documentaries

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

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witch

fourstar

Although it was made a few years before the term “documentary” was coined, Häxan was far from the first non-fiction film ever made. It may, however, be the first documentary to ever be billed as a horror film. Based on the painstaking research of Danish writer/director Benjamin Christensen, Häxan is a hot-button doc that pretends to be about the “real” history of witchcraft, but is in truth a condemnation of how modern society deals with mental health. Although it begins & ends with lectures on antiquated notions of geography and health care, most of the film consists of live reenactments of medieval depictions of witchcraft that often blend the film’s documentary genre with classic silent horror. The reenactments are not only the sugar that helps the medicine go down. They’re also technical marvels that made Häxan the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made and a cinematic outlaw in countries that found its depictions of witches & devils to be blasphemous.

In its reenactments, Häxan looks like what you’d get if Fritz Lang’s Metropolis were set in Hell. Devils wag their tongues and suggestively churn butter while witches make potions out of thieves’ fingers, cat feces, and doves’ hearts. Women are lured out of their marriage beds by demons for late night naked dance parties and rub salves on each other’s backs that give them the ability to fly around on brooms. In these scenes, Häxan is the most metal 20s movie I’ve ever encountered. There’s so much wild imagery in the costuming and practical effects that I swear I’ve seen directly echoed before in VHS-era creature features like Nightbreed, Demons and C.H.U.D. The movie’s late night witches’ councils could also pretty much be considered source material for Kate Bush’s incredible “Sat in Your Lap” music video. Although Häxan boasts a serious message it deeply cares about, there’s no denying that it has a lot of fun in scaring the shit out of people with the medieval “The Devil takes many shapes” concept. Recreating live-action versions of witchcraft from art history is the film’s bread & butter, even if Ben Christensen had a loftier purpose in mind.

As devilishly fun & influential as the reenactment scenes are, Häxan (like a lot of hot button documentaries) is ultimately a huge downer. When the film returns to the real world to draw the thread between how women with mental illness have been treated in the past (as witches) and how they’re treated in the present (as lepers & pariahs) the naked dance parties are a far off memory and a flood of more sobering thoughts comes crashing through. The narration explicitly states “The Devil does not belong to the past” and asks “Isn’t superstition still rampant among us?” as depictions of the horrors of modern mental institutions and shady health care practices play out on the screen. Christensen then smartly returns to the opening depictions of the crystal spheres & bowl-shaped landscapes people once believed to be the science of the Universe’s structure, calling into question the validity of modern scientific consensus. Even nearly a hundred years since Häxan’s release, the sentiment is still potent. There are still huge flaws in our treatment of mental health & we still need flashy, sinful entertainment to draw our attention to them. Along with its hellish practical effects & creature design, the film’s central message has a surprisingly long shelf life.

Häxan is currently streaming on Hulu Plus.

-Brandon Ledet

Saturday Night (2010)

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EPSON MFP image

three star

One of my all-time favorite pop culture documents is Live From New York, the oral history of Saturday Night Live. It’s an impressively thorough work that traces the grueling writer’s room structure of the sketch comedy institution back to the coked-out shenanigans of the 1970s. The absurdly late hours & rapid-fire turnaround that give the show’s more gloriously inane moments their loopy, “Why would someone even write that?” absurdity seem like a very peculiar business practice, but make total sense when considered in the context of their 1970s origins. Over the three decades of SNL covered in the book, not much changes institutionally. The show is like a river that only gradually shifts its course as a constant supply of fresh faces flow through it.

In case you are interested in how SNL functions, but can’t be bothered with the ~700 page task of Live From New York, James Franco has your back. His 2010 documentary Saturday Night was seven years behind the definitive oral history, but is much more easily digestible and covers much of the same territory. The premise is simple: Franco films the one-week cycle of the production a single SNL episode. On the starting Monday, the writers & cast cram into Lorne Michaels’ office to pitch seeds of ideas for sketches that could possibly be developed that week. As the days roll on the crew develops around 50 sketches that get torn down & rebuilt through a series of table readings, producers’ meetings and live rehearsals. They frantically grasp at sketch comedy straws & avoid sleep like the plague with only the faint promise that something they develop makes the live broadcast. After a single day of rest it’s Monday again and they’re pitching sketch ideas for the next SNL host. It’s a punishing/fascinating creative process that may be a hangover of the 70s party scene when rampant drug use could get you through the ordeal, but it’s one that pays off with some of the more bizarre realized ideas on broadcast television for four decades running.

Saturday Night starts with its most amusing moments. It’s genuinely delightful to watch the wheels turn in writers’ & performers’ heads when they’re excited about getting to work on an infant sketch idea. The fun fades a bit as the work gets more difficult, the frustration involved with the detailed logistics of developing a sketch on full display for the camera. Franco’s choice to film a week John Malkovich hosted pays dividends, as his subject is an endlessly fascinating personality even when just standing around idling as the SNL machine swirls around him. Cast members like Bill Hader & Will Forte also carry the film a long way, especially early in the creative process when they’re frantically riffing or selecting fart noises from a sound board. There are a few moments when Franco’s personality becomes intrusive, like a frustratingly useless scene involving Hader’s dressing room mirror & the intentionally conspicuous absence of Amy Poehler, but for the most part he pulls the film off with a calm, low-key tone that benefits the laborious process he documents. Saturday Night is a great companion piece to the more definitive Live From New York book. There are less mind-blowing anecdotes & juicy gossip than in the whopping oral history, but the film brings the day-to-day logistics of the pop culture institution’s unfathomable workload into vivid focus.

Saturday Night is currently streaming on Hulu.

-Brandon Ledet

Arakimentari (2004)

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EPSON MFP image

three star

A short, brisk documentary about Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki, Arakimentari tiptoes the same line as its subject: the division between fine art & shameless erotica. Araki, a photographer, is an excitable pervert even in his old age, rapidly firing off lofty platitudes about the visual appeal of vaginas & what it means to be an artist. The movie itself begins with the questions “What is a photographer? What is photography?” before diving head first into Araki’s unique world of daily self-documentation & bondage model photo shoots. As a total weirdo and a sexual deviant, Araki comes across here as the (much cheerier) Robert Crumb of photography.

Araki reached his peak cultural popularity in the 1990s & Arakimentari is smart to mimic a 90s aesthetic in the telling of his work. There’s a truly hip 90s NYC vibe in the movie’s long stretches where aggressive electronic music (provided by DJ Krush) plays over blindingly fast slide shows of Araki’s photography. The movie works best in these montages, allowing the art to speak for itself. Portraits, flowers, everyday objects, and muted landscapes mix with Araki’s obscene erotica in surreal bursts. Several photographers are interviewed to help provide context for Araki’s significance, but musician Björk is also included as a kind of Ambassador of 90s Cool. She explains that she found his work when she lived in London during that decade, describing what a powerful discovery it was at the time. Björk also points to the significance of Araki’s book about his deceased wife in a moment that gets a deservedly calmer, tenderer type of slideshow than the rest of his work does here.

Arakimentari is not a prying, tell-all type of documentary. It offers its subject’s life & work for review in the best light possible. It tells the story of an energetic degenerate with a photographic eye & a constant smile, without asking him to reveal too much about either himself or his detractors. Its best moments occur when the art is offered for viewing free of context, but Araki himself is an amusing character & deft storyteller that makes the rest of the run time worthwhile as well.

-Brandon Ledet

When Björk Met Attenborough (2013)

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EPSON MFP image

three star

At just over 45 minutes, the short-form documentary When Björk Met Attenborough is more or less supplementary material for the brilliant Biophilia Live concert film. The documentary’s central conversation between the idiosyncratic musician Björk and famed naturalist David Attenborough is philosophically stimulating, but is not all the film has to offer. The movie also serves as a key to understanding exactly what Björk was trying to accomplish with the muli-media Biophilia project, especially her ambitions in trying to change the way we “see, hear, think about and make music”. She says early in the run time that “It seems to be around this age I am now you have to make a sort of spiritual statement” and When Björk Met Attenborough does a great job of detailing just how ambitious her statement is.

In her attempt to position Biophilia as a spiritual statement, Björk looks back on the way she experienced music as a child. She speaks fondly of singing on her lonely walks to school through inclement Icelandic weather, music serving as a private conversation between her and Nature. She also expresses frustration with how schools taught her to interact with music through ancient Europen composers and non-intuitive instruments. With Biophilia, Björk attempts to rewire how music, nature, and technology interact with each other into a more innate process. She begins this journey with a tour through London’s Museum of Natural History, the largest natural history collection in the world, guided by Sir David Attenborough.

The central conversation between Björk and Attenborough is unfortunately a little stiff and, well, unnatural. Ignoring the artifice of the encounter, though, the ideas discussed about where nature & music meet are thoroughly engaging. Lyrebirds mimicking ring tones & chain saws, the evolutionary advantage of a beautiful singing voice, and the prevalent sexuality in modern pop music all make for great philosophical fodder. The true highlight, however, is their discussion of the Biophilia song “Crystalline” in the museum’s massive crystal room. Attenborough & Björk pick apart the “mathematical beauty” of crystal formations & other natural phenomenon and how Nature’s patterns are mimicked in music’s time signatures. It’s a lofty concept, but one made convincing by two abstract minds who love to look for such connections between science and art.

The “Crystalline” segment opens other threads for the film to follow, especially in how technology can be exploited to harness the stated connection between nature & music. First, the film demonstrates through cymatics (the study of sound’s visible patterns) how the song “Crystalline” looks, as opposed to how it sounds. Other inventions like the sharpsichord, a rigged Tesla coil, and swinging pendulum harps that use gravity to play their notes all prompt the audience to consider “the way we see, hear, think about, and make music”. Björk also collaborates with legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks and several software developers to utilize touchscreen technology in computer apps that create new ways of making music in a more intuitive way. She not only integrates existing technology in Biophilia, but also pushes to create her own.

When considered in isolation, When Björk Met Attenborough is an interesting intellectual exercise. When considered as part of Biophilia as a larger multi-media art piece it’s a Rosetta Stone, documenting a vastly ambitious work that tries to encompass music, nature, and technology in one definitive whole. The matter-of-fact tone of Tilda Swinton’s narration and Björk’s titular conversation with Attenborough makes this ambition seem perfectly natural and reasonably attainable. It’s not the kind of documentary that’s going to pick apart the ideas at play and question their validity. After all, the movie ends with Attenborough paying Björk a huge compliment. Instead it’s the kind of film that offers strange ideas at face value so the audience’s minds can run away with them and draw their own outlandish, philosophical conclusions.

-Brandon Ledet

Rich Hill (2014)

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rich hill

fourhalfstar

“God has to be busy with everyone else. Hopefully he will come into my life. I hope it happens. It’s going to break my heart if it don’t.” – Andrew

Andrew, Harley, and Appachey are teenage boys living well below the poverty line in Rich Hill, Missouri. Population: 1,393. Each boy has their own dreams, but the reality of their grim, rural surroundings severely limits their chances of obtaining them. Andrew, a sweet, hardworking athlete who loves God and his family, shows the most promise of the trio, but is constantly uprooted by his father in the search for steady employment. Then there are Appachey and Harley, whose anger and frustration sometimes lead to darker outlets. Appachey is a skater who wants to teach art in China one day. Rebellious and prone to violence, he lives in dilapidated squalor with his chain smoking mother and sisters and often gets into fights at school with students and administration. He seems irrevocably lost. Harley is funny and good natured but also socially awkward, lethargic, and obsessed with knives. He is taken care of by his grandmother after his mother is imprisoned for trying to kill his step dad, who Harley claims sexually abused him.

There are thousands of cities in America like Rich Hill, with thousands of children like Andrew, Harley, and Appachey. Small, impoverished working class communities where poverty, prison, drug abuse, and violence are the daily norm and hopelessness and lack of opportunity coincide with high school football, church, and 4th of July parades. Directors (and cousins) Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo chronicle this bleak slice of Americana with empathy and an open heart. Maybe it’s because the filmmakers are from Rich Hill, but they thankfully do not make this an issue film or a political statement. Instead the film’s focus is squarely on the boys who obviously trusted the filmmakers as they share intimate and painful details of their lives.

Stylistically, the film feels less like a documentary and more like a Terrence Malick film; its poetic realism and evocative score help capture the beauty in these bleak settings. Rich Hill is one of the great modern American documentaries and deserves to be held in the same regard as other modern classics like Hoop Dreams. Sobering, yet ultimately uplifting, it is a hauntingly powerful capsule, a mosaic of the impoverished working class, and a critique of the American Dream.

You can watch Rich Hill right now on PBS.com through Feb. 3, 2015.

-James Cohn

Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money (2011)

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wrestlingjesus

twohalfstar

The very last pro wrestling documentary I watched when assembling my Top Ten list for the genre was GLOW, the story of an over-the-top 80s glam wrestling promotion that saw brief success on television. Wrestling for Jesus was a jarring, smelling salts follow-up to GLOW. It pulled me out of GLOW’s glitter-covered reverie only to wake me on the small-town poverty side of wrestling. This is the wrestling of backyards & gymnasiums, where audience members were likely to have attended high school or at least church with the performers. Where the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling bragged about how they were the greatest show on Earth, the men of WFJ thought themselves to be, you know, pretty good and some of them would even like to maybe get paid a small sum of money for risking life-altering injuries in the Lord’s name.

The wrestlers who express interest in making a modest amount of money for their time and compromised health are secular defectors of the Wrestling For Jesus promotion. WFJ, as a non-profit organization, accepts donations for their live events, but those donations are directly given to the church. The events themselves are an extension of church in a way. Performers’ promos boast about their ability to spread the gospel & sermons are delivered from the ring after matches. These men are wrestling solely for Jesus, to bring new followers into their faith through sports entertainment, not to make money. As far as recruitment tactics go, it’s a fairly convincing one.

However, participation in WFJ isn’t entirely selfless. At the very least the WFJ community helped the titular T-Money overcome the grief surrounding his father’s suicide. T-Money’s triumph over his grief may have been short-lived, but he basically thanks WFJ (an organization he runs with his wife) for saving his life. As the film progresses, his WFJ-aided recovery gradually reveals itself to be one step on a long road that would see rougher patches (like his own suicide attempt & a domestic violence arrest). T-Money sounds conflicted at times about whether he believes WFJ is a positive or negative long-term influence in his life, confessing that sometimes he hides his true personality in the community’s presence. It’s likely he’s also hiding his true self in the camera’s presence. The refusal to follow this thread of thought to a satisfying conclusion is the documentary’s fatal flaw.

There’s a sense that T-Money is on the brink of a personal epiphany that the movie doesn’t stick around to discover with him. When one of his fellow WFJ performers breaks his neck in the ring, T-Money is moved to tears in his proclamation that he wishes it was his own neck that had broken instead. The injured wrestler appears to be pleased with his time in WFJ, believing he had sacrificed his body to a noble cause. T-Money appears less convinced, but the movie doesn’t follow him long enough (or push him to speak honestly enough) to find out what that means.

Unresolved ending aside, the filmmakers do a fine job of remaining objective when they could easily have made their subject look foolish or evil. That objectivity doesn’t exactly shield the Christian wrestlers from the incongruity of infusing religion into a sport built on camp & violence, but it does allow them to be sympathetic even as the phenomenon feels increasingly bizarre. Wrestling for Jesus was far from the most essential wrestling doc I’ve seen in recent months, but also far from the worst. WFJ‘s Achilles heel is that its fascinating subject could have made for a much better movie if only the filmmakers had allowed it more time to develop & pushed for more honesty. If director Nathan Clarke couldn’t afford to dig deeper, his film could have at least benefited from some of GLOW’s outlandish hubris. There’s nothing like some old-fashioned self-aggrandizing to cover up a lackluster wrestling program.

Wrestling For Jesus is currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

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tifanny

fourstar

Obsession with celebrities is something we have all experienced. Whether it’s scribbling “Mrs. Jonathan Taylor Thomas” on every inch of a notebook or writing absurd fan fictions about the members of One Direction, we have all participated in some form of celebrity obsession. But what happens when a celebrity obsession is taken to the extreme? Sean Donnelly’s 2008 documentary I Think We’re Alone Now focuses on two individuals that have an excessive obsession with Tiffany. Yes, Tiffany, the teen pop sensation from the 1980s. Jeff Turner (age 50) and Kelly McCormick (age 35) are both very bizarre individuals that share an unconditional love for Tiffany. She is more than a fantasy girlfriend or celebrity crush; she is their God. Tiffany ultimately consumes their lives.

When I first watched this documentary, I couldn’t help but find humor in the quirky lives of these two super fans. Turner’s peculiar laugh while he explains how Tiffany previously placed a restraining order on him made me chuckle. McCormick’s room filled with pictures of Tiffany and handwritten signs professing love to her brought out many deep belly laughs. I quickly became obsessed with this documentary about obsession and forced many people to watch it with me. It wasn’t until I watched the documentary for the fifth time that I started to notice something beyond the film’s humor.

I saw something more in Turner and McCormick than just two twisted, disturbing stalkers. I saw two lonely, misunderstood adults that are filled with passion and no one to share it with. What I love the most about them is their honesty. They say exactly what is on their minds, whether its reality or part of the fantasy world they created. There’s no sense of embarrassment or shame when either super fan elaborates on their Tiffany obsession. There are a few scenes with Turner and his emotionally abusive stepfather that were absolutely heartbreaking. He doesn’t have many close friends and one can assume he has a very unsupportive family that doesn’t give him the love and attention he deserves. McCormick is intersex and explains the struggles and emotional pain she has endured throughout her life, and much like Turner, she doesn’t have many friends or family members in her life. There is such a huge lack of love and understanding for both Turner and McCormick, and they believe Tiffany is their hero, an Aphrodite that serves as their guardian and protector giving them the strength to go on.

All in all I Think We’re Alone Now was the most uncomfortable 61 minutes that I’ve ever experienced. My cheeks were so sore from constantly cringing, and I caught myself constantly covering my face with my hands and peeking through the cracks of my fingers. That’s why I love this documentary so much. I commend Donnelly on his method of filming this documentary because it gives viewers the ability to be a fly on the wall in the lives of these two obsessive super fans. Turner and McCormick give a much deeper meaning to Tiffany’s one-hit wonder.

-Britnee Lombas

Brandon’s Top Ten Pro Wrestling Documentaries

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wrasslin

Between a few friends’ recently renewed enthusiasm for professional wrestling & my own recent introduction to the wrestling-heavy comic book series Love & Rockets, something happened in me last September: I started watching again. I’ve easily watched more pro wrestling in the past four months than I have in the last decade. A young fan during the sport’s famed Attitude Era, I lost my enthusiasm sometime in high school, a loss I now regret. Not keeping up with wrestling over the years meant missing out on large doses of my favorite two elements in popular media: camp & violence.

Approaching the sport as an adult, however, camp & violence weren’t entirely enough. I also craved context, something I never questioned as a teen. In addition to the countless matches I’ve watched in recent months, I’ve also been greedily consuming documentaries on the sport. The following list is the most helpful films I’ve found in my search for context. Together, they combine to explain to outsiders just what makes wrestling so fascinating & how it evolved to become the violent, campy spectacle it is today.

1. Beyond the Mat (1999) – Widely considered the Citizen Kane of the genre, Beyond the Mat is more of a love letter to the sport than an objective documentary. The 90s vibe is potent here. Vince McMahon is drunk on the power the Attitude Era has afforded him (a level of power he hadn’t tasted since the 80s). The close friendship detailed between hardcore legends Mick Foley & Terry Funk is movingly sincere. The devastating Jake “The Snake” Roberts scenes could conceivably have been research material for Aronofsky’s masterful film The Wrestler (right down to the troubled relationship with his daughter). The narrator’s urge to explain the basic appeal of a sport he loves, a sport that to many people “isn’t real” feels antiquated, but it’s more than forgivable given the time of production. If you’re looking for a beginner’s guide to appreciating pro wrestling as entertainment, this movie is a great place to start. If you already have any affection for the sport you will still love every minute of it, even when it makes you feel like shit.

2. Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998) – While Beyond the Mat documents the state of pro wrestling at the height of the Attitude Era, Wrestling With Shadows does a fine job of defining exactly what made that specific era so distinct. Wrestling icon Bret Hart struggles within the film to reconcile his own 80s-minded ideals of what the sport should be (especially in how it’s viewed by children) with the extreme late-90s direction it was going. There’s also some essential insight into Bret’s father, Stu Hart’s “The Dungeon” training room and the infamous Montreal Screwjob incident involving Bret. Both topics are interesting in how much the camera reveals as well as what it withholds. Is there more to the story than what we’re told? Hard to tell, but it’s still very informative even when mysterious. Unfortunately, Wrestling With Shadows also boasts the worst soundtrack I’ve ever, ever encountered in a documentary (a depressingly common problem with the genre). It’s a truly laughable distraction in an otherwise entertaining movie.

3. I’m From Hollywood (1989) – Andy Kaufman’s posthumous “documentary” (more of a mockumentary, really) about his wrestling career is unambiguously an angle, a continuation of an in-ring storyline. In the 80’s Kaufman fashioned himself an infamously effective heel by proclaiming himself the Inter-gender Wrestling Champion and challenging women in the audience to step up as his opponents. This escalated to a very public feud with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler that both men sold beautifully. It’s both amazing & unsurprising how well pro wrestling fit into Kaufman’s fucking-with-your-reality style of comedy. In its finest moments I’m From Hollywood is a document of how the demented, proto-Tim Heidecker genius Kaufman utilized the sport as a form of high art. It works best when interviewees like Jerry Lawler & the late Robin Williams are committed to the joke, as opposed to folks like Tony Danza who refuse to play along.

4. GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (2012) – A few of the docs on this list play into the self-aggrandizing of wrestling promos that make their subjects sound like The Best Thing Ever. The GLOW documentary excels at this showy brand of self-promotion that’s so inherent to the sport; it really does make GLOW look & sound way better than it could have conceivably been. This makes sense, considering the 80s wrestling company/television show it documents (“the only all-female wrestling show there’s ever been”) was firmly invested in the entertainment end of “sports entertainment”. The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling could wrestle, no doubt, but they mostly started as amateurs (hopeful actresses & models) roped into the business in boy-band levels of commercial-minded schemes & manipulation. The story of GLOW is the story of a brief, unlikely cultural phenomenon fueled by 80s glam, over-the-top camp, novelty rapping, and genuine beasts & bad-asses. All of this precious material is backed up by a wealth of televised footage to support the interviews & the best soundtrack of any film on this list (provided by outsider post-punk geniuses ESG).

5. Barbed Wire City: The Unauthorized Story of ECW (2013) – It’s difficult to find a truthful, comprehensive look into the legendary Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion among the various failed attempts. Barbed Wire City is a godsend of a corrective to that problem. Easily the best take on the subject to date, it features interviews from both world-class shit-talker (and morally-questionable businessman) Paul Hayman and the very people he built up & arguably screwed over. Barbed Wire City also postures ECW as the wrestling equivalent of the Roger Corman Film School, where talents would develop ideas & characters in a gritty environment before moving onto the big leagues (to the organization’s demise). It distinguishes itself from other docs in the genre by featuring interviews with old-school ECW fans (including a dorked-out Billy Corgan) who helped make organization special just as much as the performers did. Its actually-listenable post-rock soundtrack also assists in making it a godsend among its peers.

6. The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling (1999) – A (mildly-condescending) history of old-school “wrasslin”, The Unreal Story explains how pro wrestling adapted from traveling circus to television mainstay. Although Steve Allen’s snarky narration in this TV doc prevents it from achieving the heartfelt love-letter status of Beyond the Mat, it does a great job of giving the evolution of the sport a historical context. My favorite outlandish claim from The Unreal Story is that Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting wrestling came with ancient promos that included insults threatening to make opponents “bleed before the Pharaoh” . . . brother. Not only is this history lesson informative (especially in its profiles of old greats like Gorgeous George & Ricki Starr), but it also offers a strange perspective of a time when 90s media did not know how to handle the Attitude Era’s sudden surge in popularity except to look backwards.

7. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (2004) – A fascinating profile of the pioneer crop of 1950’s women wrestlers, it’s mostly comprised of modern interviews fleshed out with brief clips of televised matches, photographs, stock footage & era-defining television clips from game & variety shows. I’ve seen a few lackluster wrestling documentaries that are put together this way, but Lipstick avoids mediocrity by giving a mic to women who rarely get to speak at length & covering a subject that rarely gets its due time in the spotlight. It also serves as an interesting account of how pro wrestling evolved from the traveling carnival circuit to television, making it a sort of companion piece to The Unreal Story. At the very least, it’s like spending 90min kicking back a six-pack with the world’s coolest, most foul-mouthed old biddies.

8. Scott Hall: The Wrestler (2011) – A 20min ESPN short recommended for those who aren’t depressed enough by Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ story arc in Beyond the Mat. Documenting “Razor Ramon”/Scott Hall’s struggles with substance abuse, his own role as an absent father and the damage pro wrestling has inflicted on his body & his mind, the intimacy of this movie will destroy you. For folks seeking fame & recognition within pro wrestling, this doc should serve as a reminder to take care of themselves in the process.

9. MTV’s True Life: I’m A Pro Wrestler (1999) – This trifle boasts some valuable locker-room footage from the Attitude Era that serves as a strange time capsule of both a period when wrestling was a white-hot commodity and when performers Chyna & HHH were white-hot romantically. Most importantly, though, there’s some essential insight into the toll the training process can take on a fresh body as well as the dedication it takes to survive that toll. The short-form doc is a tryptic depicting life before, during, and after pro wrestling fame, a surprisingly balanced & thoughtful approach, considering it’s an MTV production.

10. Pinfall (2011) – An even more focused look at the pro wrestling training process than the True Life episode mentioned above, this small-scale short follows British wrestling fan & amateur filmmaker Adam Pacitti as he attempts to train for a wrestling match in just one month’s time. Pacitti initially enters the process with the wrong mentality & wrong physicality (especially in regards to his belief that he could properly train within a month) and is relentlessly punished for his naivety. In its most valuable contributions to the genre, the film offers both a unique look at the exact training patterns new wrestlers must follow as well as the disconnect between the hubris of what a fan believes they can accomplish in the ring & the harsh realities of a sport outsiders don’t believe to be “real” at all.

-Brandon Ledet