On this week’s extra-packed episode of the Way Too Indiecast, Bernard, CJ, and Dustin discuss the 2015 Cannes Film Festival lineup, which looks to break the mold and announce some new filmmakers into the fold as opposed to showcasing the same old faces. Then, inspired by the recent release of While We’re Young and the upcoming The Age of Adaline, the gang talk about the subject of aging in film and why we find it so endlessly fascinating. Also on the show, “Name 5” returns and the boys share their indie picks of the week. Enjoy, friends (while we’re young)!

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (2:12)
• Cannes 2015 Lineup (13:10)
• Name 5 (33:58)
• Aging in Film (39:04)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

2015 Cannes Lineup

While We’re Young review

Different Drum review

Kevin Chenault interview

Blue Jasmine review

Before Midnight review

112 Weddings review

Doug Block interview

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Doug Block isn’t afraid to be open with his audiences. In 2005, Block made 51 Birch Street, a documentary about his parents’ complicated marriage. Years later he followed up with The Kids Grow Up, a documentary about his daughter moving off to college. Now, after making two films about his own family, Block turns the camera around to his own line of work.

112 Weddings is Doug Block’s look back on 9 couples he worked for over the last 20 years as a wedding videographer. Now, years later, Block has come back to interview them and see how they’re doing. Block uses the sober testimonies of his past clients, along with profiling an engaged couple about to get married, to explore the way marriage changes people over time.

HBO will air 112 Weddings on June 16th in the US, but Canadians are lucky enough to see the film in theatres when it opens on May 23. We talked to Doug Block about his film during Hot Docs earlier this year, be sure to check out our review and read the full interview below.

Can you get into the origin of this idea? When did you know you had a good concept for a documentary feature?
I knew it from the first wedding. I couldn’t believe they were paying me to do [wedding videos]. The prime concern of any documentary filmmaker is always access, and I was getting extraordinary access. Seeing an ordinary couple in one of the biggest days of their lives is fascinating, but to be paid well for doing it is like going to heaven. I was really taken with the weddings, and I was naturally curious about [their future]. I always thought it would make an interesting movie to come back years later and start asking them very nosy questions about their marriage.

What do you find different about going from autobiographical films to focusing on other people’s stories?
Well, you don’t have to face your cast every night [Laughs]. I don’t know, they have their own challenges. I love autobiographical films when they’re done well, and I work really hard to try and do mine well…

For quite a while I toyed with the notion of bringing my own marriage into it, but I just decided that I’d been there with the last two films. I thought “Do I really want to drag my wife into this?” She was perfectly happy to not be in it. The film works perfectly fine on its own.

What draws you to doing these intimate stories?
They just seem to fit a style I’m used to. I never deliberately said I’m going to make personal or autobiographical documentaries. I certainly didn’t plan on that, it just kind of evolved on my second film. There’s a certain intimacy and candor you get as a one person crew that really works [for me], and it sort of dictates the style. It’s not about getting the most beautiful images. The biggest benefit is that you can just shoot without fundraising. I get an idea for a film and I go do it.

You know there will be some level of evasiveness or deception from the couples you’re interviewing. Are you trying to break through that, or thinking of ways to make them open up to you?
With this kind of interview, particularly when the couples are framed in a two-shot, you can see their body language and facial expressions as the other’s talking. You get a kind of feel for their dynamic as a couple. What they don’t say is probably more revealing than what they say. Their reactions to each other was kind of my secret weapon, and I hate to phrase it that way because it sounds much more aggressive than I mean it to.

I was surprised at the level of candor. I try and create an atmosphere for the couples. Everything is for their comfort, to relax them and make it seem like it’s no big deal. Because my voice can be in the interview it can be much more conversational. Our dynamic, our back and forth is very much a part of it. I think it’s important to establish the fact that we had this kind of quick, surprisingly intense relationship for a very short period of time on a very important day of their lives.

Do you think your intense, brief relationship with the couples on their wedding day is why they were so open with you years later?
I think so. I think it was partly that and partly that they trusted me. I worked really hard in the editing to honour that trust.

So it didn’t take long to get everyone to agree?
I used the first 9 I asked. I came to realize that if I sat any of the couples down I could have had a really interesting story. I think if you dig down under every couple they’re bringing an epic story of their families into it. Each partner brings this long family history to the partnership. There are multitudes of stories within any marriage, it just depends on where you put your focus. I tried to put the focus on different aspects, in some cases how they met, how their parents reacted, or what children did to the equation.

Before you went out and started filming, did you have any set ideas or goals in mind about what you wanted to learn from the experience?
I tend to think in terms of what audiences will get out of it more than what I’ll get. I went into [this film] wanting to explore a subject like marriage. I figured if I had enough couples and a diversity of experiences it could create this mosaic-like view of marriage. I’m sort of captive to the specific experiences of these couples, so once I got the first couples I went for other couples that would make good contrasts. I ruled out certain couples because I thought they were too similar to another couple and their story.

How did you meet Heather and Sam, the couple about to get married?
I met them by accident. It occurred to me early on to get a new couple, because it would be important to see this perspective. I actually met them at a screening of a friend’s documentary. We learned Heather was getting married, I said “I’m doing this film,” and Heather’s friends quickly volunteered her.

I love all the couples in the film, but they’re amazing. Some of the things they have to say about marriage were so thoughtful in a way that only unmarried couples are. I think once you’re married and in the thick of it you stop talking about marriage and start living it, but they were really eager to talk. Their wedding was beautiful. To me, it was one of the greatest weddings I ever shot. I’m just stunned at what you get when you pick the right people. I think when you’re on the right track with an idea the documentary gods start smiling on you.

Throughout the film you like to show how time is the biggest factor when it comes to marriage.
Time has always been really important in all of my films. I love cutting back and forth through time, but I think you have to be judicious in how you use it so it doesn’t feel like a gimmick. I was looking at relationships over time, and [the film] went in some surprising directions during editing. It was kind of a surprise to look at marriage as an institution. I didn’t even realize I asked so many questions related to that, like the idea of what changes when you sign on the dotted line. I started to realize in editing that every single one of these issues would be the same if they were living together. It has nothing to do with marriage, it just has to do with time together. Be there long enough together and life is gonna happen, and there are bound to be tests. Parents are going to be ill, they’ll die, you’ll have kids, hopefully they’re healthy, maybe they’re not, but either way it’s testing your relationship. So what is different about being married? That was really interesting to explore. The whole notion of how, in the last 100 or 200 years at most, humans married out of this thing called love. It was always for security, economics, legal protection…Love had nothing to do with it, and that alone was interesting. Love is a hard thing to keep alive for a long period of time.

Your film seems to be resonating with people a lot. What have you noticed from audiences as you start to show the film?
It’s just an intriguing concept, so I’m not surprised. I thought it would be an audience pleaser because I thought the humour would translate. I’m thrilled it’s coming out theatrically in Canada. I think it’s a good date movie [Laughs]. It sounds cheesy, but I think it’s a really good movie for couples to see together.

What about the couples in your film? Have you shown it to them?
We showed it to as many of them as we could at one time. We had a little mini screening at HBO. It was nerve-wracking, but they really loved it and I was so relieved and thrilled. You never know how people will react, but they felt it was truthful and well-intentioned.

Have you thought about profiling more weddings?
I don’t know. I could go back. It would make a great ongoing series, which is something I’ve certainly considered and it may well happen, but I think there’s a big difference for me. I think a big reason why this films works the way it does is because of my relationship with the couples. It’s part of the dynamic. It gives the audience a short little window into [the marriages], but with the careful editing we did each one has a little dramatic arc to it. It feels like a complete, satisfying story. The trick was how to weave them all together so it wasn’t like one wedding to the next. You bring couples back, you bring up certain ideas to couples and they come and weigh in and then bring it all together at the end. The weaving together of these stories was the hard work.

For more info, visit the official website for 112 Weddings

Hot Docs 2014 kicks off next Thursday, and Way Too Indie has already been getting sneak peeks of some of the many, many (197 to be exact) documentaries that will play from April 24 – May 4. One of the benefits of Hot Docs is how some of the low-profile documentaries from other film festivals get a chance to be seen here. Golden Lion winner Sacro GRA will screen this year, along with Sundance winners The Overnighters (stay tuned for a review in the coming days) and Rich Hill. Other highlights include SXSW winner The Great Invisible and IDFA winners Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case and Ne Me Quitte Pas.

To give a sampling of some of the titles that will play in the coming weeks, here are our thoughts on The Case Against 8, 112 Weddings, and Doc of the Dead. Be sure to stay tuned for more Hot Docs 2014 coverage, and if you’d like to see some of the films playing or learn more go to www.hotdocs.ca.

The Case Against 8

The problem with big ‘issue’ docs like The Case Against 8 is how hard it is to drum up interest in something that already has a lot of public exposure. Credit goes to directors Ben Cotner and Ryan White, then, for taking the legal battle over California’s Proposition 8 and creating such an involving documentary. As the title says, the doc focuses on the side arguing Prop 8’s ban on same-sex marriages as unconstitutional. Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies, among many other lawyers and interested parties, let Cotner and White’s cameras in on their vetting process for plaintiffs, gathering of evidence and every other small detail as they prepare to make their case in court.

Cotner and White smartly frame their film as a legal procedural, and footage of mock trials along with attempts to snag one key witness make for surprisingly exciting viewing. The indulgent 110 minute length is offset by the film’s subjects, all of whom turn out to be perfect representations of what Cotner/White are trying to say. The strongest example is Olson and Boies’ partnership on the case; both lawyers come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, and actually worked against each other in Bush v. Gore back in 2000. The fact that Olson, a staunch conservative, and Boies, a former lawyer for Al Gore, can come together on this case shows how this case is a human rights issue at its core, transcending partisanship.

The personal lives of the plaintiffs, two same sex couples, are also shown, and the ordinary nature of their lives is enough evidence to show how their sexual orientation is irrelevant to them (“I really don’t think about it,” one of the plaintiffs says at one point. “It seems so secondary to everything else.”). The Case Against 8 may feel like a 2-hour victory lap at times, but it’s undeniably good filmmaking.

112 Weddings

For the last 20 years, Doug Block (51 Birch Street, The Kids Grow Up) has been working on and off as a wedding videographer. These videos are the subject of 112 Weddings, as Block begins contacting his former clients to interview them and find out what has happened to them since their wedding day.

The results are, expectedly, mixed. Some couples are still together, while others have divorced or faced plenty of struggles over the years. Block’s choices can range from the clichéd (he profiles a couple about to be married in between footage of the older couples) to the manipulative (contrasting divorced couples’ tearful testimonies with happy footage from their wedding).

What ends up making 112 Weddings fascinating is the candor of its subjects. Some couples talk openly about their struggles with different issues, while others avoid the harder topics altogether. “When things are going good, you don’t wanna sit and think about when they were going bad,” one wife says. One of the doc’s best moments comes when a woman glosses over her daughter’s battle with a terminal illness, leading her husband to call her out on avoiding an issue that appears to have defined their marriage.

Those kinds of scenes, along with the jarring cuts from old wedding videos to present day, emphasize how much of an impact time has on a marriage. When Block explores these kinds of ideas, 112 Weddings makes for a fascinating watch, but his thesis can be boiled down to “Weddings are easy. Marriage is hard.” That kind of simplistic approach ends up making 112 Weddings pleasant but ineffective viewing.

Doc of the Dead

Zombies have taken over the mainstream, so it comes as no surprise that someone has gone out and tried to make the definitive zombie documentary. Alexandre O. Philippe, uses a variety of classic horror icons (George A. Romero, Tom Savini, Sig Haid, Bruce Campbell and Simon Pegg are a few talking heads that show up) and zombie experts to explain the history of zombies and why they’re so popular.

Doc of the Dead is a bit of a messy film, but endearingly so. Philippe zips through as many topics as he can in the scant 80 minute runtime, from the word’s Haitian origins to its cinematic development. Facts about the origin of the word can be quite interesting, like how a zombie was originally a voodoo slave with no cannibal instincts (Romero is the one responsible for defining the modern-day zombie). Much of Doc of the Dead‘s first half is spent discussing the staples of the subgenre, along with how adaptable zombies can be as a metaphor.

Philippe and the various interview subjects thankfully approach the topic with a sense of humour, since zombies aren’t a topic that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Doc of the Dead’s second half isn’t as strong as its first, mainly because the focus is put on how popular zombie merchandising has become over the years. There is something funny and bizarre about seeing just how much zombie-related material is out there (knives for fighting zombies! zombie dummies for shooting ranges! zombie survival kits!) but it quickly gets stale.

The doc’s presentation and fast pace are luckily good enough to make the duller moments pass by with ease. Doc of the Dead will obviously appeal to fans of the undead, but the doc is still plenty of fun for people unfamiliar with zombies. It’s lighthearted, breezy and overall a fun piece of pop trivia.