Errol Morris's First Person

I've been out of town; hence no posts for a few days. Because my flights were relatively short, I took along Errol Morris's First Person series, figuring it would be easier to get through a few half-hour episodes than to try to watch a feature-length doc bit-by-bit.

Morris is one of my favourite filmmakers, largely on the strength of The Fog of War, his biographical film about Robert McNamara, the Vietnam-War-era U.S. Secretary of Defense. That film is essentially a 100-minute interview with McNamara, cut with a mix of archival footage and whimsical images created by Morris. The interview is a dance between McNamara and Morris, who is occasionally heard off-camera, asking a question or challenging McNamara's answer. To me, The Fog of War is one of the great examples of the art of the interview.

First Person ran on the U.S. Bravo channel for 17 episodes around 2000-01, presumably while Morris was between Mr. Death and Fog of War. It's a series of interviews, conducted and shot in the signature Morris style, using his Interrotron contraption, a floating camera, and lots of jump cuts, as well as the requisite Morrissian illustrative shots and archival images. Judging by the four episodes I watched, it's a great example of a doc filmmaker parlaying his creative success into a money-making venture that keeps the rent paid and a few people employed. Occasionally, it reaches a level of deep weirdness that encourages second viewing, but as in most series, the formula usually takes precedence over the subject.

Of the episodes I watched, by far the strangest was Sondra London, a serial dater of serial killers. Morris's camera lingers over her creepy face as she talks lovingly of her jailed paramour-du-jour, known elsewhere as the Gainsville Ripper. We don't learn much here, but watching this woman is a deeply voyeuristic experience. She's a profoundly disturbed nutbar, but how can you not put her on TV?

Another episode engages us on a higher plane. Clyde Roper is a marine biologist who's on a lifelong quest to find and study the semi-mythical giant squid. He's a great storyteller and a serious scientist, as well a charming eccentric - the kind of scientist who performs well on CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks. He also sounds like he could have been an alternate for Morris's Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, and perhaps he was. He and Morris clearly have a rapport, and you get the feeling he could easily carry a full-length doc.

I don't have much to say about the other two episodes I watched - famed autistic animal-behaviour expert Temple Grandin, and grandstanding lawyer Andrew Cappocia. In both cases, the show feels formulaic - the former because I just don't find Grandin especially compelling (though the shots of Grandin getting into her, um... hug machine certainly add some weirdness), the latter because the guy's a big self-promoter who doesn't back up his claims and delivers nothing but schtick (turns out, he ended up going to jail).

So, in the end, does the series work? Yes and no. It's a diverting way to spend a half-hour, and Morris's schtick is certainly a lot better than most. His well-practiced tricks - both his interviewing style and his use of images - work pretty well. But I can't help but feel that the series doesn't quite rise above radio with pictures.

Classic Albums: Nirvana - Nevermind

I'm a big sucker for the Classic Albums series. I discovered it on MuchMoreMusic a while back, and was blown away. An album that I actually knew note by note - Deep Purple's Machinehead - was being deconstructed by the heavy metal gods who made it. There was bassist Roger Glover sitting at a mixing console and punching up individual tracks, showing how they got this sound and that effect. All five band members, now pushing 60 and considerably less hairy than in 1972, were telling stories about the greatest piece of work of their lives. It wasn't just rock'n'roll heaven (though the 15-year-old that's still inside me somewhere certainly felt that way), it was a really effective look inside the creative process. (OK, we're not talking Mozart here, but Deep Purple could really play, and the album is a rock'n'roll masterpiece.)

Since then I've heard that Classic Albums actually didn't do all that well in the ratings on VH-1, where it originated, because - it was felt - it was too "Inside Baseball." Turns out, rock fans actually want to know more about what goes on "Behind the Music" than about the music itself. Whatever. Once again I'm out of step with the masses.

Fortunately, the Classic Albums episodes are pretty widely available on DVD. I've picked up a few over the last couple of years, but have largely been disappointed. For some reason, the heart of the story was missing. Queen's A Night at the Opera is a good example. The episode is driven more by the format - going through the album song by song (at least half of which aren't actually any good) - than by the story. And then of course there was the huge hole in the middle - the absence of Freddie Mercury. The bottom line was, it felt less like a documentary and more like a mass-produced TV show.

So when I picked up the episode on Nirvana's Nevermind, I wasn't terribly optimistic. Like Freddy Mercury, Kurt Cobain wasn't around to be interviewed. But something about this show really worked. The surviving band members, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic (looking, in a blue buttoned-down shirt, like a middle-aged accountant) speak intelligently about the time and about Cobain. Butch Vig, the producer, picks out just the right elements of the songs to focus on, and tells good stories from the studio. And the usual array of publicists, A&R people and music journalists for the most part actually add some good anecdotes and analysis.

But I think what works best about the show is this: the rise of Nirvana intercuts effectively with the song progression on the album. The songs are so personal that they allow the story to build, revealing elements of Cobain's character through their content and the way he played them. The show climaxes with Smells Like Teen Spirit, the second-last song on the album, which segues perfectly into the band's becoming an international phenomenon, and leads naturally into the wrap-up, which sums up Cobain's character and foreshadows (though never mentions) his death. All this makes it sound easy. But I bet the director and editor had to wrestle pretty hard to shape all those interviews into a story with a strong emotional climax.