Mockumentary
Related: mock (verb) - documentary film
C'est Arrivé Pres de Chez Vous/Man Bites Dog (1992) - Rémy Belvaux André Bonzel, ... [Amazon.com]
Definition
A mockumentary or mocumentary is a fiction film presented as a documentary film. They are usually comedic, often parodic in nature, and are often presented as historical documentaries with b-roll and talking heads discussing past events or as cinema verite pieces following people as they go through various events. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MockumentaryC'est Arrivé Pres de Chez Vous/Man Bites Dog (1992) - Rémy Belvaux André Bonzel, ...
C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog) is a satirical 1992 Belgian French language black comedy mockumentary starring Benoît Poelvoorde. In the film, a pair of film-makers follow a serial killer recording his crimes (and thoughts and opinions) for a documentary they are producing, but find themselves getting caught up in the mayhem that ensues. The film is shot in black and white.A literal English rendering of the title would be It Happened Near Your Place, but the film was released in North America as Man Bites Dog.
Tagline: A Killer Comedy --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Bites_Dog [Dec 2004]
Mockumentary films
- Bob Roberts (1992) - Tim Robbins [Amazon US]
Written and directed by actor Tim Robbins (who also plays the title role), this 1992 mock documentary about an upstart candidate for the U.S. Senate is smart, funny, and scarily prescient in its foreshadowing of the Republican revolution of 1994. Bob Roberts is a folksinger with a difference: He offers tunes that protest welfare chiselers, liberal whining, and the like. As the filmmakers follow his campaign, Robbins gives needle-sharp insight into the way candidates manipulate the media. While the film follows Roberts's campaign, it also covers a fringe journalist (Giancarlo Esposito), who may have dug up the kind of dirt to push Roberts's campaign off the rails. Robbins captures the chilly insincerity of this right-wing populist and fills his cast with terrific supporting players, including Alan Rickman as the campaign's shadowy financier and Susan Sarandon and Peter Gallagher as a pair of airhead TV news anchors. --Marshall Fine - Zelig (1983) - Woody Allen [Amazon US]
The thinking person's Forrest Gump, Woody Allen's 1983 Zelig is a funny, atmospheric mock-documentary about the collision of one man's manifest neuroses colliding with key moments in 20th-century history. Allen plays the title character, a self-effacing, timorous fellow with such a porous personality that he physically becomes a reflection of whoever he is with. Complex and painstaking, the film's pre-Gump special effects manage to place Allen, buried under a series of makeup and prosthetic guises, in a number of scenes along with Adolf Hitler at a Nazi rally, a pope at the Vatican, and famous guests at a garden party hosted by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Similar in tone and satire to some of Allen's short, comic pieces published in The New Yorker magazine, Zelig is a one-note movie that takes its delicious time establishing the fullness of its central joke. It's well worth the wait. --Tom Keogh for amazon.comZelig was an experiment upon Allen’s part in creating a documentary
- The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez [Amazon US]
Anyone who has even the slightest trouble with insomnia after seeing a horror movie should stay away from The Blair Witch Project--this film will creep under your skin and stay there for days. Credit for the effectiveness of this mock documentary goes to filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who armed three actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Josh Leonard) with video equipment, camping supplies, and rough plot outlines. They then let the trio loose into the Maryland woods to improvise and shoot the entire film themselves as the filmmakers attempted to scare the crap out of them. Gimmicky, yes, but it worked--to the wildly successful tune of $130 million at the box office upon its initial release (the budget was a mere $40,000).For those of you who were under a rock when it first hit the theaters, The Blair Witch Project tracks the doomed quest of three film students shooting a documentary on the Burkittsville, Maryland, legend of the Blair Witch. After filming some local yokels (and providing only scant background on the witch herself), the three, led by Heather (something of a witch herself), head into the woods for some on-location shooting. They're never seen again. What we see is a reconstruction of their "found" footage, edited to make a barely coherent narrative. After losing their way in the forest, whining soon gives way to real terror as the three find themselves stalked by unknown forces that leave piles of rocks outside their campsite and stick-figure art projects in the woods. (As Michael succinctly puts it, "No redneck is this clever!") The masterstroke of the film is that you never actually see what's menacing them; everything is implied, and there's no terror worse than that of the unknown. If you can wade through the tedious arguing--and the shaky, motion-sickness-inducing camerawork--you'll be rewarded with an oppressively sinister atmosphere and one of the most frightening denouements in horror-film history. Even after you take away the monstrous hype, The Blair Witch Project remains a genuine, effective original. --Mark Englehart
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This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - Rob Reiner [Amazon.com]
This Is Spinal Tap is a 1984 mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner and starring members of the semi-fictional heavy-metal glam rock band Spinal Tap. The film is a mock rockumentary that satirized the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, Aerosmith, Kiss, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and The Beatles among many others. The cast worked with Saxon in preparation for their roles. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Spinal_Tap [Jul 2006]
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