass door. The shot then moves up, and reveals that the black and the reflection were both parts of a grand piano played by the Mozart-loving astronaut. The kids were seen in a barely distorted reflection in the piano. The other shot puts Ms. Mozart on a ladder, face to face with a painting of the real Mozart and his family. As she reflects on the painting - and gets quite emotional - she's seen in a reflection, framed perfectly in a triangle of black that makes her face clearly visible. John Tran rocks.

So that's number one. A pretty enjoyable beginning.

P.S. I just put in a link to the Amazon page for the film, and as I was browsing through that page, I read a review of the film by one of the subjects, who talks about why she loved the experience and the result. It's quite instructive.

Why Doc a Day?

I work in documentary film and factual TV in Canada. Been at it for a while... and have lofty creative ambitions, not to mention High Standards. But I find, to my embarrassment, that I have enormous gaps in my knowledge of documentary film. Sure, I've seen my share of films and I have my favourites. I go to film festivals, occasionally get my act together and see the latest theatrically released doc, and sometimes watch films on TV. But I record a lot more films than I end up watching. And I have stacks of commercially released documentaries on DVD that I've been meaning to watch for months, sometimes years... not to mention copies of films by friends and colleagues that - here comes that embarrassment again - I never get around to watching.

So I've decided to try an experiment: I'm going to try - and I emphasize the word "try" - to watch a doc a day for a year, and write about it. I may miss days when I get busy, there certainly will be gaps when I'm away on shoots or on holiday. But I'll give it a shot. I'm taking the yoga approach: it's the intention that counts.

I started this morning, with a kind of marathon. I'm alone in the house this weekend, and what better way to spend the day than watching films. I'm up to three - I got ten minutes into the last one before I turned it off - and I think I'll try to get through at least one more before I call it a night. Oh yeah. That's one way I'm going to make it easier for myself: if I don't like a film, I have no intention of sitting through the whole thing.

And another thing: anything goes. I'm not going to restrict myself to films that are Important - though I'll try to get through the canon - and I will try to watch films by people I know and care about. That will mean watching episodes of factual TV series that some purists would sneer at. But as far as I'm concerned, we're all engaged in the same thing: real people (as opposed to actors) do stuff; we film it and put it on TV.

So here goes. Doc a Day. On average. Thereabouts. Let me know what you think.