I’m so over filmmakers who put or involve themselves in their documentaries. Thanks to Michael Moore, who wasn’t the first to use first-person narrative in non-fiction filmmaking but who was certainly the one who brought it into the spotlight, so many documentarians want to be in their movies, be the subject of their movies or at least narrate their movies in a very personality-injected way. It’s like the whole Woody Allen, casting oneself as the star kind of directing, which influenced so many indie filmmakers, only it’s much worse. This isn’t to say that all documentary must be objective, and I continue to be a huge fan of McElwee and Broomfield (who apparently has changed his style of late) despite the fact that newbies like Jonathan Caouette and Zana Briski have been ruining subjective documentary filmmaking in recent years. Instead it’s to say that one shouldn’t pretend to be making a movie about a cause, when really one is making a movie about oneself, or one’s cause.
Case in point, this trailer for Abby Epstein’s The Business of Being Born, which attempts to make the documentary out to be like a footnote to Moore’s Sicko. It doesn’t really show how the film involves executive producer Ricki Lake on screen, nor does it let us know that Epstein, too, is a character. I’ll admit that I haven’t yet seen The Business of Being Born and so can not comment on just how much footage there is of Lake, who apparently gives birth in the film, or Epstein, who fortuitously became pregnant in the middle of making the film, but any amount is too much, in my opinion. I made exceptions for Don Cheadle, who executive produced Darfur Now, in which he also appears, because the film is partially about how celebrity is unfortunately the best route in which to carry a cause (and a film), but in Lake’s case it merely seems like a case of blatant self-interest. Anyway, the film opens today in New York City. And no, I’m not running out the door to see it, so it may be awhile before I find out if that self-interest works or doesn’t.
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