Why? How would that be any better for her?

Whats the deal with Gail, is she functionally insane? Does she support herself? I can totally see her working away in the local council payroll office or somesuch

Her house looks tidy... Way tidier than mine :)

I learned, though trying my own expedition into attempted gonzo journalism/documentary work, that to do this sort of work, you have to essentially be a sociopath. You have to befriend, gain the trust of, document, and then possibly tear to shreds the person in the public eye. With rare exceptions nowadays it's all about getting the moment where it all comes crumbling down on camera. I got the first part down pat, but the second part had me trying to write about the good parts, realize nobody would give a fuck, and bailing.

If he was doing his job, he'd film as a personally videotaped message from Brent Spiner was shown to her saying she needs psychiatric meds, just to watch her break down and then justify it a few minutes later as a Jesuit trick and her shoving the camera guy out the door. His crowning achievement gained by preying on a mentally ill woman for laughs. And if you have any sense of decency, you'd probably feel some bit of shame for doing this.

If I was ever to do a film documentary, it would be following people who want to do this stuff, because my remorse would probably be muted in that case.

i generally do music videos and genre stuff, i've never done a doc, but I have wanted to.


I was actually thinking about doing a tandem doc about chris chan and GCS, but have the doc be mostly about the people who troll them and the dependency they have upon each other and the internet equally.

GCS and Chrischan are themselves not that out of the ordinary: madness is ordinary as Bukowski said. What makes the story interesting is how their madness effects other people through the internet and how these people in turn effect her.

The true story, I believe lies with the people behind this drama: they are the subjects just as much, if not more than GCS and ChrisChan.

I am too busy to make this film, though. I floated the idea by some of the people who produce for the Duplass brothers but nothing came of it.

postscript: the documentary ethic you're suggesting here is pretty invasive.

reality tv =! documentary.

what you do when you make a decision to directly effect your subject's like in that matter is say "my subject isn't actually interesting enough, there is no story here. let me create a plot point."

that is sociopathic and usually lazy, bad storytelling.

er *subject's life

I'd beg to differ that it's reality TV alone. It still comes as part of how you report what you find. In my case, it was intended more as written, so it's entirely left up to the subjective view of the author how (and this was more about a community) how you characterize the community by the positive and negative outliers within it. And with video, you still have a choice on where you point the camera, and whose answers make it to the final cut.

I do agree that documentary has been tainted by the need for "the money shot". People laugh about Geraldo Rivera opening Capone's safe and finding nothing, and yes, he is a sensationalist ass who got what he deserved there, but that's the true risk of documentary - sometimes you find nothing. When you're starting with a rather broken subject, you know at some point you have to suppress your sympathy for this person, because they already have enough rope to hang themselves, and you really don't need to give them any. The Brent Spiner video idea was hyperbole, but you know sooner or later, with the help of editing and time, you'll get that winning broken person shot.

In my case, it came down to whether I wanted to paint the community with the brush of a couple of truly delusional people and maybe make some sensationalist work, or have a piece about the pluses and minuses of this particular group and have something I knew no publisher would ever accept. It would have burned far more bridges, and I wasn't okay with that. I had the trust of all of the above and I didn't have it in me to pull the trigger on it.

If you end up with any empathy for the subjects it will distort your end result. One dream outcome of the Chris-Chan doc would be having the trolls' lives or emotional state be shown to be worse than Chris', but that's a brutal thing to have to commit to film for the public to see, no matter how bad the people are.

I can't disagree with you more.

There is a difference between propaganda and documentary. Propaganda begins with a narrative and edits content to construct that narrative. Documentary resists entering a subject with any narrative (sometimes this is hard) and endeavors to find the story / drama and document it.

I think your idea that "sometimes you find nothing" is really poisonous to documentary story telling. Just because you didn't find the story you hoped to find doesn't mean there isn't a story there, and certainly doesnt mean you should interfere with your subjects lives to create it. (this is why id like to document this guy making this film) It is your job as the filmmaker to find the story, find the meaning and convey it. The only assumption you should have going in is: there is a story here and I need to find it.

as for your specific situation it sounds like you had pressures from producers or clients that kept you from doing what you wanted: which is sometimes just the way it goes.

Every documentary is indistinguishable from every nature show. Place living, screaming food on camera, film predators killing it. This is no different.

Agreed - she's mentally ill and needs help.

The Kickstarter seems to have vanished. Doesn't seem that anything will ever come out of this. The Jesuits win again. ;-)

And, now it's back. I got a 404 when I tried it a minute ago, using the link I gave here, but using the link from the Youtube page itself got me there.

you have to delete the 20% that gets popped in here by ebil html

No, the problem with the link I gave is that there's a gap, probably an auto linebreak.

The Jesuits put that %20 in there to throw you off the trail... they're crafty like that...

If she is seeing a professional that allows her whole internet life to happen, that professional needs to lose their license and spend time in jail.

And just because you're functionally sane doesn't mean you don't still believe in crazy shit. Look how many otherwise normal, down to earth sane people believe shit like Scientology.

meme: you're assuming said professional knows about her internet life, and she's a paranoid schizophrenic who probably has difficulty opening up to people.

Maybe you should read the guy's Kickstarter goals before you judge the nature of the project.

You probably should send a few pizzas his way