Errol Morris Gets Lost In A WILDERNESS OF ERROR

Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated Marc Smerling’s (Capturing the Friedmans, The Jinx) true crime docuseries A Wilderness of Error, which debuts on FX September 25, is completely addictive and utterly disturbing (and accompanied by an equally riveting and unnerving companion podcast, Morally Indefensible, out now). Based on the 2012 book A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by the OG of investigative doc-making Errol Morris, the five-part series is a deep-dive reinvestigation of the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Army surgeon and Green Beret still serving time for the 1970 murders of his wife and two young daughters – a nightmarish crime he blames on Manson Family wannabes to this very day. It also contains the added bonus of serving as an accidental expose of Errol Morris himself.

And to read the rest of my own Errol Morris reexamination visit Hammer to Nail.

“An Outsider in that Testosterone-Driven Climate”: Laura Gabbert on Her Food Doc, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles

Sundance vet Laura Gabbert (No Impact Man, Sunset Story) is no stranger to the foodie world, having directed 2015’s City of Gold, which follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold on his culinary excursions throughout LA. Now, with Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, Gabbert turns her lens to the other coast and across the pond, globetrotting through time and space with seven-time NY Times bestselling cookbook author and renowned restauranteur Yotam Ottolenghi. Though the Israeli Jew (whose business partner is a Jerusalem-born Muslim) is based in London, he’s invited by the Met to curate an edible, cake-centric exhibition inspired by the decadence of Versailles. So of course Ottolenghi does what any modern-day man of the world would do – takes to Instagram to assemble a culturally diverse team of the most cutting edge pastry chefs one can find.

To read the foodie interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“An Opportunity to Look at How True-Crime Storytelling Can Affect Reality”: Marc Smerling on Reinvestigating Errol Morris’s Reinvestigation in A Wilderness of Error

Marc Smerling’s true crime docuseries for FX, A Wilderness of Error, debuting September 25, is a deep-dive reinvestigation of the case of convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, who has spent the past nearly four decades serving time for the 1970 killing of his wife and two young daughters – a gruesome triple homicide that the onetime Army surgeon and Green Beret blamed (and still blames) on Manson Family copycats. The five-part series is based on Errol Morris’s non-fiction book A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, a deep-dive reinvestigation of the case – specifically the case laid out by both prosecutors and the famed journo Joe McGinniss in his own 1983 book Fatal Vision. Which in turn was made into a two-part TV miniseries. And if your head is spinning, buckle up. Smerling – one of the prolific forces behind Capturing the Friedmans, The Jinx and the Crimetown podcasts – has crafted one rabbit hole of a ride. (Along with an accompanying eight-episode podcast, Morally Indefensible, available now, which follows the McGinniss angle and questions whether the journalist ultimately got too unethically close to his subject.)

To read my interview with the prolific, Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated producer/writer/director/DP visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Cardboard Cutouts Don’t Grow Old, They Don’t Die”: Jan Oxenberg on Criterion’s Rerelease of Her “Docu-fantasy” Thank You and Good Night

Jan Oxenberg was a thorn in the nonfiction establishment’s side long before hybrid doc-making was a thing (or even a term). Case in point: Her feature-length (Sundance ’91) debut Thank You and Good Night, a restoration of which will hit the Criterion Channel this week (along with two of the queer pioneer’s earlier shorts, 1973’s Home Movie and 1975’s A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts, accompanied by a new director’s intro). Though Thank You and Good Night has been described as a “docu-fantasy” it’s also a very real time capsule of sorts. The film takes as its starting point the looming death of Oxenberg’s grandmother, which prompts the radical filmmaker (who has since, counterintuitively, become an established writer/producer for mainstream TV) to pick up her camera and record as much as she can in a race to the inevitable end. That includes no nonsense interviews and daily interactions with her mother and siblings, a cousin, even some of her grandmother’s friends – who together form a beautifully sad and unexpectedly funny, Borscht Belt-infused mosaic of NY secular Jewish life. Which brings us to the “fantasy” portion of the “documentary” – embodied (?) by the film’s narrator and spiritual guide. Who happens to be a cardboard cutout named Scowling Jan, the director’s five-year-old self.

And to read my interview with the groundbreaking director visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Pete Souza, ‘The Way I See It’

One of the more unlikely Instagram stars of our “Trump Show” era (with 2.3 million followers and counting), Pete Souza is likewise a surprising choice to star in a documentary. (Which of course is one reason Documentary has chosen Souza as our September Doc Star of the Month.) Having arguably spent more time around the Oval Office than any US president, the Chief Official White House Photographer to President Barack Obama (from 2009-2017) and White House Photographer to President Ronald Reagan before that (from 1983-1989), Souza now allows the spotlight to be turned on himself in Dawn Porter’s (Focus Features distributed) The Way I See It.

To read my first (and likely only) interview with a Chief Official White House Photographer visit Documentary magazine.

“Can a Psychopathic Institution Be Redeemed, or Should It Be Eliminated?”: Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott on Their TIFF-Premiering Doc The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel

I can still recall my red pill moment while watching Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation with my best friend, at the (pre-financial crisis) time an analyst at a big bank. “Corporations are people? What the hell?” I practically shouted. “Yup,” he simply responded with a weary shrug. For many clueless progressives like myself, unaware that corporate power had been spreading like the coronavirus, silently hijacking all branches of our government for decades, The Corporation was both horror film and wakeup call. The real deep-state conspiracy...Which is where Joel Bakan (who wrote the 2003 doc, based on his book) and Jennifer Abbott’s The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel picks up.

To read my interview with the deep-thinking duo visit Filmmaker magazine.

"As a Director I Want to Show My Own Failure, My Own Intrusion in the Films I Make”: Milo Rau on His Venice Premiering The New Gospel

Making its world premiere at this year’s — IRL! — Venice Film Festival, The New Gospel is the latest work of “utopian documentarism” from Swiss director/writer/critic/lecturer Milo Rau. (Though one might add “biblical provocateur.” As the newly installed artistic director of NTGent, Rau once took out classified ads in a Belgian newspaper seeking modern-day crusaders for a staging based on the city’s Jesus-themed Ghent Altarpiece. One read, “Did you fight for IS, or another religion?”) With The New Gospel, the multimedia artist tackles Italy’s ongoing migrant crisis through a most unusual form — by creating a contemporary Jesus film in Matera, the setting of both Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and before that Pasolini’s canonical The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

And to read my interview with the interventionist documentarian visit Filmmaker magazine.

Human Experience is the New Fossil Fuel: Jeff Orlowski on His Big Tech Critique, The Social Dilemma

From Arab Spring uprisings to Russian disinformation campaigns, social media platforms have swung from heralded saviors to all-purpose bogeymen with breakneck speed. So how did we get here? And can online life even be fixed? Was it all the inevitable result of a worldwide collective bargain with the Big Tech devil? (Nothing in life is free, and that goes double in Silicon Valley.) With Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma, which premiered at Sundance — as did the director’s 2017 doc Chasing Coral and 2012’s Chasing Ice — these consequential questions and more get addressed through a most unusual format.

To read my interview with the Sundance vet visit Filmmaker magazine.

Three true crime docuseries for end-of-summer streaming

With the summer theatrical blockbuster now a remnant of the pre-pandemic past, streaming services of every corporate stripe have rushed in to fill the void. And since the true crime genre has long been a surefire way to keep those eyeballs glued to screens, it’s no wonder we’ve seen a slew of docuseries suddenly come to a Netflix/Hulu/HBO/Amazon, etc. near you. So with the hot, dog days slowly subsiding, here are a few stranger-than-fiction, true crime picks well worth the episodic viewing.

To read my recommendations visit Global Comment.

“A Vindication of the Primal Nature of Creativity, Spontaneity, and the Uniqueness of Each Human Being”: Gustavo Sánchez on I Hate New York

For those of us who spent most post-midnight hours of the Giuliani years on the smoke-choked dance floors of places like Limelight and The Pyramid Club, I Hate New York, the debut feature of Barcelona-born journalist Gustavo Sánchez, is a walk down an age of innocence memory lane. A pre-9/11 time when nightclub royalty such as Amanda Lepore and Sophia Lamar were as ubiquitous as the flyers in the St. Mark’s record stores that showcased their names.

For those not steeped in trans-fabulous NYC lore, the aforementioned Lepore is best known as the longtime (Jessica Rabbit-esque) muse of David LaChapelle, while (Lepore’s former friend) Lamar is a no-nonsense refugee from Castro’s Cuba who began her reinvention as an avant-garde artist during NYC’s punk heyday. For over a decade (2007-2017), Sánchez tagged along with each on their various East Village excursions, as well as followed trans and AIDS activist Chloe Dzubilo, lead singer of the pioneering punk band Transisters, and activist/DJ/rapper T De Long. The resulting film, a clear-eyed downtown history lesson, is distilled from hundreds of hours of interviews, fly-on-the-wall observations, and VHS-style footage. From contemporary Tompkins Square Park to flash-from-the-past SqueezeBox, I Hate New York is also, thankfully, more nostalgia-free love letter than cinematic poison pen.

On the day of the film’s September 1st digital release, Filmmaker caught up with Sánchez, who in grade school became the youngest radio host in Spain, to find out why and how he decided to document the dogged survivors of a long corporate-coopted underground scene.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.