I love documentaries. Be it 'making of' bonus DVD features, or pen pictures of old movie stars, or things completely unrelated to cinema, I think that real life stories are often more dramatic and entertaining than anything that a creative mind can offer up.

I would love some recommendations from some like minded folk, and in the interests of fairness I hope I can turn you on to a thing or two myself.

A couple of favourites and accompanying trailers.

I Don't Know Jack

Such a beautiful epilogue to the career of Jack Nance (best known as Eraserhead's Henry Spencer, Twin Peaks' Pete Martell and long time Lynch Mob member). I bought it through DL's official site shop, and is worth it alone for David's remembrance of having to go collect a drunk Jack when he got into trouble one time. His death is quite the mystery, and quite fitting to the tale. Has some wonderful stories from Catherine Coulson, Dennis Hopper et al and any Lynch completist/fanboy should really take a look at this.

Possibly my #1 docu of all time. Really, it's that good.

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David Lynch presents Terry Zwigoff's 'Crumb'

Trailer: http://www.matttrailer.com/crumb_1994

Can't find an embeddable clip, but the linky above should do you. Or else search YT for some clips from the film. Robert Crumb is one of America's most influential comic artists. He is a VERY strange individual with some highly questionable morals, but this is a fascinating portrait of a character who could have walked straight out of the pages of a Lynch screenplay.

Lynch put his name to this alongside director Terry Zwigoff (of Ghost World fame). Check it out if you can get hold of a rental copy or find it on ebay.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

I am by no means a massive gamer, but this is as close as you will ever get to a battle of good against evil in real life. Billy Mitchell is one of the best villains I have ever come across in any form of film, fact or fiction.

An extraordinary story about what would appear at first blush to be a very ordinary subject matter.

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Recommend me something, Club Silencio ...

My Kid Could Paint That

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The story of a four year old abstract artist...or is she? It first tells the story of how the girl became famous, eventually selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But soon questions arise about whether these paintings are in fact being made by this four year old or from the mind of her parents.

I saw this last year in my senior year of high school, and this quote from this movie struck me. I don't know if it's necessary but I'd like to share it:

"Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photographer, used to say that photographing people was appalling. That it was some sort of violation of them. It was even barbaric, he said. Because you were essentially stealing something from them. You were imposing something on them. He sensed the inherent unfairness of this transaction. All writers, all storytellers are imposing their own narrative on something. I mean, all art, in some ways, is a lie. It looks like a picture of something, but it isn't that thing. It's a representation of that thing. Your documentary is, on some level, going to be a lie. It's your construction of things. It's how you wish to represent the truth, and how you've decided to tell a particular story. By that, I don't mean that certain things don't happen. Of course they do. It's not that there's no such thing as truth. But we come to like and trust a certain story, not necessarily because it's the most, absolutely truthful, but because it's a thing that we tell ourselves which makes sense of the world, at least at this moment."

--Michael Kimmelman (author and the chief art critic and columnist for the New York Times.)

Ah, cool.

I remember the hoopla around that story. I'll check it out. Thanks.

I love dogtown and z-boys.

silenthiller119 wrote:My Kid Could Paint That

Caught this by chance tonight.

Makes for fascinating but squirmy viewing as it unfolds. Seems to me that the parents found themselves quickly in a situation spiraling out of control and it was soon too late to go back. Might do a little digging around to see if there are any follow up stories.

I've been watching LOTS of documentaries recently, so I'm going to start to fill this thread up a bit when I have some time.

This one deserves its own post though.



This is an astonishing documentary. I didn't know all the details around the events depicted in the film, but knew it was supposed to be exceptional. I didn't realise quite how much this would affect me, because it kind of left me in an astonished daze, and bits of it are still coming back to me a couple of weeks later.

I'm struggling to find the correct word to describe it, because "stunt" would be to do it a huge injustice. It's like one of the most complicated bank robberies the world has ever seen, yet there was no physical bounty at the end for the guys who pulled it off.

Genuinely one of the most audacious feats of cunning I've ever heard of in fact or fiction. A proper 5-star film. I'm saving my second viewing for a rainy day.