Who’d Follow That?
What the difference between a doc and an advert?
I find that when flicking through Netflix, looking for something to watch – that depressing ritual – when Vanessa says, “Oh, that looks good”, it never is. Luckily, we don’t watch Netflix much. Still, before you think me one of those people who look down their noses at people who do (“Oh, we don’t own a TV”), we don’t watch Netflix as we’re watching Home & Away instead (if you don’t know what “The Bay” is, you don’t need to know more than it’s an Aussi soap, and if you do, and though it got cancelled back in the 90s, well it didn’t and hangs on as Ireland’s version of Coronation Street). If you’ve never seen “The Bay” or any soap, the storylines are based on miscommunication and misunderstanding drama. Yes, there are sometimes some malice and bad actors, but mostly, it’s miscommunication and misunderstanding, each drama leading to a cliffhanger, followed by a resolution, which then things are understood and connected, but which only leads to further miscommunication (her: “I thought you were a having an affair when really you were planning a secret birthday part” him “If you can’t trust me, maybe I don’t love you anymore” etc). All soaps are the same, boiled down to “I thought she thought” and “I thought he thought”.
I don’t like Home and Away; it’s one of those programs where you can apply the cut-up technique. Mix and match episodes, half of an episode from the 90s, half from yesterday, and it would make sense, as it’s always the same story, just recycled over and over, like Trail or Outside magazine. It’s not supposed to be a permanent feature, but if it is, I think its familiarity is comforting. I don’t like it, but I watch it because my wife likes it.
But being in Spain, where Home and Away isn’t a thing (add VPN advert here), we’re left to watch Netflix.
The first rule of Netflix is “never watch anything made by Netflix”, as it tends to be like a film starring Steven Siegal, the opposite of a sign of quality. The other sign is anything with a great Critis score on Rotton Tomatos (“Fool me once, Rottom Tomatos, shame on you...”). But as we flick around and around, Vanessa only interested in a “good romcom (I tricked her into watching Scent of a Woman last week, as it sounded romcom-esk, when it isn’t) and picks something that looks good, a documentary called “Skywalkers: A Love Story”.
We watched the film, which, if you’ve never seen it, concerns two Russian roof toppers (the word reminded me of Heinz Toast Toppers, which was an 80s working-class delicacy, like sick with mushrooms in it that you put on toast and heated under a grill). If you don’t know what roof toppers are: they break into tall buildings, but without stealing anything, and cosplay being Philippe Petit, only without the death-defying skill, just the death, standing on the top, maybe doing a handstand, or hanging off a beam one-handed, and filming the whole thing, often via drone. Sometimes they live up to the trope of the redneck’s last words: “Hey everyone, look at me”, and fall, and sometimes they don’t, and fall later, off camera.
People seem to find this all amazing, with the famous ones having millions of ‘followers’, no doubt the kind of followers who comment on every image with an emoji of a cabbage, high heal shoe, KKK hood, and an anchor (when you’re working on a Chinese influence farm, you soon realise no one reads these comments anyway, it’s a numbers game). I’m being cruel, I know, and I was actually intrigued at first. However, I did point out that many of these ‘firsts’ in tower topping were probably only the first by someone with an Instagram account and drone, as some poor Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan had probably been up and down said death defying ‘top’ a hundred times without a harness and in their flip flops.
The film tells the tale of two top-toppers, Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus and shows their rise to international fame (via fake text-to-voice news presenters) and then further fame as they join forces, unexpectedly fall in love, become even more famous (further text-to-voice TV presenters, and perhaps some fake interviews), become fully sponsored, and travel the world, watersports and bubble baths and all. End of first act.
It was around this point that I tried to explain to Vanessa, who was now weeping at the romance of it all, that Instagram actually has nothing to do with art or storytelling, or danger, and is more like soft porn (minus the nipples). Yes, people might see themselves as artists or creators of merit, but generally, they just have a nice arse and prance around in leggings two sizes too small all the time. She disagreed and said I wasn’t romantic, but it’s true.
Now, we fast forward two or three years, and the two are no longer the definition of true love. They’re burnt out and twisted, jaded; it’s all about the sponsors, the followers, the likes, the clicks. They look like a pair of junkies, always watched, hopefully. COVID strikes, and they sulk. Then Russia invades Ukraine, and they sulk some more, as they’ll probably lose some followers (some because people now hate Russians, mostly because they’re dead). With a ground war in Europe breaking out and nuclear armageddon on the cards, they need something to get them back on top: NFTs!
Up and till this point, I was actually enjoying the film, as I thought it was a takedown of the narcissism that comes from social media, how once good people become enslaved and cheapened by the algorithm. But then I realised it was serious.
“What’s an NFT?” asks Vanessa, a woman whose happiness stems from living under a rock, under another rock. “Not Fucking Trustworthy”, I replied.
The couple decides to climb some very high building, not sure where, and leave Russia (before Ivan or his drone are conscripted), and go and spend a few months in Thailand and practice by climbing more buildings. But things don’t go smoothly, and after some ups and downs (crucial when tip-topping), they break up—end of the second act.
By this point, I was grumbling that something was very odd about this film. It wasn’t a documentary; it was a film masquerading like a documentary, with the actors playing themselves, everything scripted and story boarded. Watching Angela, her movement, the way she acted, and her face, it had the spontaneity and natural charm as a Vogue photo shoot. I reminded me of that bit in Ways of Seeing by John Berger, where he says; “Men act, and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor woman herself is male; the surveyor is female. Thus, she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight.” But then I realised it wasn’t that, it was this was just like Home and Bloody Away, it was all just a soap opera.
Everything was a high wire act, yes, there was danger, but most it was an act.
The stage was set for the third act, to climb up this big building, wherever it was, but by now, I didn’t believe anything I was watching. It might as well have been filmed on a sound stage. It was all fake, even when it wasn’t.
I won't spoil the end, but unlike the best climbing docs, none of them die, even in the credits or on their Wiki pages. How fake is that! Maybe they were never real, just AI-generated, or living in Instagram unreality; who knows? Who cares? (I guess Chinese people click farms do.)
“What a great film,” says Vanessa, as I switch off the TV, feeling as satisfied as a man who’d found he’d mistakenly bought a plant-based bacon sandwich at a service station as he pulled back onto the motorway at 2 am.
I know this sounds negative, and I’m sure lots of people will love the film, and it’ll have a high score on Crap Tomatoes. Still, to me, this is the worst kind of documentary because it’s not a documentary at all; it’s an advert, paid for, scripted and performed by the people it's about. To me, having made a film like this (Psycho Vertical), the role of the director is not to be employed by or friends with the subject, but ideally, screw the subject over, betray them, leave all the stuff the subject wants in the film out, and instead put in all the things they’d wish to left out in, the ego, the envy, the greed, the psychotic, the clinical, the human. When you compare this to a film like The Alpinist, or Solo: Lost at Sea (2008) (David Michod went on to direct one of my favourite films, Animal Kingdom), or To the Limit (2007) (Pepe Danquart begins the film misleading as Huber fan-boy, but soon turns the movie onto the brothers), it’s a sad waste of time, for the film maker, the subjects, but most of all, mine.
99.99999% of people will never have a documentary made about themselves, and those that do will probably only ever get one, and so, if such a thing is to be some representation of the truth of who you were, what a shame to just make it soap, or worse, advertising.
What’s best to keep in mind in all such endeavours that expose us to the light of others are the words of the great Lester Bangs, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else while you’re uncool”. But who’d follow that?