Moriarty’s Documentary Catch-Up! MAN ON WIRE! AMERICAN TEEN! I.O.U.S.A.! Which Is One Of The Year’s Best Films?!

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here. It’s been a rough summer for documentaries at the box-office, but a few films have managed to break through and at least create a bit of buzz. It may not have translated into giant DARK KNIGHT style business, but at least they’ve made some impression. And in one case, I’d say one of the very best films of the year deserves more attention than it’s gotten so far, and I hope the film finds a second wind as it continues to roll out in theaters around the country. AMERICAN TEEN certainly got the biggest push possible from Paramount Vantage when they released it, and they worked very hard behind the scenes to get it in front of the press and also make the “cast” available. After you’ve dealt with enough studio publicists over the years, you get a good feel for when they really love something, and they really loved AMERICAN TEEN. It was obvious in the energy they put into their work on the film. I wish I had loved it as much as they did, but the truth is that Nanette Burstein’s technique on the film raises so many red flags for me as a viewer that I had trouble offering up the endorsement. I think it’s skilled filmmaking in many ways, but when you’re dealing with documentaries, there is an expectation of a certain degree of honesty, and I didn’t feel like I could trust what I was watching enough to hand myself over to it. What a shame. The film itself isn’t a particularly novel conceit... when I reviewed Kirby Dick’s far superior CHAIN CAMERA at Sundance in 2001, what struck me about it was the way his choices as a filmmaker (he gave the kids a camera and then asked them to film themselves instead of having a crew follow them around) removed him from the process enough that I felt like we were seeing these kids as they really are. Burstein, on the other hand, has created such a controlled environment and structure for her movie that although it ends up working well as a narrative, that comes at the expense of a certain degree of credibility. Her film feels like a Hollywood version of real life, like a very skilled episode of something like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. She follows a group of students through a full year of high school, and in the process, she tries to dispel certain stereotypes by taking us behind the images that kids project, hopefully so we can see something universal in the experiences they all have in common.



And it’s an appealing group of kids, no doubt. The two that were most embraced by critics and audiences were, unsurprisingly, Hannah Bailey and Jake Tusing, the two who seem most resolutely themselves at the time the film was being made. High school is still a time of self-definition, and for many people, it’s a practice run before college. I’d say that Megan Krizmanich, who is the queen bee of the high school and a fairly rotten person at times in the film, is a perfect example of that. Her insecurities are crystal clear in the film, and every single time she picks on someone else or uses her wee li’l bit of power to tear some other poor kid down, it’s obvious that she’s just doing it because she can. She’s one step away from crumbling under the pressure her parents have put on her to get into a particular college, and as a result, she’s miserable, determined to share that misery with anyone she can. I don’t for a second believe that if I met Megan today she’d be the same person, though. With Hannah and Jake, they seem like kids who have already figured out who they are, so their main struggle seems to be finding a way to make others accept them. Hannah in particular has a really powerful self-determination in the film, and even when she gets sidelined over what appears to be silly soap-opera stuff, she still retains this focus that allows her to stand up to her family and make choices for herself at a time when a lot of kids are just doing what they’re told because they have no idea what they want yet. My issues with the film basically come from the editing and the way things were shot. Too much of the film feels staged. Even if the events are true, there’s a false quality to a lot of the scenes. They feel constructed. I’m not convinced that Burstein was above asking for a second take. On something like THE HILLS, who gives a shit? No one honestly believes that “reality television” has anything to do with reality, do they? With a documentary, though, there should be a little more church and state. Recreations are fine, as long as they’re clearly labeled as such, and as long as you’re not talking about something that you could have filmed for real. Here, Burstein’s film feels conveniently structured in places, too neatly put together, and it killed it for me.



I.O.U.S.A. is about as far from AMERICAN TEEN in style and execution as a film can be while still both being described as “documentaries.” This is much more of a conventional talking-head style film that analyzes a particular issue, and when I first heard a description of it, I thought it sounded deadly dull. My parents came into town recently, though, and my dad asked me a few weeks before their visit to see if I could track down a press screening of the film or a screener of it for him to see while he was here. In one of those lovely bits of synchronicity, an event was announced for August 21st featuring a screening of the film followed by a nationally synchronized Q&A session with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson, Dave Walker, and a few others participating. One of the theaters listed was the Woodland Hills Promenade, which is all of about ten minutes from my house, so we booked our tickets. I was a little reluctant because Fathom Events has such a terrible track record regarding presentation when they do those anniversary screenings of films like POLTERGEIST or FIRST BLOOD, but in this case, the less-than-perfect digital video projection didn’t do a significant disservice to the film, which is a very lively presentation of a considerable number of charts and graphs and graphic demonstrations. It was like going to a very, very slick PowerPoint presentation in some ways. That’s a little unfair to the work by director Patrick Creardon. As with WORDPLAY, his documentary about crossword culture, this is a very smart overall package. Along with co-writers Christine O’Malley (Creardon’s wife and producer) and Addison Wiggin (who also wrote the book this film is adapted from), he’s managed to construct a compelling emotional film that takes a sober-eyed look at just how fucked we are financially in America right now. And, guys... I don’t care what your political beliefs or affiliations are, let’s face some facts: we are not doing well. I.O.U.S.A. gets into the deficits that are forcing us into a position of crisis right now (budget, savings, trade, and leadership), and it’s the leadership deficit that has to change if everything else is going to follow. That is not me saying “Change will solve things,” either. Only the right change will solve things, and until it happens, we won’t know, will we? David Walker is the star of the film, in my opinion, and turned out to be the star of the evening overall thanks to his participation in the Q&A afterwards. He’s the President and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and he used to be the Comptroller General of the United States. He ran the Government Accountability Office. This is, to say the least, a serious guy, a guy who has managed to have a real and direct impact on our government without being a party player for either side. He has been sounding the alarm about our government’s money problems for about a decade now, and he’s never been soft-spoken about just how angry people should be. It’s just that... well... I didn’t know anything about David M. Walker until I saw this. Until I came home and did a little reading about him. Here’s this guy who should be the voice we are listening to since that was... you know... HIS JOB AND ALL... and no one seems concerned by what he’s saying. There is an urgency to the message of this film, of course, since the debt is climbing steadily and constantly, and there are a number of different voices represented here. Much of the film follows Walker on his “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” where he travels to do Town Hall meetings along with people from The Concord Coalition, The Brookings Institute, and The Heritage Foundation, among others. Robert Bixby is a particularly fascinating foil for Walker, both of them brilliant and engaged speakers, but Walker the one who looks buttoned down and in control while Bixby has a touch of the mad scientist thing going on. Their conversations manage to downplay just how scary everything they say really is if you’re paying attention. I thought it was interesting during the Q&A afterwards how Warren Buffett kept talking about how the economy’s not just doing well right now, but it’s on track to keep doing better and better so there will be a piece of the pie for everyone “because the pie just keeps getting better.” No one else on the panel agreed with that in the slightest, and Walker openly scoffed at the “Pollyanna crap” that Buffett was bringing up. Walker strikes me as a man who is tired of having to say the same thing over and over, but genuinely motivated by a sense of public service so he’s willing to say it as many times as he has to in order to get people to listen. I doubt most of you will get the chance to see the film in theaters, but keep your eyes open just in case. If not, pick it up at least as a rental the moment it comes out for home video. If you plan on (A) making any money (B) spending any money (C) saving any money or (D) owning anything whatsoever, you may want to pay attention, because this is your economy they’re talking about, your future they’re spending, and you should be far, far angrier than you already are. For a film as volatile as this, Creardon keeps things informational, engaging, and never turns it into a shrill screed or an attack piece. It’s apolitical. It’s got one thing on its mind: figuring out just how America got into the mess its in, and finding a way out of it. I.O.U.S.A. doesn’t answer every question it raises; not by a long shot. But at least it raises the questions. That alone deserves your attention.



But if you’re reeeeeeally lucky, maybe MAN ON WIRE is playing near you right now. If it is, go. Don’t put it off any longer. Don’t hesitate. You should see the film on the biggest screen you can in order to partially understand the visceral impact of what Philippe Petit did, but also so you get some sense of the vertigo created in the places he pulled off his stunts. Basically, Petit is a performance artist, long before that phrase existed, and to the great benefit of director James Marsh, there was a ton of footage taken back at the time of the stunts, giving him tons of material to work with now. Oddly, even though much of that footage was staged or done for fun, it feels more “real” than much of AMERICAN TEEN, and I think it’s because there’s so little artifice to it. Petit is one of those guys who seems incapable of being false or disguising his own eccentricities, and so no matter how the vintage footage was obtained, it seems to reveal quite a bit about the time and the place and just how innocent Petit was while planning his daring crime. It’s so funny to use that word in that context. “Crime.” Technically speaking, what Petit did was a crime each time he did it, but it’s the same kind of crime that, say, the work of Banksy is these days. It’s art. It’s something they are compelled to do, and the results can transport us out of ourselves, if only for a moment. The “ecstatic moment” is a cultural concept that has manifested itself in any number of ways throughout human history, but basically, it’s the moment that people are chasing as they either alter their consciousness or as they create art or as they push themselves sexually or as they embark on some death-defying stunt. It’s a moment of transcendence, a moment when you embrace the full potential of what it is to be human. Some people live their entire life without having one, and other people move from ecstatic moment to ecstatic moment by design. When Phillipe Petit first saw a picture of the World Trade Center, it was still unbuilt. It was just a design, an idea. But in that moment, he knew he was going to find a way to get to New York, sling a tightrope between the buildings, and then walk across. And from that moment, he never once wavered in his determination to figure out how to make that happen. He was chasing his own ecstatic moment, but in doing so and finally making it happen, he provided that moment to the people of New York who were lucky enough to witness it, and to his friends who helped him pull it off. One of the miracles of Marsh’s film is how much he makes you feel like you’re part of the planning and execution of this feat. The film is almost built like a heist movie, and there are several sequences where Marsh has staged recreations to play under interviews with the various people involved. Again... even though those scenes are blatantly recreations of real events, it works to emphasize the truth of the story. Marsh is one hell of a filmmaker. His last film, THE KING, has some issues, but it’s an undeniably moody and tense experience, with strong performances from both Gael Garcia Bernal and William Hurt. And WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP, his 1999 documentary, is a profoundly underrated film that really established just how bold and unusual his vision is. MAN ON WIRE works as drama, works as history, and works as character x-ray. It’s a profound picture, and the highest praise I can offer it is that Marsh has provided film audiences with an ecstatic moment worthy of Petit’s original accomplishment, and it’s well worth tracking down.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles