Yes, I have suc­cess­fully pur­chased for my self a nice big headache in trashing a film so many people happen to like. Also, I’ve started get­ting the requests for more backups of the facts, and standing up for my accu­sa­tions. I had to, iron­i­cally, buy a copy of the final DVD that’s come out and had it sent to my home, and I’ll be com­paring the screener and the DVD for editing changes and talking about what I don’t like. I hope I’m wrong, I really do.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion I felt obliged to take the side of Jesse Thorn (host of The Sound of Young America) for his minor-​​key cru­sade against This American Life. His take on the show is that it dis­torts the sto­ries it tells in order to make them more like “sto­ries”, with plot arcs and sus­pense and reveals in an orderly and com­pelling sequence. He fig­ures there’s a sig­nif­i­cant number of cases wherein the sto­ries get dis­torted to the point of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. And that’s a bit dubious for a show that’s sup­posed to be about the real reality of American lived expe­ri­ence. You know, it’s about *this* American life.

Point being I’m sym­pa­thetic for your desire for verisimil­i­tude. Farley Mowat used to say (prob­ably still does) “don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth” but there’s got to be a limit on that right?

Anyhow, I can’t stop loving that movie. And Steve Weibe is still my man.

Also, I’m pumped that the Jason Scott is com­menting on my com­ments re: Jason Scott.

I appre­ciate the respect, Hugh.

The problem in all this is that I’m a doc­u­men­tary film­maker. You’d think that would make it even better that I’m talking, since I’ve actu­ally done this crap. But in point of fact, that then leads to accu­sa­tions of pro­fes­sional jeal­ousy or being angry that “my” movie was made a dif­ferent way or I was cheated out of cash or funds. This is why I made it clear I had selfish as well as eth­ical reasons.

An example of how this could all go would be a chef making a big stink because another chef is claiming he “invented” a recipe that all chefs knew of, and yet now they all have to deal with being asked for that chef’s dish, or even worse, being accused of stealing that chef’s recipe. At the end of the day, people are going to go “yeah, but does the sand­wich taste good???”. The rest of it is just back­ground noise and ethics, honor, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion are side issues, unre­lated and irrel­e­vant. I feel a little like the chef making the big stink, and a bunch of people are going “but the sand­wich tastes good”.

Personally, I have no issue with This American Life or even King of Kong remixing items into dra­matic form, as one would use the pacing of lan­guage or para­graphs to por­tray infor­ma­tion. I expect as such.

The Fidonet episode of my BBS Documentary is, essen­tially, a mas­sive nar­ra­tive struc­ture applied to a 15 year period of his­tory that encom­passed tens of thou­sands of players. Tom Jennings said of this, “As one of the vic­tims of this hor­rible plot, I have to admit it’s pretty good. OK it makes me look good, which is prob­ably an acci­dent or mis­take; but it does present some of FidoNet’s com­plex­i­ties in a real­istic, non-​​trivial-​​making light. Which is not easy. For better or worse, things are NOT over­sim­pli­fied to make a digestable story, which prob­ably took a lot of nerve on Jason’s part. Simple linear sto­ries prob­ably sell better ”

What he’s get­ting at is the issue with trying to com­pose nar­ra­tive form from reality, which is often not nar­ra­tive. In fact, some­times things come along which need­lessly com­pli­cate mat­ters. A film­maker has to choose which way they’re going to go with this, if they include com­pli­cating but accu­rate infor­ma­tion, or leave it out for “sim­plicity” even though min­imal studying or research will betray these shortcuts.

And then we get into whether the short­cuts are fatal, like how Michael Moore did in fact “meet” Roger Smith before he went to make “Roger and Me”. He wasn’t a film­maker at that point, wasn’t shooting his film, but he did meet the guy. The core of “Roger and Me” appears to be an attempt to meet Roger and being thwarted. You see how much of a mess this can become.

“This American Life” also tends to obscure the iden­ti­ties of people, and they’re just kind of little pup­pets. I haven’t given it enough thought, really, but I would be annoyed if the sto­ries being told were being mixed around time­line wise and not revealing this. But, for example, if they are talking about a mother and daughter and the daughter wants to be a in a rock band and we’re not told until late in the story that, oh, by the way, Mom was in a punk band when she was 18 and toured the country, I just con­sider that weaving a nar­ra­tive, not being dishonest.

It’s a long, sticky road, isn’t it.

I noticed your review of “The King of Kong”. We are dis­trib­uting a very sim­ilar gaming doc­u­men­tary, “E-​​Athletes”, which releases on DVD, January 27^th, 2009.
Attached is a sell sheet.

We would love to send you a screener for review.

Would you be of interest? If so, what would be the best address to send you a copy?

Thank you so much and look for­ward to hearing from you.

Best,

Jacob Ripley
Public Relations Representative
Passion River Films
732−321−0711 x135
Jacob@​passionriver.​com

416 Main Street
Metuchen, NJ 08840
Discover unique films at: http://​www​.PassionRiver​.com

[…] back, Jason Scott — the com­puting doc­u­men­tarian who hugh​stimson​.org readers may remember from King of Kong con­tro­versy — “got angry like a fire gets burning” because AOL hometown […]