QT6 - Harry survives the insane wilds of DOCUMENTARY NIGHT: CRY OF THE WILD and BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH!!!

QT6 – DOCUMENTARY NIGHT

Today’s been a very interesting day – bizarre news on a personal front – and as the lights dimmed for the Alamo Drafthouse’s trailers for coming events – I find out that Emily Hagin – the 12 year old girl that has shot her pre-adolescent Zombie epic… that her house has been broken into and both of her video camera and her computer have been stolen just hours ago. If you’d like to help her out – Email me @ harry@aintitcool.com and/or send a donation to: Emily Hagin / P.O.BOX 180011 / Austin, Tx 78718-0011. Sometimes the world just fucking disgusts me. It seems her film footage is safe – but way for some jackass to break a little girl’s heart. Suppose I should just be greatful that they were at QT fest and not at home for some sick fuck to kill. Sigh.

I need a good film experience right now.

Right about this thought, the lights went dark and Tim League hit the stage saying, “Documentaries can be intense. Sometimes it’s not just about dirt-farming, but it can be about sharks!” Quentin is giggling stage left in the dark, and is then invited to take the mike.

As Quentin hits the stage and grabs the mike he begins to tell us that he wanted to bring something a little different to the fest this year, and not just repeat the same old genres and types of nights. We had witnessed AUSTRALIAN NIGHT the night before – and personally I’d love to see Quentin do his BOLLYWOOD NIGHT at some point in the future… But tonight he was talking about DOCUMENTARIES.

Now any veteran of a film festival is well familiar with the Documentary genre – it’s an old standard. Some viewers may view the Docs as the “filler” for Film Festivals, but for me – it’s one of my favorite forms of film. A great documentary can really be everything that “narrative film” is and more.

Quentin went on to talk about the plethora of Doc genres and subgenres – and how there’s even “Schlockomentaries” – films that purport to be documentaries, but that their sole purpose is to titillate and gross out. Like those “Nature” films that purport to study NUDIST COLONIES and hell back in the 30’s and 40’s all those African Documentaries – which were actually marketed as a way to see nudity on the big screen under the auspices of seeing “primitive” culture. But we were not to be seeing any of these types of Docs tonight.

Tonight was a different type of “Nature” documentary – it’s the doc about Man setting out to discover Nature. The first film of the evening would be CRY OF THE WILD from 1973. This was one of those low budget kids movies in the Documentary world like those flicks Disney used to do like SEAL ISLAND, VANISHING WILDERNESS, ADVENTURES OF THE WILDERNESS FAMILY and TOKLAT – which by the way, if Quentin were to ever own a bear, he’d name it TOKLAT.

The children docs, we were told, were sold like exploitation films in the era were sold. The doc would come into say, St Louis and buy all the commercial air time for the Kid Shows on television – and for a 3 hour period – Every commercial was selling you these films or THE SEARCH FOR JESUS or THE SEARCH FOR NOAH’S ARK! And then they’d just clean up. This is a problem for modern films – since the advent of cable – it’s not a matter of buying ad time during afternoon cartoons and Saturday Morning… But with complete niche channel packages – to buy up that time, you must do it NATIONWIDE – but then – MARCH OF THE PENGUINS has done a brilliant job of it recently!

Next – Quentin went into a phenomenon that is “That commercial that you saw on TV for the movie you never saw, but you still remember that goddamn commercial.” CRY IN THE WILD was that film for him. He remembered this commercial where the narrator essentially said, “When the Wolf Cub is born, he first emerges himself from his mother and his eyes are sealed shut, he must emerge from that cave to let loose a howl to let the world know that he is born!” – Quentin never forgot the spot – so when he saw a print come up in the BIG REEL – he said, “That’s that movie with the wolf cub!” And when he watched the film he said, “That’s a really really really good movie!”

The film is actually a movie about a Canadian Documentary filmmaker that’s trying to follow some snow wolves. He’s a one man filmmaker, that’d go out into the wilderness by himself with his camera equipment to try and track these wolves. He’d take one camera that he’d be shooting with, but then he’d set up another remote control camera that he’d use to shoot him filming the wolves.

With that – Quentin left the stage and the trailers began.

First with NIKKI, WILD DOG OF THE NORTH – the Disney family film. I actually want to see this.

Next was WOLFEN – heh. Love the WOLFEN vision, always have.

PROPHECY – love this trailer – cuz it just uses concept and promotional art to sell the film.

Lastly was the trailer for Saul Bass’ PHASE IV – This is a strange little film that I absolutely love. I love that the ants don’t talk, that the ants don’t grow big, they just get brilliant – but they stay ants. That’s scary. This film has a creep level that’s just really kinda fucked up. The trailer is a work of art.

CRY OF THE WILD

Essentially, this is the story of Bill Mason – a man that wants to live in a different time and a different world. Not really, but he loves to emerse himself in that different world and to feel something of this world before Man started to meddle in it. To experience something pure in nature, to find out more about this villain we call WOLF.

At the start of the documentary he has a simple take on what he’s attempting to do, he just wants to observe wolves. That’s basically it. He wants to study them in the wild, live amongst them and hopefully disprove a level of the fear that man has of them. To do this, he says, “You need time. Time & Caribou, cuz wherever there’s caribou, there’s wolves.” I love that.

The footage from the first year – is frankly, not very good. He didn’t really seem to know a lot about what he was doing. He’d see a wolf about once a week, he never could capture a kill on film. Couldn’t really track the wolves effectively. And more than anything, it was about fighting nature and trying to stay warm. Contrast this with how he is doing at the end of the film where he’s learnt to build an igloo, to disguise his presence, to keep warm and to observe and shoot from.

In many ways – that’s the greatest thing about this doc, it’s the personal development of Bill Mason, the documentarian.

Oh sure, I love the wolves and the beauty of Algonquin Provincial Park and the Gatineau Hills, Hull in Quebec. But really – watching how Bill took this project on, and how out of a frustration with attempting to study wolves in the wild, he begins to raise wolves and try to imitate a natural habitat – then take those wolves back out into the wild – only to find that “fed” wolves never learn to hunt and to kill, and are basically useless back out in the wild. That’s fascinating.

I also love seeing his little girl trying to break up a wolf fight between two wolf pups. It’s adorable, but incredibly unsettling at the same time. He brings his family into the film to show how the entire Mason household has latched on to the project and the fascination with wolves. It’s great.

Throughout the film, Bill’s little comments… I found really choice. Like – at one point as a wolf is pushing around with it’s nose… “A wolf gets his biggest kicks in life through his nose!” Or as he describes the pathetic nature of this one constantly self-loathing wolf, he comments that her self-esteem is so low that she won’t allow herself to breed with the leader of the pack… and he states, “Poor Girl, she’s a natural born loser.” Followed by the entire audience going… “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

I have to admit – as Bill took the wolves back out into the wild – and was essentially setting up a situation where his wolves were not getting food in an attempt to get them to hunt… I thought… this could go badly. Because Bill was still being friendly towards that huge friggin wolf – but as he got hungrier and hungrier – I thought – man, that wolf is gonna eat that poor man up – and suddenly I had this whole terrible fear that we were going to see a film that suddenly had poor Bill Mason killing this beautiful animal and crying in the wild at what he was forced to do.

THANK GOD the film didn’t go there. But just looking at this, you KNEW it could have happened. And turned very “Blair Witch”.

All in all – a very nice documentary – what I loved about it was the non-professionalism of it. It really did feel like the wild. And it felt like a man struggling with his own limitations and frustrations. And to a degree ill-prepared. Which all goes to make for better drama and reality. It’s films like these that did the legwork from which other filmmakers learned and moved forward with the knowledge gained from someone like Bill Mason. Very good film.

Next – Quentin came out, “Alright, DOCUMENTARY NIGHT CONTINUES – In that film we learned that wolves must be taught to kill, well this time we get to see some real fucking meat eaters, alright?!?!?!” and the audience goes wild.

In 1972, Quentin saw this film at the Cinerama Dome, “You know, this might have been the first documentary film I saw in theaters. The poster was great, with this big shark jaw and GREAT WHITE DEATH… I mean BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH – ya know GREAT WHITE DEATH is a really great fucking title!” The audience laughs – and in the laughs I recognize Robert Rodriguez’s laugh – sure enough he’s sitting there with Greg Nicotero – fellow JAWS enthusiasts. This screening is a big deal for us JAWS lovers.

Anyway – Quentin said he hadn’t seen the film since then. He got that big Laserdisc Special Edition that came out and found out that BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH wasn’t just the film that the folks that shot the real shark footage for JAWS did, but that the film served as the “goto” film for the entire production. That Spielberg not only watched it, but talked with the filmmakers about it and then actually hired the filmmakers to shoot footage for their film. “In a lot of ways, this set the grounds for what Spielberg did on JAWS, and now you’re going to see it in Glorious Beat-Up 35mm, BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH!!!”

I’m so ready to see this!

That there isn’t a restored digitally remastered print of this movie, that you can’t get this on DVD – is a fucking crime! This is hands down one of the most engrossing, captivating and cinematically important documentaries around.

First. Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing and that’s brilliant. They were not sure where to go to find a Great White Shark. They didn’t know what to do to attract a Great White Shark. The “Michael Crichton-esque” team of experts they put together were pretty much like the “experts” that were brought together for Alien contact in SPHERE. Only one of them had ever even seen a Great White. Oh sure, they were divers and spear experts and folk singers. They understood what was known about sharks at that time, but frankly… the world didn’t know anything at that time about sharks. It was literally a wide open field.

They start off trailing a whaling vessel off South Africa – what we see is late-20th Century Apartheid, Sperm Whale harvesting and killing – and some of the most bone-chilling footage I’ve ever seen. This is the shit that caused Nemo to create the Nautilus – and here it was fucking happening for real. The sound of the whaling harpoon cannon was like this horrifying sound that went straight through you – and the brutality of the hit – a crash of sea-water and an explosion of blood. They then drag the whale in its death-throes attracting sharks for hundred of miles to this enormous flailing carcass in the water.

Watching the sharks feast on the Sperm Whale… I simply haven’t the words for the gothic horror that it lodged into my mind. The sharks seemed to start eating around the head – the big blinking eye of the whale as chunks of white flesh were bit out of his bleeding head. The light cascading down and around the beast as 30-90 sharks went at it. This was just stunning.

But later – when they kill the second whale – and they decide to get out of the cages to get better shots of the feeding frenzy, unlimited by the use of cages… with the theory that a strong punch on the nose would fend them away, “Those Brutes Can’t Stand That Kind Of Rough Treatment!” one of the team beams.

This footage is, both the most beautiful and frightening footage of sharks I’ve ever seen… The blue and crimson water – 60 tons of sharks swimming around them – testing them for the kill – and there they are hitting the fucking sharks in the nose with rods, the cameras, their bare fist. It’s fucking insane. It’s just amazing. You’ve never seen this sort of reckless, “why the fuck not,” sort of insanity before. Imagine if the JACKASS guys decided to do one of their films with 90 sharks in a feeding frenzy. It’s that sort of insane.

After this sequence, one of the filmmakers could be heard to say, “This certainly beats the decadent life of night clubbing!” My god, these are pure unadulterated thrill-seekers. Folks that probably grew up reading Hemingway, Jack London and Richard Harding Davis. Throwing caution to the wind. Watching the beautiful blonde Valerie Taylor in her skin tight diving suit knocking about sharks in blood drenched water… INSANE. The whole audience was dodging and moving as though the sharks were all about the Drafthouse. Single handedly – this was one of the most visceral films I think I’ve ever seen.

After their failure to get footage of a Great White here – they follow the whaling vessel back to the Rendering Plant for the whale carcasses the whalers brought in… The whales were loaded up upon a steam engine hauling two flat cars – and you see their giant carcasses chained with these enormous chains to this blackened turn-of the century Victorian coal-burning Steam Engine with enormous plumes of black smoke hauling the decaying whales to the plant… which literally was hell on Earth. Apartheid workers moving atop iron surfaces heated from beneath shaving off great hunks of whale and dragging it into the flaming pit beneath them. The workers skin shimmering with the sweat of being fried as they work. It was… So huge in it’s scale of horror that I couldn’t really process it. I wasn’t prepared for the footage. This wasn’t a Great White Shark.

They next begin to head up the coast of Africa to around Madagascar – searching for a great white shark – stopping off on Islands to hear tales of the “biggest shark they’ve ever heard of” -- The filmmakers optimistically saying, “That could only be a great white!”

At one point – they hit upon the idea of chaining their boat to a sunken British AirCraft Carrier the HMS Hermes, which was sunk of the coast of Ceylon on April 9th, 1942 from a Japanese Aerial attack with planes from 3 Japanese Carriers. This 10,850 ton ship lays dead upon the edge of the continental shelf – just a push and a shove to an impossible abyss… and these madmen decide to CHAIN THEIR BOAT IN THESE WATERS WITH CURRENTS LIKE A FUCKING RIVER TO A BOAT ON THE EDGE OF A BOTTOMLESS ABYSS – In the hopes of making enough noise to attrack a Great White Shark. In the History of Bad Ideas – this ranks up there. I mean – think about that.

While diving 170 ft down to attach the chains – on the way back up, Peter Gimbel develops the “Bends” and nearly dies. One of the chains comes loose. They have to get him extra oxygen –

“You just threw it over?!?!?!” – one says

“Uh… Yeah… I hope it doesn’t sink,” as the other man dives over after it.

They almost lose a man to the sea, by being swept way off coarse… When the man returns from the sea, “The Giant Squid really had me worried!”

And they haven’t seen hide nor tail of any type of shark in these waters. But Peter still thinks there’s a chance… he gets overturned.

By the time we get to the “Dangerous Reef” off Australia – to the only waters that any of them had ever seen a Great White… they begin to buy all the blood in Australia, cow carcasses, dead horses… whatever that had good ol red meat to it and begin to create an artificial dead whale. I shit you not. They attract 3 Great Whites.

What commences… is insanity. The sharks biting the lines loose from the ships setting the cages adrift. Peter getting out of the cage to “swim amongst them” only to quickly get back into the cage. The diver that was swept out to sea earlier in the film – the still photographer… one of the enormous Great Whites got caught up in his cage and went absolutely fucking batnuts. The entire audience couldn’t pass a noodle we were so uptight. This shit was scary, amazing and fucking breath-taking.

The folk singer was awesome, not his music, but that he existed in the doc. The entire audience laughed everytime he appeared. Coming out of the water, one of the divers says, “You gotta have a sense of well being. You can’t think you’re going to be eaten”

I guess I haven’t got a sense of well being. I couldn’t help but associate with the Sperm Whale from earlier in the film. Sharks seem to like fat things. I think they’d love me. Fuck getting into the water. Just fuck that.

After the film – a ton of us hung out around the lobby just electrified by the film. Whoever owns this film – needs to SERIOUSLY look into re-releasing it into theaters as the film that inspired JAWS. It’s fucking an amazing film. Just amazing. One of the greatest adventure documentaries you’ll ever see. Wow.