Grey Gardens

This was sort of painful to watch. Depressing. I think I was supposed to find it kind of funny (which it was at times) and fun to watch these two eccentric women bicker with each other, but it was just more just sad watching this middle aged woman cling to her mother who she really couldn't leave. With no money and no real skill to speak of to turn into money to pay someone to care for her mother...there's really no leaving. It was interesting how much Edie and her mother argued and seemed to get on each others nerves, her mother just  seemed to treat her rotten...or more like a mother treats a daughter, and Edie just takes it. And she keeps coming back for more.

This movie was also scary for the fact that it doesn't seem like it took too much to turn their house into a raccoon infested shithole. They just didn't care for it. They didn't even seem to use every room. They used the bedroom and the den dining kind of area sometimes, but they were in a huge East Hamptons house. What'd they do with all that space?

While listening to Edie speak, I did wonder how much was BS and how much she actually believed to be true. All her proposals. Her dancing skills. Im going to go ahead and go out on a limb here, but I'm thinking that more than half of it is probably embellished a bit. But it was interesting that the filmmakers were sort of part of the story because Edie and her mother needed the companions, so unlike regular docs, they spoke to the filmmakers as if they were people, not as if "pretend like the camera isn't' there." They were there. It was company they don't' usually have, so why wouldn't they speak to them? They would.

I guess now the next step is to watch the HBO movie based on this doc that Drew Barrymore won an Emmy for.

And to sum up, in the words of Little Edie Beale on the subject of her mother "She's a lot of fun. I hope she doesn't die."

Dear Zachary

I was going to write this: I've heard nothing but good things and it was pretty good. Something edited in the era of MTV. A nice "document" of what seemed like a pretty great guy.

But I just finished it and that's not just what it is. It's a completely surreal heartbreaking documentary of terrible things happening to good people that morphs into an expose on the government and the judicial process. It's so painful to think that some people have to go through that much pain. I don't even think I can recommend it in good faith because while it was great, it kind of ruined the rest of my night.

That's kind of worrying me. Whether I'll be able to be a documentary editor. Usually, the purpose of docs (and why I like them so much) is they they can evoke such an emotional response from people. They're meant to do that. And because of that reason, these things are so damn depressing. Even if they end well, there's so much pain you have to trudge through to get to that point. At least of what I've watched so far. I need to watch a completely silly documentary next, I think. Or I might need to take a break from this...and I'm only 3 days in.