Does this documentary make my butt go numb?
Published by Becky S October 9th, 2005 in arts
I’m not trying to hate on those who make documentaries (documentarians?), but surely it’s obvious that the world has far too many of these films. Were there always so many bad documentaries, or are there more now because digital technology has lowered the barrier to making them?
Regardless, this madness should stop. Do people even watch their final product before foisting it upon the world? As a public service, I’ve developed some guidelines for documentarians:
- If your documentary sucks the fun and the good and the life out of the very subject that you are trying to celebrate, don’t show it. Even if it contains a surprise appearance by Viggo Mortensen dancing to an accordion rendition of Sweet Caroline, don’t show it.
- Is your documentary full of pretentious knuckleheads who talk too much and take themselves too seriously? The magic of editing, people. Pull a Michael Moore by rearranging the interview footage and creating some out-of-context sound bites.
- Seriously, a film about the rise and fall of your cousin’s mother-in-law’s Japanese beetle colony doesn’t need to last for an hour.
- If you ignore the above rules and choose to unleash your creation, don’t screen it at Philadelphia’s International House. The seats there are ass-numbing and cause cranky people to write mean things about your movie on the Internet.
Someone should do a documentary that exposes all the superfluous documentaries.
Wow, a documentary about superfluous documentaries would be, like, 10 hours long. Hopefully it will play somewhere more comfortable than the International House.
Also, why not a blog? Using Google, I found several documentaries about blogs but no blogs about silly documentaries.
A documentary about documentaries? Next thing you know people will be making a coffee table book about coffee tables.
Ah Kramer.
As I recall Becky, you and I squirmed and shifted on those ass numbing seats while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and wondering why we were not on psychedelic drugs to help get us through the movie as was most likely intended for the original audience. That certainly would have helped with the ass numbing.
The Roxy also has horrendous seats.
Yeah, 2001: A Space Odyssey stone-cold sober on ass-numbing seats. WTF were we thinking?