Consider The Velvet Underground (2021) or Hitsville: The Making of Motown . These are loving portraits, but they gloss over the financial exploitation of artists. Conversely, look at The Offer (a dramatized series, but relevant) or Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017). The latter shows Jim Carrey staying "in character" as Andy Kaufman, terrorizing the cast of Man on the Moon . Is Carrey a method genius or a bully? The documentary refuses to decide, because the documentary is a product of the very industry that celebrates "difficult genius."
The ultimate expression of this may be The Staircase (though true crime) or Listen to Me Marlon (2015). Brando’s documentary, built from his own audio diaries, is the purest form of the entertainment industry doc: the star as unreliable narrator. We listen to Brando speak about the futility of acting, the stupidity of Hollywood, and his own profound loneliness. And yet, he is using his performance skills to sell us that loneliness. We are buying a ticket to watch a man tell us he hates selling tickets. Where does the genre go next? We are already seeing the emergence of the "Deep Fake Doc" and the "AI Archive." Studios are now mining their libraries to create documentaries about films that were never finished. There is a growing appetite for documentaries about the fans of entertainment—the cosplayers, the convention-goers, the "superfans"—which turns the lens back on the consumer. GirlsDoPorn E09 Deleted Scenes 21 Years Old XXX... --BEST
As long as there is applause, there will be a documentary about the silence that follows it. And as long as there is a curtain, we will pay to see what happens when it’s pulled back—even if, or especially if, what we find behind it is a tragedy. Consider The Velvet Underground (2021) or Hitsville: The
In the pantheon of modern documentary filmmaking, we have long celebrated the chroniclers of war, the biographers of political titans, and the investigators of corporate malfeasance. But in the last decade, a quieter, more insidious, and arguably more popular sub-genre has seized the cultural throne: the entertainment industry documentary. From the tragic unraveling of child stars in Quiet on Set to the forensic deconstruction of a flop in The Franchise (and its real-life counterparts like The Kid Stays in the Picture ), we are obsessed with watching the sausage get made. More importantly, we are obsessed with watching the makers get chewed up by the machine. The latter shows Jim Carrey staying "in character"