Does Sundance Sensation Catfish Have a Truth Problem?
At the end of yesterday's well-received screening of Catfish -- easily the most buzzed-about documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival -- one man raised his hand for the Q&A.
"This may be a minority opinion," he said. "I think you guys did a great job, but I don't think it's a documentary."
A murmur went through the crowd and the filmmakers became angry and defensive, but more on that later. In the meantime: Brother, I'm right there with you. There's something fishy about Catfish, and I'm not just talking about the title.
Catfish is directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost and stars Schulman's photographer brother Nev, a good-looking 24-year-old who's also very comfortable in front of a camera (despite his cursory protests to the contrary). Shortly after Nev takes a picture of two dancers for the New York Sun, he's sent a painting of the photo from an eight-year-old painter named Abby Pierce, who he then befriends on Facebook along with her mother, Angela, and Abby's foxy older sister Megan. Soon enough, the film posits, Nev begins falling for Megan, and the two of them begin a long-distance internet courtship since Megan and her family live in rural Michigan. Still, things are not quite as they seem.
(I'll warn you now that there will be some spoilers to follow, though many of the film's principal surprises will go unrevealed by me.)
After several months -- all filmed, of course -- Nev and the filmmakers grow suspicious when they learn that the intimate, unplugged songs that Megan has sent to Nev weren't actually recorded by her. Conveniently, they're already on a trip to the midwest when they figure this out, so they decide to drive to the family's house to figure out whether any of the Pierces truly exist, and who exactly is behind what increasingly appears to be a ruse.
What they find and film there is ultimately a very sad, lonely person, though Nev and the filmmakers (wearing shit-eating grins through the encounter) try to skirt charges of exploiting her by leaning heavily on all that build-up. All three men claim that they had no idea that anything was amiss during those several months of online and on-the-phone chats. I don't buy it at all; I think the filmmakers knew from the start what they had on their hands, and they baited a mentally unwell woman for almost a year until their film needed a climax.
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i didn't know it was supposed to be a documentary.
what his name supposed to be? smith?
I saw the premiere of this movie. I stood up and applauded at the end of it. However, not five seconds after I left the theater I felt emotionally manipulated. I reflected on this and I kept coming back to the scene at the farm house when the filmmakers took mail out of the mailbox of the farm house where Megan supposedly lived. Aside from thinking that that is a crime, I wondered how the postcard that was stamped by the Post Office "Return to Sender", or something of the sort, had remained in the mailbox and not been returned to the sender, who was Ari. Another problem for me was the way they came up with the title Catfish, seemed to be a strained and sophomoric attempt at
tying the whole charade up with a neat philosophical bow and justification for exploitation of what, if handled by a documentarian, would be a very interesting and insightful comment on the human condition.
I am glad that someone has so eloquently called the verasity of this movie into question. While I don't think the movie was "written" per se, I now think that it was more scripted improvisation than a documentary. In which case the filmmakers could easily skirt the question of whether the film was written, because arguably it was not, it was outlined with plot points. In other words contrived not discovered and not a documentary. There is a distinct difference between discovering and piecing together a narrative and creating a narrative.
lol My Date With Drew was awful! -10 points for reminding me about that stupid movie!
After watching this trailer, I thought it looked like a very interesting suspense film. Then I found out it was a documentary, and I'm calling BULLSHIT. The trailer alone raised some MAJOR credibility issues, and I'm glad someone is pointing them out. It seems impossible (as you say) that these 3 would be surprised at what they find in Michigan, and if they were, they are TERRIBLE documentarians. Judging by the critical reaction to the film, they are talented filmmakers and intelligent people, so how could they not have done ANY research whatsoever about their subject? Whether this film is well made is irrelevant. They are missrepresenting it as a documentary, which is unfair to all the journalists and filmmakers who actually present a factually accurate narrative.
Was A Million Little Pieces well written? Absolutely. But lying and calling it a memoir took away any merit that book had. The same goes for Catfish.
I'm calling BULLSHIT.
I just caught the trailer over on Apple.com, and my first thought after viewing it was to Google "Catfish is not a true story." The results of that search led me here. After reading this article along with all of the comments, it sounds like the film certainly presents a "true" story, but the idea as to whether or not it is a genuine documentary seems questionable in the eyes of some. The trailer (as well as the discussions in the comments of this article) certainly have piqued my interest enough to make me want to check this film out, though.
The nature of the trailer certainly makes me question whether or not the intentions of Nev and the filmmakers are entirely "genuine" from start to finish. The trailer gives off the impression that the trio travels to Michigan and shows up unannounced at the "Facebook Family's" farm at night, which throw up a red flag in my mind. Of course, I have no idea if that's actually what happens in the full-length film, but the nature in which the trailer was edited is enough to cast doubt into my mind about whether or not the film is truly an authentic documentary. Either way, I'll be checking it out when it hits theaters in September.
Molly Friedman also partakes in this form of 'filmmaking'. Her entourage includes the likes of all of RBF and makers of Catfish. Molly Friedman - I believe you and your friends are having a difficult time distinguishing art from kitsch.
This is a youtube movie, nothing more, Rogue will take a bath on this, it will be a lesson to all, you cannot be a jackoff youtube movie producer and expect to get rich,
You have to play by the rules and work your way up slooowwwly and do it like everyone else, I predict that these guys will be a non event next year, Joost who ?
Okay...so you write an article accusing a documentary of being fake with no evidence other than the film makers acted naively (which is impossible because they have friends on Facebook) and responded a bit flippantly to being accused of faking their movie.
Really, I saw it at Sundance, and I really enjoyed it. It would be troubling to me if it were fake but you really need more than just a suspicion before making accusations like this. Maybe you should have, I dunno, done some work yourself and e-mailed the filmmakers.
You think you know your "friends"? It is precisely because they had been making documentaries for years and years, and without success, that it seems infinitely MORE likely that they finally put their heads together and asked themselves, "Hm, how can we finally make it big? I know: a fake, ridiculous documentary!"
How does the movie ends?
This is a true story.....about as true as "Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity"
Yep! lol
I just saw the trailer and it claims to not be based on a true story. So I don't really see what the problem is. =/
Did you bitch about Cloverfield being fake too?
"Not based" and "Not inspired" are the phrases to note.
They are trying to be clever and follow it with "Just True"
The point they're trying to make is that it's not BASED ON, or INSPIRED BY a true story. It IS a true story. At least, allegedly.
So this film is supposed to be a documentary? When I first saw the trailer it never even crossed my mind that this story line was not scripted, as it doesn't seem realistic at all. It came off as purely cinematic. My first thought after watching was, "wow, that looks great. It reminds me of Paranormal Activity meets The Girlfriend Experience: A completely fake, scripted film designed to look like a documentary to sell the ideal or some social concern that is a bit of a fad nowadays. I mean come on, it's common knowledge that millions of social networking profiles are fake. I mean it's even common knowledge that there are different types of "bots" on these sites that range from tasks such as spamming a product or website to just making the social networking site look full or hunks and babes. Everyone knows people aren't who the say they are. If these guys turely didn't know that, then there is no way they could ever have even put together this film because it would show such a lack of elementary intelligence, which you would need a large dose of to put together an entire film. This film looks about as legit as The 4th Kind.
In that picture, the main guy actually looks like the actor from Paranormal Activity alittle bit. Just from watching the trailer the movie looks like a fake documentary to me. I think if they wanted to be taken seriously they should have gone with a different trailer that doesn't give away the whole plot and that doesn't make it seem like a crazy horror movie.
Buchanan totally got the point in the Molly vs. Kyle showdown, haha. BTW the movie Buffalo '66 is cool!
i hate the fact that nobody enjoys films like they use to. kant we just watch it and enjoy it without wonderung if its fake or not?
Seems like a lot of coincidences are happening for the makers of this film. Nev coincidentally finds this "hot girl," who coincidentally has an 8 year old sister that saw a picture of his, and falls for her. Then they drive to Michigan and the hot girl coincidentally isn't what she appeared to be (making for a great dramatic twist). And all of this coincidentally happens to a bunch of people that record/document a lot of their lives and make movies. What are the odds of all this happening to this one small clique of movie-making friends?
I think they set it all up, myself.
It really bothers me that so many of you are willing to jump to the conclusion this is faked based off a trailer. You haven't seen the movie. You have no evidence it's fake. You just have unsubstantiated allegations above and a trailer. At least watch the movie for God's sakes! Take the post above. Nev doesn't "just happen" to find this girl. The girl sends him a painting of one of his photos he saw. He likes and writes back and they start talking. As they're talking he finds out she has a sister. There's more to it but I don't realyl want to give it away here but seriously you might want to actually see a movie if you want to declare that it's fake, and if you're going to right an article about how it's fake, you might want some for of evidence. The internet is the worst...
Check out the trailer for Catfish, the Sundance hit documentary, is poised to be the most controversial film of 2010 because it exposes the grim reality of our modern world. http://bit.ly/anE6RZ
I've seen the movie and here's my take on the controversy:
Nev's feelings for Angela were staged - the rest is real. He led on a stranger he knew was an impostor long before it is revealed in the film. It's safe to say they were on to Angela very early in the relationship but chose to build up Nev's emotional involvement for the sake of the film. Unfortunate there is a line later on where Nev says to Angela, "I wish you could talk to me as Megan" that really comes off as manipulative and low if this is in fact the case ( otherwise it is one of the most profound moments in the film).
The "photoshop" moment that is being used in press material, for instance,is presented as a genuine expression of affection when in fact it is a play for the cameras. Unfortunately, given that these are people narcissistic enough to film there every move, it's easy to see how they would edit out any of this unsavoury side of their motives and paint themselves as the sole "victims" of deception.
Essentially, the timeline of the has been altered to protect them from accusations of exploitation.
Sorry - Meant to say "Nev's feeling for MEGAN were staged "
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