Forum Overview :: The Netflix Instant Forum :: "Shut Up, Little Man!"

[quote name="skip"]The Bill Hicks documentary on Netflix is terrible. Watching a documentary that refuses to be anything other than celebrity worship of a comedian is as bad as watching all those rocukmentaries that clutter up the Netflix documentary section. I couldn't get past 20 minutes of the "Shut up and play the Hits" before stopping. Even VH1 understood this and limited their "Behind The Music" episodes to 40 minutes. Most of these people aren't that interesting and they have such carefully crafted personas that the docu won't have any interesting revelations. And let's be honest, if you'r watching a Hick documentary you probably know enough about him that the movie won't have much to tell you. You'll learn as much about Katy Perry from a profile in US Weekly as from her documentary. The only exceptions to these are when the fame is fairly narrow and the subject doesn't have an agent make sure each shot is consistent with the person's brand. "Anvil!" and "Crumb" both sidestepped this problem because both were about people with limited fame and no intrusive agents. Both these movies also showed more ambivalence towards their subjects than the Hicks director, who is clearly a huge fan. Other ways around it is to make the movie less about the person but rather the surrounding forces or followers. "I Think We're Alone Now" wisely sidestepped chronicling a one-hit wonder 80s pop star and focused on the lunatics who would still be her fan 20 years after she had peaked. "Dig!" filmed the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dandy Warhols. Theoretically it was about the push/pull between artistry and money. However, the subjects and director seem oblivious to how they come off. They both come off as bands far too self-assured of their own limited talent, except one stayed sober enough to sign with a label and churn out a few top 40 hits before fading back into deserved obscurity and the other never left. This sort of unintentional self-satire (also mentioned by MM in "Heckler") also comes out in "Shut Up, Little Man!". It's about two 20-something guys, Eddie and Mitch, who secretly record their alcoholic neighbors, Pete and Ray, fighting and even goad them on by making prank phone calls. Eventually the tapes make their way around SF and become the equivalent of a pre-internet viral sensation. Comics, and a movie are made based on the tapes. Pete and Ray are both broken human beings, but no amount of screaming "cocksucker" will make them come off as worse as as Eddie and Mitch. These two copyright the tapes they made of other people, without their consent. In one story they recall offering Pete $200 for the wealth they've amassed through him and he refuses it, probably knowing that it was essentially a bribe to absolve those two of being douchebags who profited off his self-destruction. Since Pete and Ray are both dead, they harass a friend of theirs until he agrees to an interview. They give him a 6 pack and $100. It's slickly edited and moves along at a nice clip so even the parts focusing on Mitch and Eddie never feel too prolonged. There's some discussion of the notion of privacy but, like "Dig!", it misses the point. Let's ignore that for a second, since at one point both Pete and Ray knew they were being taped. Mitch and Eddie have done nothing else in their lives worth noticing and are still profiting off the cursing and homophobia of their former neighbors. Eddie justifies selling Pete and Ray's death certificates on his site by calling it "provocative art" or something like that and even he must know that's bullshit. Whether not they're unethical (they are), they're pathetic and creatively bankrupt. They fantasize about how much bigger the tapes would have been, if it had been released when Youtube was around. Truth be told, it would've been a lot smaller. There's lots of Youtube videos about people screaming and the reason Christian Bale's became viral is because he's famous. If Pete and Ray's tapes were released on Youtube today, they would've gotten max 5 figure Youtube views. Maybe 6 if the SJW's found it and complained about the homophobia.[/quote]