My recent chats with Marcie Hume and Matt Wolf, plus this piece I wrote about Mistress Dispeller for Criterion (go watch it!), reminded me that the practice of documentary, at its best, can be an act of love, faith and devotion to the objects we love — the people, the stories, the ideas, the audience, the textures of the fabric of reality itself.
Documentary, at its best, makes us our best selves.
We artists collect all of this material — sometimes against all common sense, urged on by something inside of us that tells us to keep going — and we organize it. We try it this way and that way until we’ve reached an arrangement that feels like we are getting the right feeling matched the right idea at the right time. Until we’ve reached something that feels true, and is true (or true enough).
And all of this is achieved through play. How wonderful! What a gift!!!
Let’s never forget that love, and play, are at the heart of what we do.
The problems come when we have so much fun playing that we forget what’s actually at stake: real people in the real world living with the consequences of our artistic choices.
I learned this the hard way, on a film I eventually had to pull from distribution.