Four Field Guides to BAM’s Massive “Indie 80s” Series
ROGER & ME courtesy BAM/Photofest
Indie 80s: True/False
By Max Kyburz
Reagan’s vision of America was a “prouder, stronger, better” one than the 1970s’ post-Vietnam damaged homeland. But for many Americans, the “new morning” Reagan spoke of turned out to be little more than fantasy; if anything, it was midnight. Among the five dozen films in Indie 80s series, a generous heaping toy with the disillusionment of the Reagan years by blurring distinctions between truth and fiction. “What is truth?” is the fundamental question for documentary as a genre, but among these many departures from the generic template (including scripted narratives employing documentary-style realism), the inquiry is into whether and when the truth matters.
Though there are rawer, more impactful films offered over the month’s course, a clear contrast evidencing the disillusionment can be found in Penelope Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988) and Rob Reiner’s “rockumentary” This is Spinal Tap (1984). Both are surreal and all-too-close-to-home in their glimpses into the mishaps (both humorous and disturbing) and self-serious navel gazing inherent in rock ‘n’ roll, plus the bloated excess that defined the era. Decline contains, as confirmed by Spheeris herself, staged footage, which can often mean D.O.A. for a documentary. Meanwhile, the faux-accented, crotch-stuffing trio of Spinal Tap, even for metal’s insiders, felt too real, in spite of every scene being scripted and improvised. Given the struggle for rock’s oversexed weirdos to maintain appearances, does it really matter whether Spheeris’s capturing of W.A.S.P.’s Chris Holmes guzzling vodka is more truthful than lowering of a foot-tall Stonehenge monument into Tap’s live performance, flanked by elves?
But what of the fictional works that hint at the established norms of documentary? The task becomes distinguishing those films from the neighborhood verite of Diego Echeverria’s Los Sures (1984) or Les Blank’s spirited celebrations of “unhip” America, Gap-Toothed Women (1987) and In Heaven There is No Beer? (1984) The unironic, blue-collar kicks of polka parties of the latter Blank film permeate in John Hanson’s working women/mining town drama Wildrose (1984). What’s more, there’s an earnestly domestic atmosphere: local folk comprise the cast, allowing Hanson’s lens insight into Iron Range rituals, like a local dance or machismo-driven brawl, all with non-interfering curiosity. That said, there’s a Hollywood sheen to be found in lead actor Lisa Eichhorn comparable to Reagan’s folksiness. Still, this piece of historical fiction rawly represents the struggle of working women, just as My Brother’s Wedding (1983) is another of Charles Burnett’s poignant fly-on-the-wall glimpses of black America. Though far from appearing like a documentary, Burnett’s film captures a young black man’s search for identity in neither a mawkish nor stereotypical fashion, which Robert Townsend directly addresses in his satire Hollywood Shuffle (1987). Years later, Hollywood has yet to take a hint.
The squeaky clean, white-friendly American idealism of that period is contradicted by many a film in this series, some made with a more conscious and cunning decision to blur the real and fake. The devastated Pennsylvanian wasteland of Tony Buba’s Lightning Over Braddock (1988), plagued by economic collapse, could not have possibly been recreated. But it’s depicted in such a dizzying, gonzo whirlwind of Hollywood staginess that the film’s structure comments on the disorientation caused by keeping flashy appearances. So does the chilling final sequence of Michael Moore’s Roger & Me (1989): a grim montage of Flint, Michigan’s poorest castaways from the automotive industry, forced to move from their homes while General Motors chairman Roger B. Smith boasts the ethics of generosity during a cushy Christmas conference. But, like with all Moore’s films, he’s received a share of accusations of manipulation for deliberately showing the events out of chronology. Are his efforts less worthy than the many other “Indie 80s” films? Given the context, it’s up for debate, but considering how his (and Buba’s, and Spheeris’s) legacy consists of countless scripted “reality-based” television shows, perhaps it’s a storytelling decision that’s inspired more harm than good. It’s a great example of how the inquiry into truth can only be answered with a question mark.
