Mockumentary

A mockumentary (a portmanteau of the words mock and documentary) is a type of film or television show in which fictional events are presented in documentary style to create a parody.^[1] These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictional setting, or to parody the documentary form itself.^[2] They may be either comedic or dramatic in form, although comedic mockumentaries are more common. A dramatic mockumentary (sometimes referred to as docufiction) should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events.

Mockumentaries are often presented as historical yet witty documentaries, with B roll and talking heads discussing past events, or as cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events. Though the precise origins of the genre are not known, examples emerged during the 1950s, when archival film footage became relatively easy to locate.^[2] A very early example was a short piece on the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that appeared as an April fools' joke on the British television program Panorama in 1957.

The term "mockumentary", which originated in the 1960s, was popularized in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.^[3][4][5]

Mockumentaries are often partly or wholly improvised, as an unscripted style of acting helps to maintain the pretense of reality. Comedic mockumentaries rarely have laugh tracks, also to sustain the atmosphere, although there are exceptions – for example, Operation Good Guys had a laugh track from its second series onwards.

Early examples

All You Need is Cash, a 1978 American-British mockumentary film written and directed by Eric Idle, featured the satirical history of The Beatles parody "The Rutles". Other early mockumenataries are "Gnomes (book)", and "Doctor What and the Garliks".

Early work, including Luis Buñuel's 1933 Land Without Bread, Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, various April Fool's Day news reports, and vérité style film and television during the 1960s and 1970s, served as precursor to the genre.^[3]

The Clowns

Early examples of mock-documentaries include A Hard Day's Night, 1964, (written by Alun Owen, purporting to describe several days in the lives of The Beatles, that would be the first feature-length mockumentary), David Holzman's Diary, 1967, Pat Paulsen for President, 1968, Take the Money and Run, 1969, The Clowns, 1970, by Frederico Fellini (a peculiar hybrid of documentary and fiction, a docufiction) and All You Need Is Cash, 1978. Albert Brooks was also an early popularizer of the mockumentary style with his film Real Life, 1979, a spoof of a PBS documentary.

Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run is presented in documentary-style with Allen playing a fictional criminal, Virgil Starkwell, whose crime exploits are "explored" throughout the film.^[1] Jackson Beck, who used to narrate documentaries in the 1940s, provides the voice-over narration. Fictional interviews are interspliced throughout, especially those of Starkwell's parents who wear Groucho Marx noses and mustaches. This style of this film was widely appropriated by others and by Allen himself in Zelig (1983) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999).^[1]

Early use of the mockumentary format in television comedy may be seen in several sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974), such as "Hell's Grannies", "Piranha Brothers", and "The Funniest Joke in the World". The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour (1970–1971) also featured mockumentary pieces which interspersed both scripted and real life man-in-the-street interviews; the most famous likely being "The Puck Crisis" in which hockey pucks were claimed to have become infected with a form of Dutch elm disease.

Mockumentary since the 1980s

In film

Note: This is a selected list of feature-length films. For a most complete list see External links below.

Since the 1980s, the mockumentary format has enjoyed considerable attention.

Zelig is a 1983 American mockumentary film written and directed by Woody Allen, starring Allen and Mia Farrow.^[1] Allen plays Zelig, a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he is near.

In 1984, Christopher Guest co-wrote and starred mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner, and went on co-writing and directing himself a series of films in the same genre. Films such as Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, all written with co-star Eugene Levy, were critical successes.^[1]

Man Bites Dog is a 1992 Belgian black comedy crime mockumentary written, produced and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde.

In 1995, directed by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes, Forgotten Silver claimed New Zealand "director" Colin McKenzie a pioneer in filmmaking. ^[6] When it was revealed to be a mockumentary, Peter Jackson received criticism for tricking viewers.^[7]

Dark Side of the Moon is a 2002 French mockumentary by director William Karel. The premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick.

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary presenting an alternative history in which the Confederacy won the American Civil War.

First on the Moon (Russian: Первые на Луне, Pervye na Lune) is a 2005 Russian mockumentary about a fictional 1930s Soviet landing on the Moon.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a highly controversial yet successful film from 2006 which uses this style, as does Brüno, a similar film from 2009.

On the Ropes is a 2011 mockumentary film written and directed by Mark Noyce. The film follows a fictional martial arts instructor and his rivalry with a local boxing gym.

What We Do In The Shadows is a 2014 horror/comedy mockumentary film directed and written by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement; the aforementioned directors also star in the production. The film is centered on vampire flat mates living in Wellington.

In television

The 1983 The Comic Strip Presents... film Bad News Tour was a spoof rockumentary about a British heavy metal band. It preceded Spinal Tap by a year, but is not known to have been an influence on the U.S. film. The film led to LPs being released and the band really touring and was followed by a sequel, More Bad News in 1987.^[8] Stella Street was a mockumentary which ran on the BBC from 1997 to 2001. It was written by Phil Cornwell, John Sessions and Peter Richardson and featured Cornwell and Sessions playing all the characters between them. The series was shot on handheld camcorders.^[9] Operation Good Guys, another low-budget BBC sitcom, which ran for three series starting in 1997, laid down much of the mockumentary blueprint for others like The Office to come.

In television, the most notable mockumentaries in the 2000s have been: ABC Australia's The Games (1998–2000), Canadian series Trailer Park Boys (2001–present), the British shows Marion and Geoff (2000), Twenty Twelve (2011–2012) (which follows the fictional Olympic Deliverance Commission in the run up to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games) and W1A, which follows the main characters of Twenty Twelve as they start work at the BBC, The Office (2001) and its many international offshoots, Come Fly with Me (2010), which follows the activity at a fictional airport and its variety of staff and passengers. British comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French often presented short mockumentaries as extended sketches in their TV show French & Saunders. Discovery Channel opened its annual Shark Week on 4 Aug 2013 with Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, a mockumentary about the survival of the Megalodon. Notable popular examples include sitcoms The Office (U.S.) (2005–2013), Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), and Modern Family (2009–present); the American improv comedy Reno 911! (2003–2009); the Canadian sitcom Trailer Park Boys and its films; the comedy series The Muppets (2015); the UK streaming sitcom Derek (2012–present); the Australian Chris Lilley shows Angry Boys, Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year, Ja'mie: Private School Girl and Jonah from Tonga.

On radio

The BBC series People Like Us was first produced for radio in 1995 before a television version was made in 1999.

See also

Literature

• Hight, Craig 2008: Mockumentary: A Call to Play," in Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong (ed.), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. Berkshire: Open University Press.
• Hight, Craig 2010: Television mockumentary. Reflexivity, satire and a call to play. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.
• Juhasz, Alexandra/Lerner, Jesse (eds.) 2006: F is for Phony. Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Visible evidence, vol. 17).
• Rhodes, Gary D. (ed.) 2006: Docufictions. Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
• Roscoe, Jane/Hight, Craig 2001: Faking it. Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester/New York.

References

External links

• Fake and Mock Documentaries (list) at the Media Resources Center of the UC Berkeley Library
• Mockumentary – Reflexivity, satire and a call to play at The University of Waikato, New Zealand