I began my career in the movie business as a (very) junior executive at Walt Disney Pictures in 1985 – when script notes, and scripts themselves, were composed on “word processors” (a step up from but really just souped up typewriters that allowed you to “see” – on a tiny little screen the size of dymotape -- what you were writing 20 letters before it was printed), and the only person I knew with a legitimate cell phone was Jeffrey Katzenberg (though I did know a now famous and very successful Hollywood producer who liked to drive his Mercedes convertible back and forth on Highland, waving around and yelling into a plastic imitation as he tried to catch the attention of passing agents and studio heads).

Twenty years later, when I made my first movie, everything had changed. The Bridge would never have been possible without digital cameras (we shot more than 100,000 hours of tape) and a small battalion of Macs.  At times, it felt like people lived or died based on how speedy our cell phone speed dials were.  And though I was tormented on the Internet (even before the anyone had even seen a minute of footage), I realize just how much the success (or at least notoriety) of the film was due to noise of the blogosphere and the availability of the movie on Netflix, Amazon and iTunes (docs about suicide might be big hits at film festivals but don’t sell a lot of popcorn in multiplex movie theaters). I am grateful.  It would be pretty easy for me to conflate technological innovation with disruptive storytelling -- but they are not the same.  If they are joined at the hip, it is an uncomfortable relationship, like Siamese twins… maturing at totally different speeds.



We are what we eat.  And look where that has gotten us.  Though we certainly have the science and understanding to produce better foods – we’ve become obese.  The thing about innovation is that it has that bright gleam, the promise of a better, shinier future – but is often just a sparkly illusion.  We are suckers for convenience, for any excuse to be a little lazier – especially when it comes dressed up as cutting edge.  Technology opens new doors – but makes absolutely no promises about what to do in the room.

We devour endless chatter.  It is hard to see how people who feed on the tweets of Ashton Kutcher will hold on to a taste for Dickens or Emily Dickinson – much less Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.  Or that people who, hour after hour, thumb through games of PlayStation 3’s Call of Duty will ever stare into Picasso’s Guernica for even a minute.

We are adaptive creatures.  As a documentary filmmaker, it would be hard not to celebrate the possibilities of the Internet – any chance to do an end-run around the stranglehold of theatrical release seems like an amazing prison break.  But the algorithms of social networking and demand for streaming content put more value on story-selling than storytelling.

I think and worry a lot about evolution.  Not so much that we will develop super long, super fast thumbs, and focal ranges set to the scale of smart phones.  But that we will simply become mindless cattle, satisfied with high calorie content without the soul enriching, mind opening nutrients.  We are not the only species that communicates with language, or that possess emotions, use tools, or fight battles – but to me storytelling is what makes humans human. It is intertwined with how we breathe and how we see and how we relate to one another.Documentary filmmakers have always been just slightly above, constantly flirting with the endangered species list.  The digital age certainly and vastly improved our numbers – much like farmed salmon raised the levels of fish stock.  At first. 

The consequences reveal themselves later, when it’s too late.  Most of our tools have been appropriated: before anyone could call foul, reality tv replaced the incredible patience and subtle observations of cinema verite with endless dribble and blunt force, semi-scripted drama – why watch Grey Gardens when you can see Animal Hoarders.  Cut right to the chase scenes.  All too many documentaries have become civic minded tent poles, message driven, un-cinematic infomercials – easily marketed and digested  -- and self-satisfying.  Make a phone call, send a text, save the world – they make us shed a tear or two, feel for a spell, like we’ve discovered a plan to exercise and lose weight, or stop global warming, reform public education, or avert financial crises.  Mediocre storytelling doesn’t do anyone any favors, depletes already limited resources, and downgrades our intelligence.   Few moments in a movie theater have been as disheartening to me as seeing a clip from The Simpsons used as b-roll illustration in an Academy Award nominated documentary.  It was the easiest of laughs. It played well with others.  But it scared me.

A few years ago, I started – but was unable to finish – a movie about a rogue troupe of elephants in Uganda, who were turning over tour buses, disrupting groups of photographers with their digital cameras, trampling encroaching villages, sneaking off to places they were not meant to be – a very deliberate and provocative protest to decades of mass slaughter and internment in the parks system (game reserves look infinite to the naked eye, but they are not fulfilling habitat and are as lonely and isolating as a walk-in closet).  In short, these giants seemed willing to die for their “elephantness.”  In some ways, I liked to think, it was a bit like looking in the mirror.

Storytelling isn’t meant to be easy.  At its best, most disruptive, most inspiring, most engaging, it is independent of technical innovation.  It’s primal.

I support the specialty coffee shop that opened a block away from a Starbucks that had clearly staked out the highest trafficked intersections – because they steam the milk slowly and precisely and the surface of the latte resembles marbled paper.  It reassures me that all is not lost.   Recently, some of the worst movies I can imagine have made a ton of money but it’s been a remarkable time for documentaries this last year.  Laura Poitras’ The Oath, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo, Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, James Marsh’s Project Nim – they have all taken me to heights and depths, light and dark places I could never have envisioned myself, but reminded me once again of the great elephants, willing to turn and topple and trample territory and tell a great story.  I am not at all certain of the future of documentary storytelling – next year there may be docs in 3D – but I’d gladly give up my iPhone, and my iPad, and risk my life, or at least my livelihood, to be in that esteemed herd.