My Documentary Decade

Dear Readers -

Apologies for dropping the ball here on the blog the past few weeks.  Between wrapping up shooting on my new film and prepping and planning for this year's Cinema Eye Honors, I've been procrastinating my return to somewhat regular blogging.

Here's a piece I started writing as I was en route to Branson, Missouri just after Christmas.  I'll be posting a couple more looks back at the year we just concluded in the coming days/weeks.  Pardon the delay.

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There’s a story to what happened to me this decade and it starts in the spring of the year 2000.  I was then an Executive Producer at a production company that specialized in music videos, working with a bunch of talented filmmakers, routinely awarded budgets of $350K to make a 3 ½ minute clip that would – hopefully for the band, the label and their hangers-on – be awarded a coveted slot on the Carson Daly-hosted "Total Request Live".

The clips had to be of a certain high production value, the labels seemed to believe, or there would be no possibility of landing on the afternoon countdown show, one of the few venues remaining on MTV for music videos.  So the budgets, even for bands that you and I would never hear from again, had to be mid-six figures.  Or else said band might slip into the ether.

By the spring we’d surfed this wave for almost a year and I was starting to feel restless.  More and more of my own creative ideas were being poured into the work that was coming out of our company, but the execution of these ideas – and the ownership of same – fell, quite naturally, to the director. 

I remember sitting in the color correct of one particular video, a video whose concept I had proposed (and one that would later become such a hit on said MTV countdown program that it would help launch the band and the director’s career) and feeling like I had well and truly reached the end of my ability to stand in the shadows.

Simultaneously, there was a very real sense that the status quo in that industry could not sustain itself.  MTV was continually cutting back on the number of videos it was playing and the labels were under attack from digital downloads.  And how could labels keep spending that kind of money on bands with little hope of recouping the costs of such extravagant vanity videos?

Just prior to this – at the end of the previous decade – I started to direct my own projects – a friend’s music video here, a public service announcement there, and finally, a short film.  And by the end of the year 2000, there was a merger.

My short was out on the festival circuit.  I felt – for the first time – not like an Executive Producer (which was a job I loved and, if I do say so myself, was pretty good at) but like a filmmaker.  I remember flying to London to oversee the shoot a video in the fall of 2000 and writing “Filmmaker” on the occupation line of my landing card and being strangely, wonderfully proud of this new designation.

By that point I had already, mentally, turned my back on music videos.  For a decade I’d worked on more than 100 – respected indie bands and big pop artists – but now I was increasingly ready to go my own way.

And within three months, I’d be in New York shooting footage for what would become GIGANTIC, my first documentary feature.

The how and the why of GIGANTIC’s birth is less important than the fact that the arrival of this decade – one that has been castigated and bemoaned for its acts of terror, war, political combat and natural decay – signaled a significant shift in my life.

My documentary decade.

I couldn’t have known as I was running around New York with my Sony PD-150 following Johns Flansburgh and Linnell in the spring of 2001 what would happen in the decade that followed.

I could not have imagined KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON or CONVENTION. 

I had no notion that I would start a blog (blog? What’s a blog?) or an award for nonfiction filmmaking.

I would never think that I’d end the decade in the Ozark Mountain town of Branson, Missouri celebrating the arrival of a new decade with a camera in my hand.

I never dreamed that I would take it all so seriously, so personally, so occasionally obsessively.

I fell into documentary almost by chance and – in some kind of Faustian bargain – documentary has run away with me.

Through the decade, as I stood in the midst of it, I felt that I was incredibly lucky – even though now I was begging for someone to give me $25,000, rather than contracting with a major corporation for nearly half a million.  The means of exchange have not quite caught up with the work that we are doing, this is certain, and perhaps they never will.

But I was aware that this was a special time, maybe the most special time in our field, at least since the early 60s.  It’s not just the success we’ve had theatrically or the fact that more and more film festivals are giving documentary equal footing to narratives (although some, sadly, still lag behind).  It’s not just that film critics, particularly a younger and engaged select that grew up with easily accessible docs, have started to insist that films deliver on all fronts, including those artistic ones.

In the end, it’s because the tools (digital and otherwise) and the medium are now unafraid and unwilling to inhibit our imagination. 

Think of the work of the decade – not just the super successes of Michael Moore and penguins and the Jackass folks (as different as each of those films are).

Look at how Jeffrey Blitz summoned Agatha Christie movies as he knocked off one spelling bee contestant after another.

Or how Jason Kohn and his team tackled corruption as they raced through Brazil, as if the underworld were just steps behind them.

Margaret Brown’s courage, staring down her own history and the traditions of her youth, unafraid to talk about race even when others may look away.

Kevin Macdonald’s stylistic bravado in pairing haunted interviews with brilliantly shot recreations of men with little hope of surviving a mountain-climbing disaster.

Pernille Rose Gronkjær’s quiet and honest exploration of the decade’s most unlikely unrequited love story.

Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe’s pitch-perfect construction of a horror comedy, as the elements (and everything else) turns against Terry Gilliam and his crew.

The collaboration of James Marsh, Simon Chinn and Phillipe Petit (and their team) in sketching an image of a man in the sky that somehow countered our nightmares.

And the numerous portraits of America’s descent into war – James Longley’s exquisite photography, Alex Gibney’s prosecutorial zeal, Laura Poitras’ intimate humanism and Petra Epperlein’s graphic, pulp, comic book-like drawings – that examined America’s occupation in Iraq more forcefully and more honestly than did the mainstream media.

These films, and hundreds more, offered not only a mirror to the world in which we live, they pointed the way forward for the art form that we are constantly engaging, loving, arguing with, trusting in and respecting.

As the decade ends, I find myself – completely surprisingly – involved once again with music videos, this time working with a band filled to the brim with its own creative impulses.  Standing in the midst of field in South Bend, Indiana this fall, resuming my Executive Producer duties, I was excited to use my somewhat rusty skills to bring someone else’s excellent vision to life.  And to know that there was no longer an MTV gatekeeper to decide whether the video was "buzzworthy" - the video would just be put up on YouTube and the public could decide for themselves.

And when the clock struck midnight on the eve of the new year, I was completely content to observe someone else’s celebration, recording the moment for a film that will be born in the new decade.

And when the moment passed and the camera could be put away and a drink could be lifted, I toasted my collaborators, my peers and the work we’d done – apart and together.

Congratulations one and all on our documentary decade.

Comments

[YuppiePunk]

The OK Go video is terrific -- and proof that you don't need big budgets to make something good for a band. How did you do the big crane shot at the end? Did it simply get wheeled in behind the DP and they jumped on? That was my favorite part, though the choreography was super-cool too.

[eric matthies]

for all you do brother, I salute you. Keep on keepin' on, and happy f'kn new years to ya.

[Randy]

To my real brother, I too salute you. Proud to share a name, proud of your skill, proud of your determination, proud of your gifts. Keep making me proud in the decade to come and the ones to follow.

[Erin D.]

What a lovely story, thanks for sharing it, AJ. I'm excited to see what you do next!