Like Ezra, I loved King of Kong. And perhaps we were had:
What I'm saying here is that a good percentage of what makes the documentary "good" are made up conflicts, inaccurate reporting, smoothed-over narratives that are meant to make you root for one side or hate the other, when in fact reality doesn't hold up to these allegations. The whole point of the narrative is that Steve is wronged, denied his rightful place in the record books because of internal machinations. But he had the championship for 3 years! He had played Billy one-on-one. Billy was not on this campaign to cut Steve off at the knees at every turn so to humiliate him and dismiss him, to his own aggrandizement.
(Feel free to check out this collection of statements by Walter Day, head of Twin Galaxies, which is an excellent succinct review of inaccuracy in the film. There are notable amounts of others.)
If you're going to point and laugh at a subculture, hold up real people like pelts to be sneered at and dismissed as this documentary most obviously does, why even go further and make crap up in editing? Why even be in that business?
The director, Seth Gordon, is hard at work at a screenplay for The King of Kong, which he will then sell to have a fictional movie made. Or, as I am saying, a second fictional movie, but one where he can see 100% of the profits of the picture without having to cut in any of the people whose lives he just took a galactic dump on. Let me be clear: he fucked these people. He couldn't have fucked them worse than if he strapped them across a air-hockey table and sodomized them with a Wico Command Control Joystick. He interviewed them, had them retrieve archival footage and materials going back decades, recorded them at their homes, their places of work, and at events that they put up at their own expense and time, and then he painted them in clown makeup and threw pies at them for an hour and 19 minutes.
And by doing this, he fucked me, too. Doors that were open to me and my production are slammed shut, people who would have been interviewed by me freely and happily are now rightfully suspicious, and there are places I can no longer hope to go. Maybe, just maybe after I am deep in my production and I show people footage and where I'm going with it I might get some folks to open up, but the damage is pretty goddamn severe. A documentary that rips entire groups of good-hearted people as shadowy, conniving scumbags with razor-thin morality hurts the scene being portrayed and hurts the people themselves. All this effort, just to turn reality into a faked up drama worthy of a dime store pulp. Yes, I am saying the movie is so bad that it has actually sucked my future movie into darkness as well.
When I sit with people to interview them, I always say the same thing: I never want them to regret letting me into their lives. I never want them to watch my film and feel a cold shiver of realization that they were had. Maybe they're surprised at how their context is with other interviews, or that they fit into the film in unusual ways, but to make someone's life worse for having given you the gift of their time and story... dude, that's some high-octane bitchslap. I don't play that way.
I was always uncomfortable with an element of derision in the film. The subculture it portrays seems to have a lot of severe Aspergers running around, which is clearly very funny to the director, but it isn't to them--and the laughter is too often in a laugh-at rather than laugh-with kind of way.
But this goes rather beyond that. Reality very rarely makes a good narrative, which is why the best stories usually have a certain . . . poetic license. The problem is, the very medium inherently makes a strong truth claim--we're just not equipped to disbelieve our own lying eyes. So when it's manipulated, it's incredibly powerful. That's what makes Michael Moore so successful--he tells a great story, even when it's not there.
That said, I'd argue that the opening of that last paragraph is as inappropriate coming from a documentary maker as it is from a journalist. Obviously you should not deceive people, much less manipulate their words to present a substantively false image of them or reality. But if you sit down thinking that no one you interview should ever be unhappy with the result, you are committing to a project just as dishonest as the filmmaker who starts out with a narrative and trims the facts to fit it. Probably the hardest thing about being a journalist is disputing the truth claims of nice people who have spent hours of their valuable time talking to you about their issues. But that's your job.
Perhaps it's just me, but documentaries about subcultures always seem to have that bit of derision about them. I don't know if it's possible to have a documentary without one.
I think my first inkling of this was watching "American Movie".
Okay, but who appointed you the guardian of the Eternal Essence of the Documentary? Sure, there are documentary projects where you couldn't do a good job unless you were willing to trick people into talking to you and thus, in the end, piss them off. But just as surely, not all documentary projects are like that? The multi- (infinite-?)dimensional space of possible documentaries includes just tons and tons where the filmed subjects don't regret letting the documentary filmmaker into their lives. So some guy wants to tell stories that way; why you gotta try to slap him down?
Right, I think there may be plenty of good documentaries that everyone's happy about . . . but I don't think you can make one if you start off thinking "everyone should like me",
A few thoughts:
First, I don't think the film was at all derisive toward any subculture. It was derisive toward three individuals--Billy, his sycophantic lackey, and the head judge (the latter two names escape me). The head of twin galaxies comes off very well in the end. And, more importantly, the entire pursuit which unites everyone--arcade gaming--is portrayed in a positive light. It is used as a vehicle for Wiebe to achieve personal success and fulfillment.
Generally speaking, the movie was very well received in the larger gaming community. Major gaming websites like Joystiq raved about the movie repeatedly. I don't think anyone outside of the very inner circle of Twin Galaxies felt offended by the way the film treated dedicated gamers.
Second, the film was not nearly as inaccurate as the Jason Scott link claims. There is no doubt that it did play fast and loose with the time line of events. But the real time line was a lot of back and forth that would have confused the viewer as much as enlighten him on the true facts. The real events lend themselves to portray the same themes and narrative; it would just be a heckuvalot more confusing to watch.
Finally, Jason Scott is way too melodramatic about the detrimental effect of the film on documentary making. The simple fact is that every documentarian has to struggle with the issue he is lamenting. The subjects have to trust the filmmaker, and they often don't, for good reason. If people are wary of opening themselves to filmmakers, that level of caution is probably a good thing given the type of damage that can be caused by even a well intentioned film.
But unlike journalists, documentarians have a built-in remedy to this problem. They can show them some of the film they've put together. This can go a long way toward proving good faith. For example, the documentary "Some Kind of Monster" about the making of a Metallica album was nearly shut down as the band realized that having a film crew document them self-destructing might not be a good idea. But the filmmakers sat the band down, showed them the film they had so far, and convinced them that a lot of good could come from it and that they were being treated fairly. The final result was a very good documentary about the making of a very mediocre album from an otherwise excellent band.
I also loved KoK and recommended it to all my friends -- a montage set to "You're the Best" from Karate Kid makes up for a lot of flaws. I recall at some point towards the end being confused about what Steve's high scores were (one score >1M and one
Crud, the Spam filter doesn't like the greater or less than signs. I was saying that I *think* the film showed two different high scores of Steve, one more than 1M and one less. So when the larger one was DQ'd he was still #1, but less than the magic number of 1,000,000. But I was confused because they never mentioned the sub 1M score again. I should re-watch it.
Most good documentaries are not very accurate. They're in the same genre as creative non-fiction. Editing sorts out the facts to fit a narrative. They tell a story.
Reality is not a story. It's not a narrative. The veneer of factuality around documentaries is unfortunate. They should be looked more as the impressions of the filmaker rather than journalistic chronicles of what actually happened. This is why laundry lists of facts that a documentary left out or misrepresented miss the point; you shouldn't be taking a documentary as factual truth in the first place.
It's a fine line. If you leave too much out, or actively lie, it destroys your authenticity. On the other hand, to be totally factual destroys your narrative. People like narratives, and a documentary needs a point to be effective.
And always rely on other sources for hard information. Documentaries, by controlling what we see, can give a false impression that that's all there is. Yes it's obvious manipulation, but given how people are wired it's very powerful. Showing pictures in a sequence is far more convincing than reams of printed information. Ask any economics professor trying to explain gains from trade to someone who's seen an anti-NAFTA documentary.
Hey, its not like the director lied about the number of dead Iraqi's from the war or anything!
rickm, there's a rumor going around that you tried to make a soul-deal with the devil, and he declined on the basis that he doesn't deal in junk-grade investments -- and besides that, you're nearly in default on the second mortgage anyway. Care to comment on that for my documentary?
I haven't seen this film, but I realized many years ago that what documentary filmmakers and mainstream journalists do is only incidentally related to the dissemination of accurate information. There may be intentional distortion to fit an agenda; there may be unintentional distortion through the journalist's world view; it may be that the journalist lacks the time or talent to write about the subject; there may be any number of other reasons why the final product be distorted, but there will be little or no fallout to the journalist.
The folks over at languagelog.com used to have a game where the general press would quote some linguist, ascribing something absurd to him. They would follow up with their colleague to find out what he actually said.
I have a couple of somewhat eccentric hobbies. If a filmmaker approached me about a project, I would be very skeptical. I would be concerned about it being a freak show, but I would also be concerned about it simply getting things wrong. I would at the very least want to see his previous work before I would cooperate. This is simply due diligence.
Well, some of these responses truly make me sad. But I did want to respond to one point brought up by Megan, which definitely needs clarification.
My issue is not with a documentary where the person, ultimately is portrayed in a non-positive light. Even the episode I talk about where I feel comfortable knowing the person has plenty of non-positive things to say; even his advocates mention long-ago disagreements with him and cases where they didn't want to deal with him. People who I feel I did right by in terms of portraying them were occasionally hung by their own rope.
Folks who are skimming the weblog entry I wrote are occasionally thinking I mean Billy Mitchell is not who's in the movie, and it's a little more subtle than that. Mitchell definitely serves out the whoppers and says stuff that makes the audience snicker or cringe; my issue is that the filmmakers go beyond that and start making him and others out to be malevolent presences, and in some ways, evil. I've wasted a lot of time flipping through a lot of opinions about Billy Mitchell the past few weeks. Believe me, a good portion of people think he's borderline criminal or a cheat. That's just not right.
I don't think a documentary filmmaker needs to make their subjects feel like they got a huge, loving hug for an hour and a half. But I do think they have to feel that stuff wasn't made up or shifted around to push them into a light su unfavorable people don't recognize them.
How about movies like "Best in Show" or "Waiting for Guffman"? Surely there's some sort of essence you can capture that doesn't derive it's authority from a plausible and easily-sold story line?
John Lynch, you are right on point about the relationship between reality and narratives.
In this instance, I feel the filmmakers of KOK presented what was shown to them. If some of the subjects of their film are going back and trying recant some of the things they said and did on camera, what are the filmmakers supposed to do? In order to make a documentary about a Donkey Kong rivalry immersed in an insular obsessive compulsive arcade gaming world, some minor details will have to me omitted. However, leaving out a piece of information for someone who can scrutinize 48 straight hours of gaming video appears to be the worst kind of pejorative journalism. By leaving out redundant or unnecessary story points the narrative automatically becomes "false." In actuality, the condensed version of the plot functions from an editorial standpoint in direct correlation to the emotional themes of the full story.
I think that there is a new generation of documentary filmmakers. There are ones that utilize their editing process to create a narrative structure not unlike fictional films. Additionally, they add stylized graphics and seek to entertain wider audiences with conflicts and resolutions that connect with people beyond the selected demographic. This is why so many people know about what its like to eat McDonalds for 30 days straight, or the current impact of the "military-industrial complex," or why the ENRON scandal went down the way it did. This younger generation of documentarians is passionate about their genre and elevating it to the stature of feature films. Michael Moore was the first to break through and have doc nominated for Best Picture, but I bet that we will be seeing more of that in coming years.
Being someone that is actually portrayed in the film, albeit for several minutes, I was personally annoyed at not just the overall re-arrangement of fact in KoK, but two elements regarding my own inclusion that were shown out of context in order to paint a different picture than what actually happened.
In the scene where I am shown saying that for a difficult submission we at TG had to "call in the pros", the director /producer cut that thought trail off and segued into others in the hobby discussing the trip to the Wiebe house. What I was actually discussing was the sending of the tape to an expert on the title and not sending in a team of people to infiltrate someone's garage without permission.
At the very end of the film when the credits rolled, a box appears that indicates that I resigned as chief referee from TG shortly after the Funspot 2005 event. That is not entirely accurate. I reduced my role from chief referee to senior referee due to my workload in Aug/05 due to the impossibility of doing volunteer work for TG and my real-life job, and then on Dec19/06, fully 18 months later, then I permanently quite TG over non-KoK issues.
My own inclusion aside, the film is rife with continuity errors, mis-statements and in some cases complete and false misdirections to craft a tale of a rivalry that was far from the truth.
I did a painstaking annotation minute by minute of the film, not unlike how I reviewed the several thousand hours of video tapes that I watched while in the capacity of chief referee for TG from Apr/01-Dec/06, and found several dozen errors in the film ranging from the minor to the outrageously false. So it personally pains me to see how some of my friends from the hobby have been portrayed for the sake of making this film, as well as how some facts of operation within TG have been portrayed.
It is an entertaining film, no doubt, but at the expense of the integrity of some of those negatively and in some cases comically poryrayed within.
Robert T Mruczek
Former chief referee for Twin Galaxies
Star Wars classic arcade marathon champion