You know, there are alot of really spectacular documentary type pictures out there and it seems like a common feature to almost all of them is a really strange cast of characters that you couldn’t make up. Pictures like AMERICAN MOVIE, AMERICAN PIMP, GREY GARDENS, CRUMB, SALESMAN, DERBY, BIGGIE AND TUPAC, PARADISE LOST, WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, BROTHER’S KEEPER, BEYOND THE MAT… these are full of these people that are too real to be in a fictional movie and yet somehow more interesting and bizarre than most of the people I ever end up hanging out with. Not that I’d want to hang out with that maniac with the lopsided head in PARADISE LOST, or Jake “The Snake” Roberts. The american movie dude seems kinds of cool, though.
But I mean how do they know it’s gonna happen that way? What if they zero in on a topic that in itself is fascinating but then it turns out all the people involved are pretty regular and don’t have anything funny to say about it? How is it that guys like the Maysles and this Nick Broomfield can have such high batting averages in this department?
I mean when you decide to make a documentary about the media crowned “america’s first female serial killer”, for once a prostitute who kills johns instead of the other way around, a woman who claims to have only killed people who tried or succeeded to rape her (which, for a prostitute, is not too far out a story), and the jury didn’t believe her because they didn’t know the victim had spent ten years in prison for attempted rape, you already know you got an interesting topic. And I guess you can assume this Aileen is gonna be somewhat interesting.
But you don’t necessarily know you’re gonna get a spacey born again Christian who legally adopts the 35 year old Wuornos “because Jesus told me to.” Or an author of a book on Wuornos who sounds absolutely disgusted with Wuorno’s lack of effort in marketing herself as a prostitute. Or a burnt out longhair public defender who smokes seven joints on the way to prison, puts Bob Marley on the answering machine at his law office, plays guitar and sings for the camera and tries to make jokes to cover up his discomfort as he accepts money on camera as Aileen’s “agent”. (more…)
This is a new comedy concert movie directed by Spike Lee. Instead of having somebody good like Richard Pryor as the star, the gimmick here is that it’s Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac.
