Within the late Nineties Joker writer-director Todd Phillips, then making use of his commerce as an underground documentary filmmaker shot a non-fiction undertaking titled Frat Home, which nabbed the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance earlier than being promptly acquired by HBO Movies.
“The premise of the documentary is that he pledged fraternities at faculties,” John Sloss, producer, founder and CEO of Cinetic Media, informed an viewers on the Sands Movie Pageant in St. Andrews, Scotland. He was discussing the pic as a part of an onstage Q&A concerning the present state of documentary filmmaking alongside Molly Thompson, Head of Documentaries and Non-Fiction at Apple TV+, and Oscar-winning producer Melanie Miller (Navalny, Maestra).
Sloss had been representing Phillips on the time. Regardless of the early buzz surrounding the pic, it was by no means formally launched. HBO shelved the undertaking.
“What occurred was {that a} separate chapter of the fraternity he [Phillips] pledged and made seem like a bunch of idiots in his movie, was the identical fraternity that the top of Time Warner’s son belonged to at one other school,” Sloss mentioned.
Sloss mentioned Sheila Nevins, who was operating HBO docs on the time and he described as “one of many nice figures within the historical past of documentary filmmaking,” intervened and put in a name to “kill the documentary” by concocting a narrative concerning the credibility of the nonfiction filmmaking.
“It had simply received the grand jury prize at Sundance and Sheila manufactured this concept that, wait a minute, the filmmaker is pledging the fraternity, this isn’t actual in any respect. That is stunning. This isn’t a documentary. However that was the whole premise of the movie,” Sloss mentioned.
The one-hour doc featured now broadly reported scenes of ferocious hazing abuses inside American school fraternities. Shortly after the Sundance screening, college students from Muhlenberg Faculty, the place the pic was shot, accused Phillips and his filmmaking workforce of staging scenes and directing individuals.
“They informed us precisely what to do,” one pupil mentioned in an interview on the time. ”They’d name and say, ‘We’re coming in, like, two hours; consider some stuff we might do.’ When it got here out as a documentary, I used to be shocked as a result of [our segment] was all staged. They’d retake scenes and all the pieces.”
Circling again to the unique viewers query concerning the bridge between nonfiction and fiction in documentary filmmaking, Sloss added: “There are selections made in each body that slant fact from one model to the subsequent. It’s a must to draw the road someplace. However the thought that there’s a pure model of documentary storytelling is only a pure fallacy.”
Thompson added: “The minute you place the digital camera someplace you’re leaving out 98% of the image.”
HBO has nonetheless by no means broadcast Frat Home and Phillips, after all, went on to shoot, amongst others, the Hangover films adopted by Struggle Canine; and, principally not too long ago, Golden Lion winner Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix. He returns to Gotham this yr with Joker: Folie à Deux, a musical with Woman Gaga co-starring with Phoenix.
Elsewhere throughout the hour session, the pair have been quizzed on their opinions concerning the up to date development of celebrity-focused documentaries the place the topic is given last editorial lower. Lately, the editorial management of documentaries like, for instance, Harry & Meghan on Netflix, sparked a lot debate round how a lot editorial management on-screen topics must be given.
“If you wish to see a forgettable movie, give the topic last lower,” Thompson mentioned.
“It doesn’t lend to one of the best filmmaking. On the September Problem, for instance, Anna Wintour, some of the highly effective girls on this planet didn’t have last lower on the movie and he or she wouldn’t have wished it as a result of she revered the filmmaker.”
Thompson added that Apple would by no means green-light such heavy-handed initiatives.
The Sands Movie Pageant runs till April 21.