SUNDANCE, ‘98. DAY III. 1/17...
One of the biggest Sundance ‘98 surprises is the hype surrounding, and occasional strength of the documentary film programming. "At Large" caught four documentaries today. From worst to best:
Some Nudity Required
dir: Odette Springer
The director asks the question, "How did I go from Beethoven to B movies?" The academic answer would be that she chose a short-lived career supervising music on slasher pics and was the architect of her own adversity for not following her artist muse in the first place. This could have been a short film with a simple answer, but Springer took the long-land route through a defused minefield of "talking head" interviews with the tease and sleaze populating the B movie industry as founded by Sam Arkoff, cashed in on by Roger Corman.
There is no tension in this documentary, nothing new revealed. The film is best highlighted by the counter-pairing of "scream queen" Maria Ford (a pretty, somewhat talented actress who so desperately desires a legit career, yet is trapped in the slasher genre) and Amazonian ex-Penthouse Pet Of The Year, Julie Strain -- a tough broad who understands the value of her tits, and through sheer force of will and sex appeal succeeds in exploiting the exploitation movie business to her own personal and financial satisfaction. Had Springer spent more time documenting the lives of characters like Ford and Strain, and spared audiences the repressed-memory issue of her own molestation as a child employed as a cheap redemptive tag to her own plight, Some Nudity Required might be considered required viewing. Ironic that the nudity in the film will be the chestnut (pardon the pun) that will sell it.
Beautopia
dir/producer/screenwriter: Katharina Otto
Although slickly concocted, this painfully subjective study of the modeling world focusing on four young hopefuls falls short for a number of reasons. The models Otto chose were pumped up as if they were being primed to be super-models, when it was obvious that none stood a chance at ever achieving that status.
Also, the darker side of modeling was not explored beneath the very surface treatment composed. None of these babes slept with anyone for a job, and the subjects of drug addiction and eating disorders prevalent to the industry was completely ignored despite threaded interviews with successful models like Lauren Hutton, Elle MacPherson, and Claudia Shiffer whom we’d expect much more insight from. Instead, Otto let the top models whine about how people don’t take them seriously enough, and that was the level she kept it at. As for the young models central to the story, we witnessed their desire to make it to the top get crushed. A fat-free Hoop Dreams.
Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart
dir./cinematographer: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
A touching love letter to Lou Reed, who, for 30+ years has shown the world that rock ‘n roll has no limits. This tribute is a must-see for anyone who cherishes rock ‘n roll history.
Frat House
dir/prod: Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland
Easily the best documentary of the fest. The Phillips-Gurland team took to the task of discovering and divulging the secrets of college fraternities, and succeeded on the subjective level where Springer and Otto came up short. To get to their subject at hand, the filmmakers ran very real personal risks, and they were willing to subject themselves to absolute torture on a year long filmic route to "Hell Night."
Frat House opens present day at some generic New Jersey state college, where, up front and out of the mouths of meatheads nicknamed "Dookie," "Ubo," and "Blossom" we’re reminded that, even in the Nineties, getting an education is secondary to "the most important fucking thing in college" -- alcohol. Ubu is the master of misogyny, grabbing frat groupies by the crotch for the camera, and Blossom, a frustrated drill-sergeant -- as a way of rationalizing the torture he’s about to subject new pledges too -- tells of the hazing rituals he went through: getting thrown up on, and being forced to bite the head off a rat to name a few too many.
Next, Phillips and Gurland score a major coup by getting their cameras on the inside of these super-secret hazing rituals. After the pledges are accepted, a formal ceremony is held by the frat brothers at which, using classic manipulation, the new guys are made to feel like they belong. A raunchy stripper is even hired for their pleasure. Then, before these guys become "family," for the next twenty days, they are subject to progressive torture not unlike what might have been found in a Korean concentration camp, or a modern day cult for that matter. In fact, hazing as portrayed in this film is not at all dissimilar to cult-style brainwashing tactics. Witness: 20 days of sleep deprivation, menial tasks, and increasing physical and psychological abuse inflicted on the pledges.
Drama unfolds when - just when we think we’ve seen too much already - the filmmakers are banned from the frat because some of the brothers actually thought that the cameras were forcing them to "hold back." Now banned from the frat house, Phillips and Gurland push the envelope by showing up unannounced to witness an incredibly brutal branding ceremony, at which the sounds of pledges screaming behind closed doors is enough to send a shudder up anyone’s spine. With only nine days left until "Hell Night," the filmmakers are absolutely banished with death threats to be carried out should they ever return.
Most filmmakers would have thrown in the towel right there, maybe trying for a cheap out like somehow graphically depicting the obstacles that set them up for failure. Not this die hard documentarian duo. They scrambled, and found another fraternity at another college that actually allowed them to pledge under the conditions that they did not name the college or the fraternity. While for a minute it almost seems like they’ve set this all up as a stunt, that thought changes quickly, when Phillips and Gurland are pissed on, forced to drink Tabasco Sauce (resulting in the hospitalization of one of them), and placed in the ultimate venue for horrific humiliation -- "the dog cage."
Do Phillips and Gurland make it through a first-hand "Hell Night?" No pressing need to spoil it. Frat House will no doubt win the Best Documentary prize at Sundance and find a distribution deal towards audiences who dare to witness ballsy documentary filmmaking at it’s best.