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Under discussion:

Art & Copy  (2009)

On the surface, Art & Copy is a tribute to legendary creative minds in advertising, and the process through which they made their most iconic ads. From taglines that became pop touchstones like “Just Do It” and “Got Milk?” to how Mac, Budweiser and Volkswagon went beyond their product and became “lifestyle brands,” the charismatic advertisers share how it happened from their point of view, which smacks of self-mythologizing. Not only does the director, Doug Pray, appear to completely buy the mythology presented, but when the film raises moral and ethical questions about advertising, I’m not sure he realizes the questions are even there.

The documentary follows a simple structure. An advertising legend (Hal Riney, George Lois, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Mary Wells, Rich Silverstein, Jeff Goodby, Lee Clow among others) tells a story or expounds on creativity. Between each story is a meditative sequence that harkens back to Koyaanisquatsi: billboard scaffolding, a city highway, a satellite being constructed –the real concrete and steel lattice work advertising travels to get to us. Usually, over these images a disturbing statistic pops up like, “We receive 5,000 advertising messages a day.” Often, the images include workaday drones putting up billboards or sitting at banks of computers monitoring satellites. Then there’s a statistic revealing how absurd post-modern life has gotten like,  “Children receive a zillion advertisements before they’re potty trained.” Paradoxically, these statistics are always followed by another ad executive sitting in an architectural masterpiece of a workspace talking about the power of creativity and how they harnessed it to the betterment of the world.

After a while, it becomes apparent that Pray’s desolate shots of satellites, billboards, highways and cables with the creepy statistics superimposed continually beg a question that won’t be answered: And do you, rebel/artist/advertising billionaire, feel complicit in creating this consumer madness? This massive spider web where we’re sold stuff from the time we open our eyes to the time we close them?

Although the question is not so subtly raised, it is obviously averted. In defense of the film, there is an insinuation that bad advertising has polluted the world and degraded consumers, but good advertising–the kind we’re talking about here–is basically art. Case in point: Nike’s Just Do It.

Nike wanted to sell sporting equipment that assists in a healthy lifestyle. Altruism, capitalism and creative genius align to make Just Do It. All of the sudden, people aren’t just buying Nike, they’re leaving abusive relationships, going back to school, changing jobs because they decided to “Just Do It.” Now, would these people have gone on to just do it–whatever it is–without Nike’s ad? Probably. Did Nike make billions by becoming an aspiration for a lifestyle rather than a pair of shoes that wasn’t significantly better than their competition? Definitely. Is the world a better place because Nike was able make shoes represent the life you want instead of the life you have? Well, that’s a question this documentary continually steps up to ask, then avoids.

Unlike Art & Copy, Beautiful Losers is a doc I reviewed last year wherein the artists actually ask themselves whether using their creativity to sell stuff is moral. In fact, wrestling with the question is part of their process of going from juvenile artist/rebels to grown ups. It’s troubling that in Art & Copy the altar of the artist/rebel has become so sacred that when questions about the ethics of one’s work become unavoidable, the worshippers simply won’t acknowledge them. These advertisers don’t ask hard questions about what they’ve created. It’s an elephant in the room which has been ignored for so long, that even though it seemed to be standing in the very editing room for this documentary, nobody acknowledged it.

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Tom DiCillo has been a Sundance mainstay for years, having had over five films in the festival since 1992. Some of the standouts include 1995’s Living in Oblivion (a must-see for any aspiring filmmaker) to 2007’s Delirious, both of which star Steve Buscemi. This year he’s back with a documentary about The Doors, When You’re Strange. It’s a feature-length movie comprised entirely of never-before-seen archival film footage, consisting of rehearsals, concerts, vintage television appearances, and it also includes most of Highway, a student film Morrison made and stars in. While the documentary doesn’t offer us anything new about the band, it’s a unique look at one of the most famous American bands to emerge from the 1960s.

So, when did you first get approached about this? Did they approach you, or was this your idea?

They approached me. It came through a very strange channel… I never would have expected it. A friend of mine is an actor, and he was on Law & Order. Do you know Chris Noth?

Yes.

We’ve been acting together.

You also did a film with him.

Yes, I did. At one point, he said, “Listen, why don’t you come and direct one of these Law and Orders“? And he pressured me a little bit, so I did it. It turned out well. They were pleased that I brought an acting sensibility. So the actors loved me, and I went back and I did another one, and I did two more. The producers liked it.

Next thing I know, Dick Wolf calls me. He says, we have all this footage; do you want to direct this documentary of the tour? That’s how it happened.

Of course I said yes immediately, not even knowing what the project was. I just said, “What a great opportunity.” Then I saw that my material was really going to be all of this archival footage, real footage. I don’t like that word, archival. It makes it sound musty, like it’s covered in dust. This footage looks brand new.

I said, “Wow, let me try to…” What would make me want to make this like a personal film would be if I could use this footage and just use it. Don’t have people blabbing away, just use the footage to tell the story.

When you say, “they” had this footage, do you mean Dick Wolf had the rights to it?

Yes. They made a deal with the Doors, they said we will give you access to this material; they’ve had it for forty years. No one had been able to put it in a form. They didn’t know how to. They kept asking me, what’s your concept? That was hard to come up with something. It ended up stumbling upon a film that Morrison made called Highway. Do you know about this one?

Yes, John Densmore was mentioning that earlier. I haven’t seen it, but he said most people haven’t.

It’s just all this incredible 35mm footage of Morrison wandering through the desert. He’s got a beard, he looks incredible. It gave me this idea of making the film much more dramatic like a narrative feature, by using this character as Jim Morrison, wandering through the film. That was exciting.

So, how many hours? Did you actually watch everything?

Pretty much. I didn’t see every one of their TV performances and stuff like that, but pretty much I looked at every inch of this footage. I looked at it for three weeks, about eight to nine hours a day.

That sounds like a full time job, just watching the footage

Yes, the producers were behind me the whole time saying, “Do you have your concept yet?”

Was this footage shot by somebody they had hired that day, and said “Shoot this for us”?

Yes, a friend of theirs. Morrison went to film school - he met Ray Manzarek at UCLA - a couple of their friends, one of them was this guy named Paul Ferraro, and he followed the Doors around for about five years and shot all this film.

Wow. Is he still around?

Yes, he is.

Was he involved in this at all?

No. I asked him a few questions. He confirmed my suspicions. My instinct that Morrison was infinitely much more complex than just this raging drunk, that he was a human being, a boy at times. I appreciated getting that look.

That makes me wonder, what did you think about the Oliver Stone film about The Doors?

It’s hard to answer that question without sounding judgmental. I don’t want to sound that way. I looked at the first three minutes and I had to turn it off. I just found it utterly phony. Now, a lot of people didn’t. John Densmore likes it.

Yes, he said that.

He likes it. So, you know, I just found it phony. I didn’t believe it. Then when I saw this real footage, I realized what was phony. It was that it was one-dimensional. It was completely one dimensional. No human being is one dimensional. No story is one dimensional. I was bored by it.

Speaking of one dimensional, was it a struggle to pull out other Doors’ stories in this footage?

A little bit. Listen, Morrison’s character is the most dynamic. He went through the biggest changes and so he leads the story. But, the rest of the guys had very specific and just fascinating relationships. Robby Krieger was a tremendously gifted songwriter. I didn’t know that he wrote half the songs. He did, he wrote “Light My Fire.” Jim took him under his wing. He encouraged him as a songwriter, that’s amazing.

I mentioned that in the film, that each of them had a very specific musical function, as well as this function of supporting Morrison so that he could go crazy and always have someplace to come back to.

Right.

I came to respect all of them.

I was reading on your blog about the whole process with Delirious, back and forth with gestation and everything. It seemed like the most painful… did you blog during the production of this film as well?

A little bit. I couldn’t as much, because I was so intensely involved. The pressure was enormous. I was hired to do this in January of last year. The concept kind of came together at the beginning of February. They were thinking they were going to take it to Cannes last year. I said, “Guys, four months, you guys are crazy.” And I was right. We literally just finished the final print two weeks ago.

So, it’s been a long experience. But, it could have been longer. I mean, it was a tremendous amount to assimilate and to try to organize. The organization was the biggest challenge. I was just too… so what I was saying was that I would go into the editing room all day, come home, [snoring sound], or sit down and write another two pages of narration so we could then have something to do the next day. So I had my stuff to do.

Are you already thinking about your next film? Have you started working on anything?

I’m getting close to it. I mean, this has been… this is a whole effort in itself.

Which is strange for you, too, because you’ve never done a documentary.

No, I haven’t. I know.

And especially a documentary that you’re not shooting.

Right.

You’re putting it together, basically.

But, it’s not a straight documentary. That’s what I like about it. I think people will still see that it has elements of my sensibility.

So, are you going to go back to narrative after this, or would you ever make another documentary?

Yes, of course I would. I would never say no to anything that excited me. That’s my… I never once thought of that, like, “Oh, wow, it’s a documentary, I shouldn’t do it.” I knew I didn’t want to make just a traditional documentary with people talking about the Doors.

And I knew that - quite honestly, I’m going to be totally straight with you - the idea of being the first person to tell this story was really a turn-on. I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Because I think these guys are just - they were an amazing band. Still today, you feel people respond to them and what they stood for.

What was your first Doors experience? You remember the first time you heard their music?

Yes, I do. You want to hear it?

Sure, of course.

Actually, I wrote this in the blog, so maybe…

*laughs* I could just copy it off the blog?

Well, no. You can, but… I’ll just tell you. I was 14. I was on my way to a junior high school dance. I had just emptied a Liquid Prell bottle of shampoo and filled it with my father’s Scotch. I was in a car, and the instrumental version of “Light My Fire” came on. To this day, that whole mind-blowing experience of hearing a song that wasn’t two minutes long - it just kept going and going, and I was like, “This is on the radio?” - this is connected to sips of Scotch that were laced with soap.

So, that was my first experience. And just the idea that they had broken the form, the whole two-minute song form. And it was just interesting music, you know, it was adult music. But, interesting that the music, even still, it’s so fascinating… you look at some of this footage of their concerts, there’s kids like seven or eight years old. Ten years old. At these… [laughs]

Rocking out at these Doors concerts.

As well as adults. I mean, the only other band that did something like that is… are these stupid teenybopper bands. I guess, people never really took the time to go to a concert, but they let their kids go. But, it appealed to the kids, and they got something out of it.

Did you send this film to them at various stages for notes, the other members of the band?

We’d have screenings. I went out to Los Angeles to do it, and so they would come in individually and screen it and give suggestions… I had to be careful that I didn’t let them steer it into a version of history that was more comfortable. I felt like the thing that made this band great was that they just… they went out there. And I said that at times, the movie has to go out there.

Have you found the blog to be a pretty good release for you? I mean, it was really cool to see you going back and forth with people that would comment. A lot of people just write and then they just ignore the comments. Have you found that to be a good outlet for you?

Yes, I do. Because it’s there, you know? It’s an interesting public forum. I take it seriously. I feel that if people write me an anonymous question or an anonymous statement, I’d love to respond to it. It touches me. And I also try to give people information that I think will appeal to them, will interest them. I think it’s a great - you know, of course everybody and their brother has a blog [laughs], so…

A lot of people are brutally honest, and you tended to be, I noticed, on there, it was like…most people give the safe PR answer, and you were like, “Here’s what happened, and **** these guys, and etc etc.”

I wish I could be more honest, in some instances, but I’m glad you’re reading.

Under discussion:

Paper Hearts  (2009)

The art of awkward goes too far with Paper Heart, the quasi non-fiction narrative in which comedian Charlyne Yi travels the countryside interviewing The People about love, while simultaneously being courted by (Yi’s real-life boyfriend) Michael Cera. Though fascinating in the ways in which it shades the lines separating the “real” from the obviously scripted (especially in the beautiful, inventive puppet animations dramatizing the documentary stories), Yi’s allegedly actual crises of romantic faith come off as contrived from the get go, suffer further thanks to the performer’s total lack of dramatic range, and resolve themselves in a programmatic ending that’s completely unearned.

Put on your helmets, there’s falling meta in the synopsis tunnel: Yi plays herself (we can only assume), and Jake Johnson plays Nicholas Jasenovec, the real director of the film, who is seen on camera briefly. Charlyne says she doesn’t know if she believes in love, and certainly has never been in it, so she and Jasenovec (the one played by Johnson) set out to make a comic road trip doc so that Charlyne can present her questions on the subject to a number of experts and Real Live Americans. Presumably, the idea is to do something kind of like Religulous, but with more bittersweet remembering and a lot less yelling.
But shortly after Nicholas’ camera crew starts following Charlyne everywhere she goes, Michael Cera starts blatantly hitting on her at a party. The next thing you know, they’re sharing a romantic dinner at a hot dog stand, which is as adorable as it sounds. Soon enough, when Charlyne and Nicholas aren’t off in some squarish state learning lessons in love from current and former motorcycle owners, Charlyne’s spending all her time in Los Angeles with Michael, learning different lessons in love, the kind that can only be taught by a barely legal dreamboat. All is going swell until Charlyne’s articulates her lingering fear of intimacy at an inopportune moment, apparently in order to give the film something resembling the standard romantic comedy’s narrative arc. You can guess what happens next; I’ll only say there is dreamy guitar playing, and kisses.

Yi’s comedic schtick is effective in small doses — see her web shorts, particularly the music videos. But a feature-length helping offers plenty of time to contemplate what makes the schtick tick, and it eventually becomes clear that it’s equal parts sound, image and vacancy. Her voice has one mode: a high-pitched squeal. Small, slightly hunched, completely lacking vanity in a standard uniform of unkempt ponytail and too-big pullovers, Yi’s look is so distinctly tomboy preteen that it’s a shock when, at one point, she pulls out a set of car keys. Most crucially, most of Yi’s comedy is based on a kind of blankness, a goofy grin topped by poker-neutral eyes. She doesn’t want you to know what she’s thinking, otherwise the joke doesn’t work.

This is a fatal quality to bring into a film which needs the audience to care about its leading lady’s romantic future. Filmed romance only works if a single shot of the hero or heroine tells you everything you need to know about what they think and feel. In Paper Heart, Charlyne Yi actually tells us everything she thinks we need to know about what she thinks and feels — in nails-on-chalkboard monotone, without altering her facial expression. The Cera/Yi thread thus brings down the rest of the movie, which is otherwise a meandering but charming and fully engaging meditation on the wisdom of romantic experience.
There are a few things right with Paper Heart, and they can all be found in those road trip interviews, where Yi hangs back and allows her subjects to tell their own stories. But the scene which embodies everything that’s wrong with Paper Heart comes towards the end, when Yi interviews a group of pre-tween kids on a playground. Of course, they’re wiser about the ways of the heart than the “adult” holding the microphone in their faces; of course, the point is that, emotionally, Yi is less mature than kids less than half her age. But there’s a point where emotional immaturity, neurosis, and social awkwardness border on pathology. Which is fine, except that unexamined pathology is not very romantic.

Paper Heart is not smart enough to critique Yi’s issues, and it can’t work as a romance without doing so. All of which wouldn’t matter if it was super funny. But it isn’t.