Pressure Cooker

I figured it was about time to go through my "eh, I'll watch it eventually" list that I've been making for myself. Started with Bigger, Stronger, Faster, went to Mad Hot Ballroom, and I've just finished this one.

I was a puddle after this one. I watched a few Rachel Ray videos, updates they did with the same class from the move and Wilma Stepheson, the teacher. They gave her a new bistro, a new kitchen, and a 5 day vacation. The tears just started flowing out of me. Funny thing is, I don't feel like I cry a lot at movie, but I looked through the tags on my blog (I tag it every time I cry during one of them) and lets just say I have plenty of "tears" tags.

Then I thought more about it. Something like this is so bittersweet. More sweet than bitter, of course. But even still, it's great that something like this happened to THIS inner city school and THIS class and THIS teacher and THIS group of students, but there are thousands of other schools like it. That's what it makes me think of (after I get over the initial happiness of celebrating the kids' success.) It made me think of the culinary art school at Mackenzie Career Center. What are they up to now?

It's funny that I watched this so close to Mad Hot Ballroom. The featured teachers were similar while being very different. Similar right down to the kiss on teh cheek before competition, but this lady was absolutely insane. Just completely hard core and a bit vicious. I can really imagine having a teacher like her or knowing of a teacher like her at my school. And she really wants them to succeed and do well and get into college. She really cares. She's involved in the lives of the students just like the teacher in Washington Heights was. Buying dress shirts for her students similar to the way the teacher at Washington Heights was buying the performing skirts for her students. Attending the football games in support of her students like the other teacher attended the final Grand Finale. What an experience, to have a teacher who cares that much. And this lady has been doing it for FOURTY years.

I feel like the camera had to have some influence on the students when to comes to being nervous for the competition. You look down, concentrating and working, and you look up and there's a camera in your face. And watching a documentary, it's easy to forget the camera's there. Being filmed, it's a little less easy. Especially if you're asked questions in the middle of doing whatever it is you're doing. I do wonder how Fatoumata had the clearance to be followed by a camera crew, but not much freedom when it came to anything else.

Last point, this movie was so hopeful and inspiring, it basically reminded me of an opposite Waiting For Superman. Superman actually did actually do a good job in showing up for this one. One thing that was interesting about this one is that it wasn't just about the competition. That was definitely a huge part, but it was more about the characters and their journeys. It was interesting to watch this and Mad Hot Ballroom back to back. There very similar in their ways but also had their difference in the way they approached the material. It's interesting how different two docs can be when they begin with very similar structures.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Competition is a great way to make a documentary moving. Unfortunately for me, the competition becomes less about celebrating the people who won and more about being sad for the poor bastards who lost. I like that they didn't dwell too long on the kids that didn't get chosen to represent their school for the competition because that would have been a little sad.

I love watching kids like this because I remember being this young and thinking I was so old and old enough to be dating and doing all kinds of things I was nowhere near old enough to be doing. They're playing it up for the camera and trying to come off as cool. Funny.

It was interesting that they got the clearance to be following these kids. They follow them walking home and they follow them hanging out with their friends. Their parents, their immigrant parents and grandparent parents and non-native English speaking parents allowed this to happen. Which is interesting.

The teacher in the Dominican Republican school didn't really come off very well for some people, I bet. Which is really just a shame because she probably basically just did her best to help these kids. You can tell she's doing it for them because she really cares about these kids and their future. All good teachers do. The scene where they go out to buy dresses is particularly revealing of that. And it's not like the filmmakers went out to go after her and make her look bad. As if they only included scenes where she said something terrible. That wasn't the plan. So...it just was what it was. Although, I mean, she did work those kids pretty hard and speak to them pretty hard compared to the to her teachers. But that's how winners win. And, also, some things are lost in translation. Take that into consideration. Overall, I thought she did a great job and was a very loving teacher. On another note, having the Dominican students do well at dancing the meringue to me was kind of like letting Nicole Schirzinger compete and win Dancing with the Stars. Also funny.

It was interesting that we were introduced to last year's winners (the people who got last year's huge trophy) halfway through the film. They were clearly a school with higher income families and more resources. So clearly, they were the villains against the Washington Heights school's underdogs. The faceless yuppies who get things handed to them. We had to beat them this time. Kind of an interesting way to go about building the roles of a narrative within a documentary. I wonder if that school minded. They clearly invited them into their school and gave them access to their students like any of the other school. But they weren't like any of the other school in the end. Not really.

35 Up

Michael asks such asshole questions. When Tony said he basically gets his shit done and makes stuff happen that he wants to make happen, he replies that "well, nothing you've done has worked out, right?" Tony's response? "It's better to be a hasbeen than a neverwas, innit?" You get him Tony.

I thought they'd have some problems finding things to talk about for the next few series, but I guess I get it now. We're just going to sit and watch all the relationships dissolve.

It's interesting though. With this sort of thing, you wonder why you just can't work the marriages out. Like, this seems like it could kind of be like fiction, so the idea of not having your life work the way they wanted it in the previous edition, or not working really hard to make your relationship work, the idea of these concepts just seems so abstract. Like when you hear things these people say about their lives, you just take it at face value, but these people are just saying things that they think will make them sound the most clever, or what the documentary filmmakers would want to hear, or what they think sounds most truthful to them. And they're not prefect. They could just be talking out of their ass. They do the interview once, and it's over, and it's on celluloid forever as these specific statements being representative of their outlook on the world. Interesting. Confusing, I know, but interesting.

Unfortunately, we keep hitting terrible decades. This hair. These sweaters. This is so miserable...really. Also, a terrible point is that these 35 year olds don't look a day over 40. Some around 45. Is it going through the 80s that did it to them, or is it because most of them smoke, or because Brits age worse than we do or...something is going on here. Like, guys, we check back with you once every SEVEN years, and THAT'S what you wear in front of the camera? That's such an odd choice. As Marggy said about one of the guys "I need this mustache to go away."

A lot of the previous children, now adults, complain about a loss of privacy or having regretted doing the program. And one of the wives was upset at how she was portrayed so she opted out of this next one. And that's a shame. I feel weird watching something that they might not enjoy doing. It's really a shame. I do wonder why they still even do it, though. If terrible things happen to them, they'd have to share that with the whole world.

It's kind to sad to see them not get what they wanted to get at 7. Which is silly. Seven year olds don't know what they want. Their opinions aren't their own so they just repeat what they hear and they only know what they want to do by what they see. They're stupid. But I want them to get their dreams. Which is stupid.

More Than A Game

When it comes to the actual movie, the fact that they got all this footage from their journey to the national championship...something like that was just begging for a documentary to be made about it. It sort of looked liked it was being filmed for the purpose of becoming a doc. That's probably not true, but they did a great job in making it seem like that.

Th graphics in this one ware ridic. Like really fun. A lot of work when into that. I wonder how good the movie would be if they didn't have that flashy After Effects animation.

They cut the basketball games pretty well. They had to do it in a suspenseful way, but also in a truncated way to get to the point and move on to the next moment. It worked. One thing I thought was weird about the flimmaking was that we were never able to see the score during the game. The movie was wide screen, so the 4:3 cut off the part of the news footage with the score of the game. That worked against the suspense and you didn't really know who was in the lead until they told you that one of the other teams won. I didn't like that.

You gotta feel a little bad for wherever that dude was who replaced Willie as a started but wasn't in the Fab Five. They talked about Romeo feeling left out, but once they pulled Romeo into the crew and Willie wasn't a started anymore, that guy had to have felt left out.

I get a little conflicted sometimes when it comes to sports movies. With a movie based on fiction, or even a movie based on real events but it's a feature, you can have some disconnect from the team that loses. Someone has to lose for someone else to win. And when you clearly see that it's real people who are really upset and really want to win, it's kind of a sad moment to see. You're of course happy for the team that won, but the team who lost has to hang their head and drive back home in shame. Luckily, they didn't really show us much of the team that lost. Which I liked.

I realized while trying to watch this last night that basketball is still kind of angermaking for me. Kind of a soft spot. I haven't had an overall great experience with it in the past. In school, tryouts, etc. I've actually had kind of a bad experience. I had to turn it off and finish it the next day. Maybe I should get some therapy about that.

Sad to watch him and know that he abandoned the state that "raised him." People are really mad about that, huh! I sort of get why now.

My Flesh And Blood

That was a drag to get through. I seriously just sorta felt like shit after watching it.. There were 13 special needs/mentally handicapped/physically handicapped kids in this movie. A family of them. That was like an hour long super depressing documentary times 13. It was difficult for me to conceptualize what it takes in a person to even take to take all of these kids. It was interesting that her mother implied that she adopted all the kids she did to fill the loneliness. That's very sad.

Adoption is so tricky. It was really interesting how they cut from one of the kids calling his birth mother "mom" and then calling the woman who adopted him "mom." And when his birth mother got married and he sat in the second row because they're "second row people"...so sad. And how does Susan feel about this. It has to feel a little crappy.

As for the overall documentary, at times, this seemed very much like a reality special. The little girl said "leave me alone" to the camera crew when she was crying in her bed. The angry kid, Joe (who I learned on IMDb was bipolar, and had ADHA, and hyperactivity, on top of his cystic fibrosis) yelled "Stop fucking filming me right now" and "I'm gonna break your camera." And they didn't leave right away. That didn't seem right. But that's how you get the good stuff I guess?

Hell House

Really interesting stuff. I tried to watch this with no judgement, but that was basically impossible. Especially with the embarrassing 90s haircuts and fashion rolling around. I read an interview with a director and he commented that in Texas, the movie plays very serious. In New York, it plays like a comedy. I can definitely see that.

From the audition scene I really felt like I was watching a Christopher Guest spoof. Like...you guys have got to be kidding. The script writing scene sounded ridiculous. He was trying to explain what Magic: The Gathering was (ultimately they decided to just go with calling it Magic). She pronounced it o-EE-ja board with no idea how to spell that one. When they read back the entire scene, it just sounded absurd. And the Harry Potter book reference? Yikes. How very 90s. The dude actually used the phrase, "power of the dark side." At times, their obliviousness of their own ridiculousness made them seem kind of precious. Then you realized they were brainwashing young minds with their sick imagery.

I find it hard to understand how they think it's a good idea to scare people into embracing and believing in God. I wonder if that works for them. I feel like the people who would be interested in going through this Hell House this would already be believers, or not be and go to make fun of the whole thing. I would think that the people this would work on would be young impressionable minds, and that seems like a very sticky issue. This would make a fabulous companion to the doc Jesus Camp.

And overall, this seems like a really messed up thing for Christians to be doing. They have to write 666, draw a pentagram (even if hey accidentally drew a star if David, but whatever), they have to pretend to shoot people, kill people, slap women, stab people. All of this, no matter if it's fake or not, seem pretty un-Christian. They make a reference to role-playing being bad but...that's sort of what they're doing here.

They have a lot of money for this production. Building new sets every year. Getting new props every year. Recording news audio every year. It makes sense because they did say that there were 12,000 people who came through the Hell House and tickets are $7. That means they probably bring in at least 70grand a year for this.

I really like how they cut together the scenes of going through the Hell House. They showed different tours cut it up with footage of the tour guides, the volunteers going through the tour themselves and other goings on of opening night.

At least the tour ends on a good note. They try to get some people saved (is that how you say that?). This tour of Hell House makes me think of going to the Church Of Scientology in New York and after we watched the video, being hounded by the nice smiling Scientologist lady about it.

Funnily enough, literally, just now, in the middle of watching the scene where the Slipknot loving alternatives youths argue with one of the Christian dudes about Christianity, God, religion in general, and the fucked upness of their Hell House, I learned that The Insane Clown Posse are Evangelical Christians! That was a coincidental turn of events. I bet those 90s youths would be disappointed to hear that.

Babies

This one was an observational documentary. I don't know if I was expecting that, but I should have from what I'd seen from the trailer. There wasn't much fancy editing or music in it, but it would pop up every once in a while. I wonder why they chose that angle instead of using a voiceover and making it sort of an anthropological study or something similar to Marching the Penguins.

Something I found interesting with this type of observational doc is that sometimes they did this thing where they used "baby perspective," getting low on the ground with the baby. Or letting the baby explore their space with no interruption. That was a interesting angle to take. There were a lot of moments where the kid was getting into something and the mom or dad just didn't interrupt them at all. As if they weren't even there to stop them from crying or stop them from eating toilet paper.

It was also interesting to see the different cultural practices of the different countries. When they had the montage of washing their babies, the Namibian mother licked her baby clean...at least I assume that's what she was doing. The Mongolian family, apparently, never let their son off of the bed until he could crawl. That's at least how it was cut.

Watching this made me think. I've always wondered, what in the world are you supposed to do to keep babies entertained? I know that millions and millions of people have raised children successfully, and it's clear from this how. Nothing. You don't have to do a damn thing! The baby in Namibia played with dirt and rolled around. The baby in Mongolia couldn't even move. The baby in Japan and the baby in San Francisco had all these toys and books and all kinds of things to play with, but how much of it was really necessary, entertainment-wise? Building their intelligence at an early age...I guess that's a different conversation for a different day.

Born Into Brothels

This was the kind of movie where it's so easy to take for granted the difficulty in telling a story like this. This women spent 2 years on and off living in the red light district of Calcutta, getting to know and forming a deep relationship and emotional connection with these children. It's looks like they just filmed that and put it up on the screen. But it was, of course, more than that. This one was sort of a variation of the observational documentary, but not quite. It's similar in that it's mostly just watching these kids do their thing, but it also has elements of other ways storytelling. Some voice over, some stills, some "pop" music.

What I found interesting was that the fear in making something like this is to not exploit the kids of their situation. You want to call attention to the problem and the issue of the film, but without using the kids to advance that. That's a thin line sometimes. So, of course Zana Auntie couldn't just sit there and observe these kids and stick a video camera in their face. She had to take action and try to better their lives. And that's where the story came from.

In that was, it was as though the filmmaker has to be in it. If she was going to help them, she had to be an active part of the story as well. We had to see the relationship she was forming with these kids. She had to be helping them. But you still get the sense that she IS the filmmaker, even though you know she's not holding the camera.

This movie is much more uplifting than what I expected. I think I went into it thinking that the kids were the sex workers. That's why I've avoided it so long. This is only partially true. Of course they do sort of show some child and teenage sex workers, it's all about the children OF the adult sex workers and them attempting to overcome this fate. Doesn't have a Hollywood ending by any means (it's real life after all) but not a complete and utter downer either.

28 Up

They got lower thirds! Just like I thought.

28 Up was strange in that I don't see where they can go from here. The questions have started to get a bit repetitive and they now all seem to be fully formed adults. We're going to see them at 3 more stages in their lives and all I can think that will happen at that time is more children and/or divorce, which will be sad to see.

Most of these kids (who are now older than me, so I guess they're not kids anymore) are married in this one. Which at 28 makes sense, but most of them got married at or around the age I am now. Which makes me feel weird. But also, a lot of these, or I'd say most of these 28 year olds look and act like I thought they were going to be in 35 Up. So I can't imagine how old they're going to look for that one. It does make me wonder, though, at what point they stopped contacting their parents are started contacting them. If this was the US, I'd guess they'd have to wait until this edition, 28, before they wre fully adults. But for some reason I feel like in the UK, 21 would be considered adult and they got with them directly then.

One thing that I think is strange about this whole thing is what it does to its subjects. I was wondering how they were going to work around some kids not being able to or wanting to do the interview some year and I guess this was how since two subjects opted out this time around. They just use more b-roll from the past editions to fill time. I didn't like it. It didn't really show any progression of the characters, of where where they were at the time, just where they came from. I hope they show up in the next one.

So interesting, besides his voice during the interviews, which is very apparent throughout the entire doc, Michael Apeted isn't present in this thing. We watch them do activities, but he never participates. He's not on camera. When he's almost on camera, he's in the shadows and you can't make out his figure. Still with that pervasive voice over though.

One thing the focused on was the differences between classes and therefore the different styles of education. This is something that is mostly a glaring issue in the UK, not so much in the States. Some of the private school posh students dropped out, but the guys still put so much worth in their education and would still support even lower classes sending their kids there. Others would disagree. One of the girls riffs that she doesn't even think of her class until the program comse around every 7 years. Which is really interesting. Like a self fulfilling prophecy

Also, I'm completely in love the sole black dude at his 21 and 28 year old state. I'm totally bummed to have to witness him become my mother's age.

21 Up

The subjects are still pretty open, even though at 21, they don't seem very eager to share their lives with the whole world. They're more aware of the fact that his will be seen by many people. More so than they were as 7 and 14 year olds, definitely. That puts a self aware spin on things. And even more interesting, they now confess to the fact that at 14, they may not have been as truthful as it seems basically because...well, they were 14, and they had the same insecurities everyone else has as a teenager.

What I also find funny is that at 21 looking back at 14 and 7, they think they are looking back on their most foolish times, but I'm sure the next time we check in with them, they'll be older and wiser and be embarrassed by what they see here.

Charles (one of the kind of kids that you think of when you think of rich British school children) is one of the ones most aware of the impact of the film. He even makes a comment about how, as a rich "character" in the movie, he was meant out to be "bad" while the lower class kids were meant to be "good." That's how he viewed the film. And he spoke about the sort of manipulation you can use with editing and different ways to produce it.

Which is another funny point. It's not just to see the evolution of these kids, but the evolution of the filmmaking. Not something simple like going from black and white to color on the 7 Up and 7 Plus Seven, but the use of b-roll when we get to 21 Up and the filming style, the way the camera moves. LOTS of talking over video footage. I imagine on the next addition, they'll finally institute some lower thirds in this thing. I almost have all the names down, but that could definitely help.

I tell you what, if I have to hear Give me the child until he is seven and I'll give you the man one more time, I might hit something. I know these weren't meant to be watched back to back to back, and when they first started making these there was no such thing as VHS, let alone streaming Netflix, but they say it at the beginning AND end of each one. Annoying.

Seven Up/7 Plus Seven

I actually suffered through/watched My Generation last night and decided to clean my brain out by starting the Up series as part of my documentary watching project. I'm sure the creator of that terrible show was inspired by this groundbreaking series.

So far I've gotten through Seven Up and 7 Plus Seven. I can't find a trailer anywhere for this thing, which makes some sense because it began in 1964. The whole thing is basically interviewing a group of 14 7 year olds about what they think about politics, "colored" people, what their future holds, the class system of England, and other topics. The way they respond to these questions was surprisingly very honest. That was something that was very interesting to see, actually. I imagine that the 7 year olds would unknowingly just let a stranger into their lives, but the follow up with the 14 year old was the same. They seemed to be annoyed or shy about answering some of the questions, but they still seemed to answer truthfully.

The change in perspective from 7 to 14 years old, and even the change from kid to kid, class to class, was interesting. I remember being 14 and looking back on my thoughts and opinions as a 7 year old and thinking, how stupid. And unfortunately, their thoughts are captured on camera.

I'm excited to continue. This thing goes every 7 years until they're 42.

Waiting For Superman

The experience of watching something in a theater instead of my small computer screen felt very weird. Being a child of a life-long teacher, I was really interested in what this movie had to say. I knew I was going to cry a little bit, so I was prepared for that. It was good, but I also had some problems with it.

The great stuff. I love putting the focus on education in this nation. How can we call ourselves a superpower and yet in a study done by the Program for International Student Assessment, we're ranked 24th out of 29 (TWENTY-NINE!) countries in math skills? And similarly in English. This obviously a problem that needs attention, and that's what documentaries are for and that's what this one was doing...by making you cry hard.

This sort of reminded me of a sort of Spellbound, but with a school lottery. They took a while to build up to the lottery at the end of the movie. They introduced us to the characters and we got to know the families and their struggles. I thought they balanced the kids families, the statistics, the (really fun) graphics, and Michelle Rhee's struggle really well. They sent us through this first before they tore our hearts out. At the Charter school lotteries each character we'd spent time with was put into a lottery in their respective schools districts and picked, or not picked, to have a better future in a better school system. A school that, the movie implied, would care more about their success.

Some things I had problems with are some of the race related things. Most all the graphics used, not racially ambiguous drawings of people, but white people when clearly, the movie focused on all young children of color until they introduced the girl in San Francisco half way through. And on that note, I didn't really feel like she was necessary at all. I see what they were trying to do by introducing tracking in schools and how that can harm a child's education as well, even in a school that wasn't as bad as some of these inner city schools, but to see the stark contrast between her future public school and the road ahead for some of these other students, was a little jarring. Especially in the end. Which I won't ruin.

And speaking of the end, I really didn't like the fact that there was no follow up, as most documentaries have. I think the theater was surprised that we didn't catch up with a few of these kids a few months later and see if they're doing okay and still on the right path.

And overall, the thing I found most interesting is that in this film, we place the problem with the schools. The schools aren't teaching our kids and they're holding them back and failing all these students. I feel like that may be a little unfair because the problem isn't as easy as that. Blame can't always be placed on just the schools. In a large majority of those schools with all those failing students, standing right behind them are failing parents. As my dad says, the worst thing about this country, the number one thing that's a problem in this nation is piss poor parenting. That can funnel into just about every other aspect of our lives. Including education.

It was very well done though.

The Business of Being Born

I don't know what I expected when I went into this, but I really really liked what I found. One of my top five that I've watched so far. This was made for a particular reason. To open people's eyes about hospital births vs home briths. And I will admit that my eyes have been opened. And I liked that feeling. Be warned, though. This is a movie about giving birth at home, so there are many many on camera births in this movie.

I kind of enjoyed how they showed the doctor's perspective and bounced back and forth between the midwife's opinions. Maybe it was supposed to be used to show both perspectives, but the argument on their side seems so strong that it really just made the doctors sound like Aholes.

It's interesting for something like this, though. At what point is something a biased one sided story and at what point is it a movie that's trying to open your eyes to the realities of the maternity care system just by revealing of facts? I think it did a great job at presenting facts as true but not making them absolute. The hospital works for some cases, as we definitely see later on in the film.

This movie was super uplifting every time a baby was born. Smile from ear to ear. It was awesome. Almost made me want to have a baby. I didn't care for staring at so many vaginas, really. That's just not a thing that I make it a habit of doing all the time, but that's part of birth and I know that it would be. I remember in middle school we had the option of watching a real birth in Mr. Love's health class, and my 12 year old self chose to watch, for curiosities sake. I was scarred for the rest of middle school I think.

Abby Epstein did a great job with this one. Really kept my attention and I felt like I was learning the whole way through.

Deliver Us From Evil

I watched this one on the recommendation of Niousha after I complained at work about all the downer documentaries I was watching. This one was even worse! It's an example of, like Dear Zachary, two hours of something that completely wrecks you, but then they try to do what they can to not let the ending be too depressing. It didn't work though. Marggy was watching with me this time, though, so it felt like less of a punishment to get through this one.

Religion is a super touchy issue. I'm not really one for organized religion in general and it was interesting to go into this with that perspective. Marggy and I argued about what it means to continue to be a part of an institution with such corruption within itself. To, as a person, choose this group. It's a tricky situation, I guess. What part of you can say I can't be a part of that because of what is happening within the church and what part is able to say that this is just happening as a small percentage of isolated events from a small percentage of the priests? We didn't really come to any conclusion on that, but it's just interesting to think about. The idea of being a part of a religion like that is totally foreign to me, so I don't know if I would even have the necessary tools to even begin to come to a conclusion.

One thing that surprised me about the doc first off was that the documentaries filmmakers let that dude just roam around that park as he talked about the fact that he was not attracted to adults, but rather children in bathing suits, in underwear, etc. I don't know if they were going for a kind of disturbing tone to his scenes with the children's playing in the background as he spoke of his crimes, but that I think was almost too much for me. Like, maybe just a little over the line and not really necessary. To see a convicted child molester stare at children in a park and talk about his past abuse of them. Yuck.

It was an interesting tool when they slowly relived what this doc is about. There was no opening teaser to explain, but as we got into it, it became clear. You could find this on tv and go into it not knowing what was going on and we don't really get that messages fully until about 10 minutes in. While watching more and more, I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at this bullshit excuses and backtracking from the priests and bishops who knew what was going on.

One thing that became completely clear to me as I got into it was that Oliver O'Grady was completely a naccist. In a different way than Billy MItchell or Troy Duffy...who are both to a comical degree. This psycho was basically the most honest person thought this entire thing. I asked my sister, the researcher of all things anti-social personality disorder related, to give me teh signs for narcissism. Unlike wit sociopathy, they recognize the difference between right and wrong but they do it anyway because they want to. But like sociopaths, they can't feel empathy, so they can't feel for their victims. The victims' feelings don't matter that only feelings that matter are theirs. And the dude was smiling and smirking and being flippant throughout the whole thing! The part where he wrote the letter to all his victims because he wanted them to come and air their grievances? That was completely fucked up. Sorry for the language. But that was insane. The whole idea that he would agree to do this documentary is unimaginable. And completely narcissistic.

Over all, I think it was really nicely done. I didn't really like the shots of O'Grady walking places and sitting around because it seems like they were telling him to do that stuff and it seemed forced, but it was cut together well and the interview footage meshed well with the action.

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.