Stunts in documentary: one good, two bad

A stunt in a doc is a narrative device used by the filmmaker to demonstrate an issue in a succinct and film-friendly manner. They can work. A good example is King Corn. In the film, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney grow an acre of corn to discover the problems farmers in America face and to see just what happens to this staple crop when it enters the food chain.

This device makes perfect sense – it structures and frames the questions the King Corn wants to raise. There are quite a few, you can read more about them on the film's website. Or you could watch the doc.

Morgan Spurlock's work is almost exclusively built around the stunt device. In his first documentary, Super Size Me, he famously ate nothing but McDonald's for a month to demonstrate just how pervasive the brand's influence is on the American public and its effect on their health.

But the stunt was flawed. Nobody dines exclusively on McDonald's – it's unrealistic. Also, if you ate nothing but burgers, fries and milkshakes crafted by the finest chefs in the land, you'll still mess yourself up. The audience already knows this. It's why we're watching. Are we surprised when a doctor tells him he's going to die?

If anything, Spurlock's stunt demonstrates the body's sheer resilience to bad food. And in turn, this opens up all sorts of interesting areas of debate. Being poor, especially in America, means fewer options. What effect does low quality food have on society in terms of crime, education and social mobility? Super Size Me touches on this a bit, but only in a general way. But we're not really watching for that. We want to see him chuck.

I always think a good doc should be surprising and educational. You should learn something about the world. I don't have much hope for Spurlock's new film, Advertising, The Movie.

This time, the filmmaker sets out to expose product placement in movies by using the mechanic to fund his documentary. Wayne's World sent up the phenomena 20 years ago. What is this film trying to say? What is there to learn we don't know already? Well perhaps one thing, maybe this was the only way Morgan could get a documentary financed, so he decided to make a film about it.

Stunts and experiments can work in documentary, but they should never get in front of the story.

Posted via email from antigob