Some may find reality shows entertaining, but I prefer to not stare into Satan’s butthole.The best reality is truly real, in the form of documentaries. I listed a bunch I like a few years back, and here are five more:
Winnebago Man. The outtakes of a spokesman losing his cool while filming promotional videos for Winnebago became an Internet sensation, and a filmmaker in Austin became obsessed with finding the maniacal guy, who’s now vanished, and seeing what makes him tick.
Unique Moment: The spokesman turns out to be a funny old coot, and the director takes him to speak at a film festival in San Francisco, where the geeks in the audience go nuts for his opinions about life and this country.
Don’t You Forget About Me. After first wanting to make a John Hughes-type movie, four film students from Toronto decide instead to road-trip to Chicago to try to find and interview the very reclusive Hughes.
Unique Moment: Many of the actors from Hughes’ films are interviewed, along with filmmakers like Kevin Smith, who were heavily influenced by him. But my favorite interviews involved my friend/co-star of my film, John Kapelos, who played Carl the janitor in The Breakfast Club.
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. Conan’s severance agreement over “The Tonight Show” prohibited him from appearing on TV for six months, so he put together a huge traveling comedy show/concert, with the proceeds benefiting his unemployed staff.
Unique Moment: Conan’s backup singers bring their families to meet and take pics with him. He’s super nice and entertains them, but later bitches to his assistant that he really hates exerting his energy pre-show. Points for him for being cool enough to allow this kinda ugly moment to be left in the film.
I Am Comic. Ritch Shydner, who was a successful comic in the 80s, lost his career to alcoholism. Now sober, the fire begins to burn again, and he tries doing standup sets at the tiniest of bars, in between interviewing fellow comedians about the business.
Unique Moment: Ritch goes to a self-proclaimed “comedy consultant”, who came up with a scientific system based on audience reaction to diagnose whether a comic’s set bombed or killed. Ritch does everything he can not to roll his eyes.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Joan just isn’t funny (and never was), but she is super generous, and it’s fascinating to see how hard she works every single day to support a bunch of relatives and friends. At one point, she dreads getting torched at her Comedy Central roast, and says, “They say it’s an honor, but if I’d invested wisely I wouldn’t have to go through this.”
Unique Moment: In the middle of doing her act at a casino in Wisconsin, Joan makes a Helen Keller joke (again, she is so not funny), and an uptight redneck in the audience goes nuts because he has a deaf son. Joan blasts him, and as the dude storms out she tells him her mother was deaf and reminds him that we need to laugh or we’ll go crazy.
