I should make another short documentary
FEBRUARY 10TH, 2016 — POST 037
Just over two years ago, I spent a week making a documentary. It was for the only production course I’ve ever done, one unit as part of my degree. I remember looking at the assessment when I started the course thinking “What the fuck am I going to make a documentary about?” I remember carrying all my gear on the bus to the end of the line where my subject lived. And I remember showing it to my dad and him saying words to the effect of “It’s good, but only because you found a good story.”
So what is the story? I’d rather you watch it first.
All done?
The subject is a friend of mine: Drew. At the time I knew her to be going through some stuff. Basically, I just didn’t really see her anymore. She stayed home a lot. When I asked myself “What the fuck am I going to make a documentary about?” Drew was the obvious choice. The production would be simple: it’s her house. The story I wanted to tell was clear: that despite all the “social media is rotting our youth” champions, technology is supremely powerful in connecting people. But really, I think it took me a while to know the real reason behind this decision: I needed this friend back in my life.
We spent two days interviewing. I say “interviewing” but it was really just hanging out and talking. The camera in my hand and the mic on her bed between us faded into her visually cacophonous room. I’ve even got hours of audio of myself talking. Coming home at the end of each day, it felt a little perverse that I needed this pretense just to be able to feel okay with having the kind of conversation I was so desperate to have. I wanted to know what it was like for Drew that she couldn’t hang out in a group much anymore. I also think that I just didn’t really get it.
There was a lot of talking during these interviews about the legitimacy of pathologizing certain psychological “quirks”. “Conditions” like ADD, or OCD, or even, I argued, chronic fatigue, social anxiety, and agrophobia that Drew was suffereing from are just extreme ends of the spectrum of personality. I knew a guy who wanted to be a fighter pilot but was immediately discounted because he was “diagnosed” with ADD as a kid. I could become a fighter pilot, even though I might have the exact same dispositions that lead to a diagnosis of ADD on his part, simply because I never took the test. I didn’t dispute that the conditions Drew suffered from prevented her from living the life she wanted to live, I just was sceptical of the importance of naming the thing. Even though the making of Aquarium gave my opinion more nuance, my then-ambivalence toward this kind of categorization is present in the cut. Drew says the word “agrophobia” once in the whole thing, and with the machine-gun pace she speaks, it’s easy to miss. But when she speaks in the opening of how her sweat smelt like poison and she threw up through her nose, you don’t need to put a name on it to know she might need some help.
Drew’s doing better now. I wonder if she wants to make another movie?
