After watching the excellent CATFISH (2010) this week, I have provided 5 mockumentaries of note for discussion:
FAUX VERITE – My favourite mockumentaries:
1) THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984) The inspiration for so many that have followed. How black can it be? None more black.
2) MAN BITES DOG (1992) A film crew follow a serial killer around town and question the ethics of their actions.
3) EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (2010) Like CATFISH this is a story of 21st century confusion about identity and aspiration. Banksy is pulling our leg.
4) SWEET AND LOWDOWN (1999) Woody Allen’s convincing bio-pic of Emmett Ray a fictional musician. UNCUT magazine predicted that a DVD copy could fetch thirty quid on ebay. I got a fiver.
FAUX PAS – the worst mockumentary of all time must be …
5) CONFETTI (2006) Robert Webb naked … come on … brit shit.
Honourable mention for THE OFFICE (2001) on the box as it was such a game-changer. Dishonourable mention for COME FLY WITH ME (2010) with its prosthetic racism about an airport, it manages to be a throw back to the last decade and the seventies at the same time.
Your thoughts?
The Dirk Malcolm Alternative 
ZELIG
“The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew that could turn himself into a Negro and an Indian, saw him as a triple threat”
The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, in the late 80s, when I first heard the Sex Pistols, there where very few books or documentaries on punk, it was only ten years earlier, but in a way I was unsure how much of this to believe and how Malcolm McClaren tried to con the music world out of £1,000,000 ! Whatever, it is a very enjoyable take on what did or didn’t happen with the Sex Pistols very brief time on the planet!
Both good choices… Allen is something of a master of the form as some of his fiction pieces are peppered with mockumentary elements, CRIMES AND MISDEMENORS for example.
Interestingly, a number of people have suggested THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but I think that belongs to a different genre entirely which we may cover another time: The ‘Found Horror Tapes’.
I have never really warmed to Christopher Guest’s other films … BEST IN SHOW and MIGHTY WIND are respected, but I don’t think that they are up to much.
> The ‘Found Horror Tapes’.
We can now add the mighty TROLL HUNTER to this list.
I like both those films but they don’t hit the lofty heights of Tap because they’re really out-and-out comedies, shot in the documentary style but with none of Tap’s believability. Too much mock, not enough… mentary (it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever).
Pingback: This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, US, 1984) « Dirk Malcolm's World of Film·
Pingback: Dirk’s Five: Rik Mayall | The Dirk Malcolm Alternative·