DOCUMENTARY DEATH MATCH

Four poorly made films battle it out for Polly Staffle title of "BEST BAD DOCUMENTARY ON AN INTERESTING SUBJECT." Most documentaries are pretty good even if they’re on a boring topic. Grab a camera, point it at someone and you have a great watch. On with the fight. The four contenders before you are all one-star ratings. There is obviously an art to making good documentaries like those from Errol Morris, Michael Moore, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Not everyone is blessed with their skills as "The Burning Man Festival," "Devil's Playground," "Hate.com" and "Straight from the Projects with C-Murder" prove. These films take great ideas and waste them as dull finished products. With thugs, religion, fire and racism on display, you know this isn't going to be a clean fight.

“THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL” (1997)

Directed by Joe Winston and starring himself, his friends as well as a bunch of naked people.

Clocking in at just 45 minutes, "The Burning Man Festival" appears to be at a disadvantage. But it does have my interest early. The film is an account of the bizarre art festival held in the Nevada desert in each year. The annual event is a bunch of people coming together to create Black Rock City. It is a carnival of nudity, art, performers and theme camps. It all is highlighted with a finale that features the burning of a huge 40-foot tall human effigy. There is no substance to the film. That may be because there isn't really a purpose behind the event. The creator of the festival, Larry Harvey, talks about it from the confines of an air conditioned trailer, while the participants bake in 100-degree temperatures. He doesn't have very good answers about how the whole thing started or why anyone should give a crap. When I first moved to Las Vegas, I became intrigued with Burning Man and figured there was at least a decent reason behind it all. With ticket prices as high as $280, my guess is money is what drives the festival's return every year. The attendees want you to believe it is stripping away the day-to-day stresses and allowing them to be free and act in ways they normally don't. They are free to do as they please. It must suck being these people. If they are so repressed and stressed out that being a nudist, rolling around in mud, shooting off guns and gluing and sculpting things to their cars once a year are what they need to keep from going insane, so be it, at as long as no one is getting hurt. But the lack of structure makes me wonder how many people are raped, murdered or die due to a serious injury at the festival. I also wonder who cleans up their mess. If these were hippies that cared about society, they wouldn’t have the huge fire or trash up the place. For some reason I don't think they do their own cleanup and I’m almost positive Harvey doesn’t.

“HATE.COM: EXTREMIST ON THE INTERNET” (2000)

Directed by Vince DiPersio & Bill Guttentag. Narrated by civil rights attorney Morris Dees and starring ignorant white racists.

It looked like "Burning Man" might be the first opponent to leave the ring after such a poor showing, but then along comes "Hate.com." This one-sided look at racist websites gets knocked out quicker than Michael Spinks. For an HBO documentary I was extremely disappointed. Forty-five minutes isn't enough time to dive into this subject matter. Since obviously all different types of hate groups can't be addressed in such a short amount of time, this film deals with groups that hate non-whites. Only a few of these believers are discussed and those shown have very little time spent on them. I would have preferred the makers picked a single subject and focused on them. You get an "oh, look at the hate out there - can you believe it?" kind of feeling instead of anything to really think about. It shouldn't be news to anyone that there are websites catering to this or any other subject. There was a disturbing segment about a father who runs a hate site and his 11-year-old son who runs an off shoot of the site for kids. But the most dumbfounding moment of the movie is when Timothy McVeigh is accused of having racist reason for the Oklahoma City bombing. The reason being he was supposedly influenced by "The Turner Diaries," which was written by former American Nazi Party leader William Pierce. From everything I ever read, I don't think this was the case. "I bought the book out of the publication that advertised it as a pro-gun-rights book. That's why I bought it; that's why I read it," McVeigh told Time. Sure, the bomber acted out of hate, but racism seemed to play no part according to the book "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing." Its writers Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck claim McVeigh said it was an act of dirty-for-dirty revenge against the government. “What the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge was dirty. And I gave dirty back to them at Oklahoma City," McVeigh explained. Regardless, this film doesn't offer much and I don't even recommend it if you are interested in the subject matter. The time could be better spent, locking yourself in your room and pondering the question, “What the hell is wrong with people of the world?” A three-second knockout sends “Burning Man” to face the next opponent.

“STRAIGHT FROM THE PROJECTS” (2003)

This is the second in the “Rappers that live the lyrics” series directed by Stephen Belafonte. C-Murder returns to streets where he grew up in “3rd Ward, New Orleans” as original gangster Ice-T hosts.

As soon as the bell rings, this one comes out swinging like ambidextrous tennis player Maria Sharapova. It has the other four fighters beat with star power. The DVD cover boasts, “This is the flip-side of the Big Easy… Not Bourbon Street, not Mardi Gras, just the mean streets where poverty, drug abuse and violence are epidemic.” But what we get isn’t really an uncensored look with a discussion of serious issues. It’s a “braggadocious” hyped-up look, almost mocking the severity of drugs and guns in some of the poorest communities in New Orleans. C-Murder (aka Corey Miller and now known as C-Miller) is the younger brother of Master P and Silkk the Shocker. C-Murder obviously did lead the life he brags about in the film as he has been convicted of murder and currently faces life in prison. He grew up in CP3 (aka Calliope Projects 3rd Ward or B.W. Cooper Housing Development) - the largest tenant-managed housing development in the country. The complex was not flooded during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but most of its 1,400 households were displaced and many have not yet returned. C-Murder claimed to have still lived in one of the units. The rent was $25 a day. Either he is lying since there is no way he qualified for public housing or he was cheating tax payers out of money. We follow along as C-Murder makes his way around the neighborhood in a brand new Escalade pretending to care for his community ding most of the film’s 48-minute running time. Children flip off the camera, teenagers flash machine guns, but most of all we hear C-Murder talk proudly about how CP3 influenced his music and how families buy insurance on their children to get cash in the likely event they are shot in the streets.. We are also blinded during a segment of footage shot at Mardi Gras with women of all ages going wild, flashing their breasts. Out of nowhere comes a disturbing shot of what appears to be a male giving us a spread shot of his backside that almost rivals the one in “Pink Flamingos.” The point of the clips is to show us the difference between the Bourbon Street partying and how they do it in C-Murder’s hood. The project party is hyped by Ice-T and then ends up being as tame as a senior citizens neighborhood watch meeting. Gunfire does break out during the Second Line Projects Parade, which seems to be a regular occurrence as the same thing happened recently. Overall this film seems too much like it wants to show off. A sympathetic view at the Calliope Projects would have been way better than this wannabe glamorized exploitive piece of trash. “Straight from the Projects” is banned from the ring, so “Burning Man” advances again.

“DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND” (2002)

Directed by Lucy Walker and starring a bunch of Amish people.

Amish communities basically live like the people in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village.” The only difference is Amish do at least have buggies pulled by horses. They refer to the rest of American culture as “English.” They might as well call us “Those We Don’t Speak Of” or even better, “Dwayne Wayne” because we live in “A Different World.” It is their belief that all things that destroy families have been removed from their communities. In their world, there are no cars, the clothes are homemade, there are no televisions with cable, DVD players and video games, there are no CD players and there are no computers with internet sites. But worst of all, no one has a single bit of free will. You live your life for Christ. That is your purpose. Amish believe you do things the way those before you did them. You don’t question anything. Things are simple and they like it that way. Violence and drugs are at a minimum. When an Amish person turns 16 the Pandora’s box of “English” culture is opened during the rite-of-passage known as Rumspringa. The “Devil’s Playground” examines a group of Amish during this period. The teenagers can do anything they want. They can up and leave and never return if they choose. They can live the “English” lifestyle for many years and later decide to return home. So they do and like Mormons that grow up to be strippers, these Amish do more partying in a day then Dirk Diggler in “Boogie Nights.” These Amish need to show C-Murder what real partying is about. It’s not even sex that preoccupies them like “English” teenagers. When they go on dates in their community, it is customary for the girl to share her bed with the boy. Wild drinking parties with drugs are what many are concerned about. Supposedly 90 percent of the teenagers return to the church. Whatever they did during Rumspringa, no one cares to know about. They are Baptized and all the partying is put in the past. Once you decide to come back, you are not to leave. If you do, all ties are cut and you are excommunicated. I’m actually surprised the return rate isn’t a hundred percent. With how they are raised, you know the guilt kills them. The Amish pretend they are giving the young a choice, but are they? To dump all of the filth and depravity of the “English” on sixteen-year-olds that have been that sheltered their whole lives is almost abuse in my book. It’s really not fair. Most “English” aren’t mature enough at that age having been exposed to this sinful atmosphere their entire lives. The Amish have to return to feel better about themselves. The freedom feels great to them. So much so they can’t really explain it in words. But that same freedom is what they’ve been told is bad. They have no support group outside the church. They’ve never attended public schools. They have to take whatever jobs they can, even if it’s illegal. So they run home to get the slate wiped clean. And though this film was on such an interesting subject, it really isn’t that very good. Clocking in at 77 minutes, “Devil’s Playground” does however have the endurance to go ten rounds before scoring a technical knockout over “Burning Man.” In the end, the villagers take down the hostile creatures they don’t speak of, as religion defeats thug life, internet savvy hate groups and the counter culture.

- CCF, February 2006