the chutry experiment

The conflict, I think, is because we are in such a period of evolution for the documentary film. Up until Errol Morris (I'm saying that, knowing that there is a whole world of documentary that has flown under my radar. There could very well be someone before Morris that influenced him, but Morris became the most well-known of this early breed), documentaries were largely journalistic with no "voice" from the director. Morris, Moore, and others have begun to change that idea. I don't think it is any coincidence just how much of a bolt from the blue (pardon the pun) TBL and Roger and Me were when they were first shown on the festival circuits. They were completly new.

An interesting comparison might be to something like HBO's film "And the Band Played On." This was a based on a book that came under a great deal of fire, but the film came under virtually no scrutiny, because it was filmed in a more traditional Hollywood biopic format. Because of this, the director was allowed to give it dramatic form and emphasis. A straight documentary may not have been able to, at the time, make social statements in the same way as giving Richard Gere a monologue about the degrading gay community while looking out a window forlornly did.

Good luck on the writing!

P.S. Don't know why I didn't think of this before. Here is a link to Jarecki on Fresh Air just after the film came out. I remember it being the interview that first made me interested in seeing the film.

Thanks for the Fresh Air link. I just posted a link to an indieWIRE article making a similar argument about teh evolution/redefinition of the documentary. To some extent, I think it has to do with all the hubbub about Michael Moore, but on another level, it's directly connected to the emergence of reality TV, news shows, talk shows, etc, all of which "confuse" the boundaries between news and entertainment--Jarecki himself allows CTF to be described as a "suspense film."

And that's ok, don't you think? A filmmaker can make the film that he wants to make, and it is worrisome that, if you break from the confines of a predetermined molding, then you are doing something unfair and manipulative. Films are supposed to manipulate us: It is the quality of the method by which you manipulate that makes a film good or bad.

Sorry to get off on a "definition of art" strain there... must have been a longer day today than I thought.

I think the argument here would be that because he's dealing with "real people's lives," that he has a higher obligation than if he merely made the film about clowns (or if he made a purely fictional film). He's been criticized by both "sides," civil liberties lawyers who think that Jarecki didn't present the best case possible to overturn Jesse's verdict and by the Nassau County police, etc, who feel that Jarecki didn't present *their* case fairly. Sure, it's his film, but a more powerful case *could* help Jesse Friedman regain some sense of a normal life. I think that one of the interesting aspects of this film has been the degre to which it *does* show that films do have consequences, that they can profoundly affect their audiences, provoke discussion, what have you.