Making a Mockery
To best understand Brian and Charles, it’s important to understand where these best friends came from. Will Clempner guides us through the history of the mockumentary genre.
“There hasn’t been a new film genre since Fellini invented the mockumentary”, proclaims Nicolas Cage’s Donald Kaufman to Nicolas Cage’s Charlie Kaufman in the actual Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. It’s a fictional quote from real-life screenwriting messiah Robert McKee and is, of course, one of Kaufman’s signature meta quips sniping at the world of film. But does it hold true? Did Italian auteur Federico Fellini really invent the mockumentary? And why should we even care? With the latest addition to the oft-attempted, rarely-mastered genre, David Earl and Chris Hayward’s Brian and Charles, it would only be right to trace the history of the format to its less than humble beginnings.
The term ‘mockumentary’ was popularised by one of the godfathers of the genre, Rob Reiner. Reiner directed 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap, which is one of – if not the – most defining films of its ilk. In it, Reiner plays documentarian Marty DiBergi who, while attempting to document the lives of fictional rock band Spinal Tap, dubs the film a ‘rockumentary’. That quote inspired Reiner to use the neologism ‘mockumentary’ while promoting the film, and it stuck. But just because the term wasn’t uttered until 1984, doesn’t mean the seedlings of the format didn’t sprout up long before.
Back in 1933, director Luis Buñuel made the 30-minute film Land Without Bread. It’s a French-language pseudo-documentary focussing on the Las Hurdes region of Spain. A part of the world so backwards, according to Buñuel, they didn’t even know about the existence of bread. Despite being grounded in anthropological curiosity, Buñuel’s film takes a surrealist approach and he even staged many of the scenes to exaggerate his portrayal of the region. He is famously accused of smothering a donkey in honey in order to film it being attacked by a swarm of bees. Mockumentary as we know it? Perhaps not. Innovative use of pastiche and exaggeration by means of social commentary which set the tone for many films to come? You bet your honey-covered ass it was.
Cut to 1938, and possibly the first English-language iteration of the genre. When Orson Welles read out a fake news broadcast based on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, his delivery led many to believe the world was genuinely being invaded by martians. Whether he did or didn’t mean to send half a nation into mass hysteria, Welles’ use of fiction presented as fact was groundbreaking. Whether the general public ever reached those extremities of gullibility again is up for debate.
Did you know that in Switzerland, farmers harvest spaghetti by picking individual pasta strands off trees once they’ve grown to full length? Of course you didn’t. But apparently, when the BBC broadcast their April Fool’s newsreel in 1957 showing said Swiss farmers in action, the programme elicited hundreds of calls from people hoping to obtain instructions to cultivate their own spaghetti trees. April Fools’ Day news broadcasts like the spaghetti harvest set a precedent for ridiculous visuals, given a sense of gravitas through deadpan format and delivery. Hoorah for spaghetti trees.
The 1960s are when things really took off in the mock-doc genre. Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night is one of the closest things to the current format to have first emerged. It’s a tongue-in-cheek, scripted look into the lives of a little known band called The Beatles, and is frequently billed as one of the most influential music films ever produced. Its seriously entertaining, irreverent style has rarely been matched since, not through lack of trying.
Films like David Holzman’s Diary, and Pat Paulsen for President swiftly followed, both of which served as precursors for one of the most influential mockumentary makers of all time: Woody Allen. His 1969 film Take the Money and Run follows an inept bank robber, and has a perfect blend of implied seriousness crammed full of astute nonsense. The pseudo-documentary form is something Allen went on to master in his 1983 film Zelig, a meditation on individuality that combines deadpan talking heads with newsreel footage in perhaps one of the greatest films of the genre.
The 1970s boast a few entries that would be remiss to ignore. Fellini’s 1970 film The Clowns is about the director’s own childhood fascination with, well… clowns. It’s part reality, part fantasy, with the film depicting Fellini making a film within the film. In 1979, Albert Brooks released his film Real Life, a spoof of the PBS show An American Family. It’s a direct parody of cinéma vérité, and one in which the involvement of the fictional camera crew becomes part of the satire – something we’ve seen a whole lot of since.
Then along came Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest. This Is Spinal Tap blurs the lines between scripted satire and improvisational genius so well that it managed to convince people that Spinal Tap were a real band. Guest plays lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, and went on to direct and star in some of the greatest mockumentaries of the past 30 years, including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind.
This brings us swiftly onto some honourable mentions from the modern era. In 2006, Sacha Baron Cohen advanced the genre by documenting the public’s responses to his outrageous Kazakh journalist in Borat. He then single-handedly took the genre two steps back with the release of Bruno. In 2010, Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix gave us I’m Still Here, and in 2014 Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement released What We Do in the Shadows, two very different films showing just how far the genre has come.
But we can’t keep ignoring the elephant in the room. The big black box mounted to your wall. Some of the greatest examples of mockumentaries exist in television format. Whether it’s Parks and Recreation, The Office, The Thick of It, or Modern Family, there’s no denying the mock-doc has truly found its footing in the world of sitcoms. But we’re here to talk about film today, so please stop telling me how the American version of The Office is better than the English one – although there’s no denying that the imprint of said show’s creator is writ large over Brian and Charles.
It’s no surprise Ricky Gervais’ shadow can be felt looming over Jim Archer’s debut film. The film’s writer and creator David Earl has worked with Gervais on a number of his shows, including Extras, Derek, and After Life, without, thankfully, falling into the trap of becoming a David Brent impersonator. Brian and Charles started as a stage show, before being turned into a short film, and finally a feature. The dry mockumentary style suits Earl to a tee, with laugh-out-loud gags from the off, and Chris Hayward’s Charles is both daft and profound. Archer is clearly aware of the history of the genre format, with sight gags, irreverent silences and uncomfortable tension between film crew and subject all feeding into a well-crafted 90 minutes.
As with all the best mockumentaries, Brian and Charles presents an absurd premise with a straight-face. But it also comments on important, universal issues – loneliness, friendship and parenthood. What shines through is the strength of the characters, the self-awareness and the heart throughout.
Was Donald Kaufman right when he said Fellini invented the mockumentary? Well, I’ll leave that to you to decide.
Brian and Charles is out in UK cinemas.
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