A Letter to Brett Morgen, the director of Chicago 10

Dear Mr. Morgen,
Your film wasn’t half bad, but there comes a point when you gotta realize that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make a movie about the sixties if you think that they don’t normally translate well on film. The people that are going to go see your film are the people that already know who Abbie Hoffman is and know about the ’68 National convention. Just because you have Eminem and Rage Against the Machine--covering the MC5 (when the MC5 is on the screen, c’mon! –Which makes some of us wonder, who are you going to get to cover Nirvana songs for your Kurt Cobain movie?) doesn’t make it more contemporary or accessible to younger audiences.
For that matter, when visiting an art school, you should know the people in your audience are kids that are learning and used to the idea of critique. So when you ask us what we truly thought of your movie, chill out, don’t start sprouting off some cover-up line that you are working in Brechtian tradition. You’re going around thinking that everyone has no clue what you are talking about and that by using rotoscope, oh sorry, motion capture, that will make it fresh. It’s history, and ultimately you can’t go rewriting it to make it “the most commercial and marketable” (as you advised us to do). Do you really think Hoffman or Rubin would agree with these comments?
But I mean, hey, good job on getting that Silver Hugo for Documentary, but maybe it’d be better if you stuck to your own advice and made fictional films.
Yours Truly.
The Society

Lightning Over Water

I've heard many directors say in order to make a successful documentary you must fictionalize it. Even though Cinema Verite may be a boring concept, there is something about the innocence of trying to create a film about reality, even if it is altered by the camera.
Wenders in 1980's, Lightning Over Water
As for Wim Wenders and Nicholas Ray's film, Lightning Over Water, which chronicles Ray last few weeks before his death of lung cancer, the film is extremely stylized and staged. Even though there is a rawness to it (Wenders said he could see Ray dying in the viewfinder), each shot was set up to provide correct lighting and shot/reverse shot editing techniques. The film was immensely well photographed, but what made the film feel authentic was the inclusion of Tom Farrell's videos that show behind the scenes of Wenders and his crew preparing the shots.
Some criticize Wenders for taking advantage of Ray and his illness, but I saw it as Wenders trying to let Ray complete one last film before his death, which was imminent.

Though I thought the best part of the film was the inclusion of Wenders, Ray, his wife, and Farrell watching (the now hard to find) We Can't Go Home Again, Ray's 1976 film about the 1968 democratic national convention that was rephotographed footage and extremely stylized. I wish I could find this film in its entirety because it seems like one of the most interesting artifacts from the '68 riots (instead of the duller grainy black and white documentation).