Re: What Documentaries Influenced You Most and Why?

Well there's my FAVORITE ones, and the ones that had the greatest INFLUENCE. I saw many of my current FAVORITES after I was already MAKING documentaries...which I'd have done much differently if I was doing them again.

Far far far and away the most influential to me was the animal segment of Sesame Street. It was the anti-Ken Burns: shut up, show the pictures, let people have the space to react.

Sesame St. was kind of cool in that they included the SOUND of kids reacting. I tried it once, and it was a truly remarkable experience. They reacted to what they saw, without being told HOW they were supposed to react. It was unmediated experience, and it really was amazing.

Not that I'm taking any credit. I just shot footage and swiped the rest from Sesame St. But I definitely used the same approach. Maybe 60 finished hours or so, not a single second of "voice of god" narration, lots of room for people to just look at pictures and ooo and ahhh.

My heresy (well, among my many) is that my favorite KB is still Brooklyn Bridge from 1981. It's ONE HOUR LONG. Admittedly The Civil War, jazz and baseball are too big to be covered in one hour or two...but jeez, c'mon already. Focus, man. Focus.

That said, my favorite doc series is David Attenborough's 1973 miniseries built on Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man. Major influence on Connections, Sagan said it was THE major influence on Cosmos. Rich enough to build an entire college course around -- still my favorite, and among the biggest emotional and developmental impacts any part of my education had on me...but he covered human history from the primordial soup to the dawn of the computer age in 13 50-minute episodes -- THE WHOLE THING, 200 million years, 13 hours.

I'm just saying.

My current fave is Errol Morris' Ocscar-winning Fog of War: 100 minutes of Robert McNamara looking straight into the camera, and telling his stories with crystal clarity. Remarkable on a whole lot of levels, not least of which is that it's the first time I've seen somebody talk to the camera like this. Instead of watching a conversation with some unseen SOMEBODY, never looking the subject in the eyes...well, watch it and you'll see what I mean.

No disrespect to anybody else, ESPECIALLY KB, who I really do respect immensely, but for my cinematic dollar, EM is the best working today.

Other faves:
--Don't Look Back. VERY self-conscious, but in a really good way. Again, no explicit narrative, certainly no narrator. The camera just rolls. The unblinking solo version of "Visions of Johanna" is my favorite filmed musical performance, which, for me, is saying a lot.

--Visions of Light. Beautiful collection of the best work of the great cinematographers.

--Some of you are old enough to remember film loop cartridges from your public school days. I remember watching silent, virtually unedited footage of the first steps into the concentration camps. This can't possibly be real, I thought. I watched those loops over again a LOT. Still can't believe it's real.

No narrator.

--I still like Roger and Me. I'm a big fan of Michael Moore's, and this is him at his most disarming - the perfect use of humor to tell a serious story. Among the reasons it was especially strong might be that, as a lifelong resident of Flint, it affected him too. My other fave of his was Bowling for Columbine, where his perspective includes his own NRA membership since childhood, when he won awards for his shooting. The unedited security camera footage, narrated only by the 911 recordings is one of the strongest things I've seen.

I hadn't put it together until I put together this list -- I really don't like a lot of chatter in my docs.

--"The Charm of Dynamite" is the best look we'll likely ever have at the work of Abel Gance. Made in 1968, didn't make it to the US til 76...aired last Sunday on TCM, not on video yet...but amazing stuff about one of the most pioneering of film pioneers.

Just a few thoughts on a rainy morning....

tw