3 Documentaries I Saw in 2009 [Movie Reviews]

I love documentaries. This is somewhat odd because it takes me forEVer to finish a nonfiction book, and reading them is almost like pulling teeth. They don't have a plot, and I'm in the ADD generation, so I don't even feel like I have to wait for a chapter to end to take a break... and then two months later, I'll finally pick up the book again. I enjoy several nonfiction writers, such as Malcolm Gladwell (and love memoirs, so those don't count), but it still takes a while to get into them, and I often feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over.

But plop me down in front of a TV and I'll watch anything. Three documentaries I saw last year stand out to me, and I recommend them to everyone.

Man on Wire

If you're my age, you probably never heard about Philippe Petit's famous 1974 escapade where he and a group of friends strung a tightrope in between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At the time, they were the tallest buildings in the world, and they spent years planning this daring stunt, which they just barely pulled off. Petit spent an hour up on the tightrope as spectators below stared up in amazement. (I'm also about to start this book called Let the Great World Spin, which is a fiction tale, of course, about spectators of Petit's tightrope walk and how it changed their lives.)

In addition to the stunt being amazing, the movie focused a lot on the dynamic between the group of friends who planned it all. Like I said, it took them years, culminating with a couple of them hiding overnight in each of the buildings (which I think were still under construction) in order to make it happen. So not only was this crazy Frenchman dancing on a tightrope who knows how high above the New York skyline, he was doing it with no sleep. But it's a great story that probably could've been made into an indie flick, but I'm so glad they went the route of documentary. Two thumbs up.

Helvetica

I have long been fascinated with handwriting, so it only makes sense that I would be just as fascinated with fonts and typography. I'm not a designer, and in fact Media Design my sophomore year was the last B that I made in college, but when I heard a documentary about the font Helvetica was going to be on PBS one night, I convinced Ty that we should watch it. And we both loved it.

Helvetica, as you may know, is a sans serif font, and very close to Arial, which is probably more familiar, at least to all of us Microsoft Office users. Exciting? Not really. But the history and proliferation of Helvetica in mass media is what interested me the most. The font is more than 50 years old – it was developed in Switzerland right when (taking my history lessons from Mad Men) ad agencies were at their height, or at least (taking my lessons from Outliers) the font was in the right place at the right time for advertisers to use it. I can't even list the number of companies that use Helvetica for their logo, but they include 3M, American Airlines, Panasonic, Toyota, JC Penney, etc. etc. Not to mention the signage for the Chicago 'L', among others.

What makes this documentary so engaging are the crazy people who are interviewed. I mean, there's this one woman who just is unintentionally hilarious. And these old designers from another era, it seems, providing all sorts of random facts about fonts. You have never seen anyone so passionate about typography. The premise may sound boring, but I found it incredibly interesting. (After all, this isn't Times New Roman. Or, god forbid, Comic Sans.)

Art & Copy

That segues nicely into my last favorite documentary of 2009, which is about advertising. I actually saw this one at the Belcourt and would have never heard of it had my friend's friend, who works in ad design, come up from Chattanooga to see it, and since I'm into Mad Men and media, I tagged along.

The documentary goes into the history behind some of the most famous ad campaigns, such as Got Milk?, Just Do It, I Want My MTV, Where's the Beef? and more... for instance, "Just Do It" came from a headline one of the copywriters read that were actually the last words of some guy on death row, slightly tweaked. I mean, it's just crazy how some of these ideas happen. 

Like with Helvetica, the people who are interviewed make the movie. I kept imagining them as older versions of Don Draper or Peggy, who probably was based on Mary Wells, the so-called first lady of advertising. Then there were younger guys with long hair who have made such an impact on pop culture that it's just hard to imagine how they ended up where they did. But it was definitely the older generation whose story fascinated me most. Mad Men is just getting to this transition, but for the longest time, art and copy were totally separate departments who didn't communicate. The copy was written and then sent along to the art department, who made designs to go with it. They finally realized how ridiculous it was that these two departments weren't communicating, that it wasn't a two-way conversation... and so they left their big offices, formed their own independent agencies and let the creativity flow. What a happy ending.

Honorable Mention: I saw this movie two or three years ago, but I really love Wordplay, which is about crossword puzzles. On that note, I'm going to go download Merle Reagle's puzzle right now.