*not including the price of HBO

If you read this site frequently, you probably know by now that I’m a bit of a documentary junkie, which is probably why HBO has been sending me screeners of their Documentary Films Summer Series.  It’s just one of the MANY ways I impress the ladies down at my local tavern.  (*uses alternating pectoral flexes to spell out ‘LET’S BONE’ in Morse Code*).  Tonight the series kicks off with Bobby Fischer Against the world at 9 pm ET/PT.

Directed by Liz Garbus, Bobby Fischer Against the World uses interviews and stock footage to tell the story of the world’s most famous chess player, his Rocky IV-like matches against his Russian counterpart, Boris Spassky in 1972, and his gradual descent into paranoid, anti-Semitic, A-holishness.  I’m not going to pretend it isn’t a mostly-talking-head documentary on the subject of chess, but the relationship between genius and insanity remains endlessly compelling.  And the cool thing about watching documentaries on HBO is that you can DVR them and you don’t have to watch it all in one sitting (you know, unless you’re poor and you don’t have DVR like a godd*mned caveman).  Probably my favorite scene in the film is Bobby Fischer’s last press conference, in 2005 in Iceland a country that had sprung him from jail in Tokyo, welcomed him as a citizen, and given him a hero’s welcome, even after his rambling diatribes and wild conspiracy theories about 9/11, Garry Kasparov, and everything else.  At one point in the press conference, Fischer confronts reporter Jeremy Schaap, whose father, Dick Schaap, had apparently once written an article saying Fischer “didn’t have a sane bone in his body.”  Fischer explains to a room full of nervously chuckling press how Schaap (the elder) had befriended him, acting as a father figure, and then, “like a typical Jewish snake,” turned around and written a nasty article (it should be noted that Fischer’s parents were both Jewish).  Schaap (the younger) interjects, saying he hadn’t read his father’s article, but “honestly, I don’t know that you’ve done much here today to disprove anything that he said.”

What follows is one of the longest periods of extended silence (broken only by the shutter snaps in the background) you’ve ever heard.  It is glorious. Anyway, it’s a little slow at times and could perhaps be more focused, but if you like documentaries about troubled Jewish chess champions who slowly turn crazy, paranoid, and anti-Semitic, you’ll love Bobby Fischer Against the World.

Almost all of my favorite documentaries are in some way or another about odd subcultures (American Movie, King of Kong, Anvil, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Spellbound), and what’s an odder subculture than magicians?  Make Believe (via FilmSchoolRejects) is a documentary about teen magicians.  It’s all the awkwardness of being a teenager combined with the awkwardness of magicians, which is enough awkwardness to spawn a thousand Birdemic remakes.  Make Believe was executive produced by King of Kong director Seth Gordon and directed by Kong assistant editor (a much bigger job on a doc than it is on a narrative feature) J. Clay Tweel.  Yes, J. Clay Tweel. I can’t say whether that was his birth name or if he changed it to sound more magiciany. Needless to say, this looks fantastic.

“The World Magic Seminar is… If you’re a teen, and you’re doing magic, you can’t miss it.”

“I don’t have too much friends, my friend is magic.”

“Kristin could be… the greatest lady magician that ever lived.”

THE GREATEST LADY MAGICIAN THAT EVER LIVED! That’s a bold statement, but then look at her levitate those metal rings. Anyway,Make Believe played the LA and Austin film festivals last year, and you can check it out now on Showtime or VOD, or when it opens in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles next month. The only kid I’m worried about is the one doing magic in Africa.  BE CAREFUL, DUDE. One day you’re pulling playing cards from behind peoples’ ears, the next they’re accusing you of shrinking the chief’s penis.  Unless you want people showing up at your hut with baskets of severed albino hands demanding you cure their wife’s infertility, you might want to move.  Magic is all political over there. So I hear. Of course, I get all my information about Africa from my racist uncle.

I wonder if this is how the Hip Hop Magician got his start.

Unless you spend even more time on the internet and you’re more aware of Mexican fashion trends than I am (note: DOUBTFUL), you probably haven’t heard of the Mexican pointy cowboy boots trend.  But rest assured that it is a real fashion trend, and those guys in the above picture aren’t attempting to achieve some ironic meme fame.  Their confident demeanor is an earnest expression of the knowledge that in their culture, they look really f*cking cool.  But what the I don’t even… Luckily Vice has put together a short documentary (nine minutes) you can watch at lunch or on a break or while you’re supposed to be working today, which will explain everything you ever wanted to know about Mexicans wearing pointy cowboy boots.  Okay, maybe not everything, but the most concise explanation seems to be this:

“Tribal music brought the pointy boots. In the beginning, people were wearing regular boots.  Then people started making them pointier and pointier, until it got out of control.”

Remember that old Chappelle show sketch about how the crips/bloods gang war started because someone stepped on someone else’s sneaker? Maybe these boots are the reason Mexico is such a powder keg.
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I vaguely remember hearing about this, but I hadn’t watched it before today.  It’s a documentary called Married to the Eiffel Tower, about a woman who has love affairs with inanimate objects, like bridges, and her bows (she’s an archer).  At one point, she blames a poor performance on a lover’s spat with her bow, “Lance.”  Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy…

FILMMAKER: When you say you date these guys, does it mean that you have sex with them?
BRIDGE F*CKER: Oh, no. We never get to that point.  Often times, they would say I’ll be the guy who will change your mind. And I never liked that attitude. I mean, I didn’t date a whole lot of guys, but the ones that I did, didn’t work out, simply because of the sex part.

Oh right, that.  It’s weird, everything was fine except for the part where I withheld the biological basis for relationships.  Later, the filmmaker asks her about her bows:

FILMMAKER: Mechanically, is it similar to a woman having sex with a man?
BRIDGE F*CKER: I would say yes.

So shooting a bow and arrow is mechanically similar to copulation?  Hmm, I think you’re doing it wrong.  Or doing it AWESOMELY, one of the two.  Here’s a comment on the YouTube clip:

Ok rather than saying she’s nuts, why not sit back and realize that some people are different. Some people are wired to love men, some wired to love women, obviously some people are wired to be in love with objects. And how do we know that the relationship isn’t reciprocated, perhaps people like must look for different things in their relationships than we do.

Yeah, I guess that’s one way to look at it.  I just hope I never hear myself say, “I found myself losing interesting in my archery career after I was legally married to the Eiffel Tower.” To me it speaks to the great capacity of humans.  It’s amazing that a human being capable of speech, wearing clothes, driving a car, operating a toaster, etc., can still be in essence a monkey trying to f*ck a football.  (*thinks to himself “what a wonderful world”*)

I’d been hearing about this one for a few months now, and finally there’s a trailer to share.  It’s called Exporting Raymond.  It’s a documentary about the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, Phil Rosenthal, who gets called to Moscow to help develop a Russian version of his show. Just imagine all the stupid bullsh*t you’d have to go through in order to develop a show here in America, then set that in Russia, where the biggest television studio apparently has feral dogs roaming the lot, and put the whole thing through Google Translate, and that’s basically this movie.  Suffice to say, I’m sold.

“Thees Raymond, why him funny?  I no think him funny.  And Sergei know funny.  I once kill Chechen weess banana.  …Banana wery rare een Russia.”

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