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Was the success of “Fahrenheit 9/11” a colossal fluke? Or just the most obvious example yet of America’s growing appetite for big-screen non-fiction?

by Alma Freeman

Well-documented is the fact that Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a precedent-shattering phenomenon, easily the most popular documentary feature of all time.

Less well-documented is this: Had “Fahrenheit 9/11” not been released to cinemas last year, 2004 would still have been a banner year for the big-screen documentary.

An astonishing 69 feature documentaries made their way into cinemas last year, the most in anyone’s memory. Compare that figure to the 34 released five years earlier, or the 11 released to theatres five years before that.

“In 1992, when we released ‘Brother’s Keeper,’ there were only five documentaries that were released theatrically,” remembers veteran filmmaker Joe Berlinger, whose documentary work includes the 2004 hit “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.” “When I walked to the premiere of ‘Metallica’ – from my Tribeca office to the Sunshine Cinema in downtown Manhattan, passing three or four cinemas – I was amazed that there were seven documentaries on screen at that particular moment.”

More eye-opening facts:

More documentaries have already been released to cinemas in the 2000s than in the 1990s.

• Number of new documentary titles released between 1990 and 1999: 192.
• Number of new documentary titles released between 2000 and 2004: 223.

Documentaries are grossing a lot more than they used to. A lot more.

• Documentaries released to U.S. cinemas between Jan. 1, 1990 and Dec. 31, 2001 – a 12-year span – grossed only $174.1 million.
• Documentaries released to U.S. cinemas between Jan. 1, 2002 and Dec. 31, 2004 – a span of only three years – garnered a far bigger total: $322.2 million.

Documentaries no longer need be tied to show business or sports to be big hits.

• Non-sports/non-showbiz feature documentaries (let’s call them “NSNSFDs”) released between 1990 and 2001 – a 12-year span – accounted for domestic theatrical grosses of $42.4 million.
• NSNSFDs released to U.S. cinemas in 2002 and 2003 – a period of only two years – grossed more: $59.3 million.
• NSNSFDs released in 2004 alone grossed even more than that: in excess of $145 million.

“There’s always been the occasional documentary like [“The Thin Blue Line” director] Errol Morris’ that would grab some of the box office,” confirms Zeitgeist co-president Emily Russo, “but over the last two years the documentary has encroached more and more on the box office, and docs have really become a much more viable kind of a film for a bit of a more mainstream arthouse release. There’ve always been a lot of docs made, maybe more so than ever with HBO stepping up, but distributors have also gotten keener and keener about handling docs for theatrical release.”

Moore Moore Moore
It is difficult to understate Michael Moore’s importance to the big-screen documentary’s newfound commercial viability.

His directorial debut was the darkly comedic “Roger & Me,” a pointed 1989 examination of the dire economic woes visited upon Moore’s Michigan hometown by local auto-plant closures. Its enormous oddball success shook the documentary community so thoroughly, that community still hasn’t fully recovered.

“Roger” was groundbreaking in several respects. It was an NSNSFD released by Warner Bros., a major Hollywood distributor.* It made more money than any NSNSFD before it: its $6.7 million gross quadrupled the gross of previous NSNSFD record-holder “Koyaanisqatsi.” It eschewed any veneer of objectivity. And it was probably the funniest non-concert documentary ever made.

“Moore changed our view of documentary,” says Magnolia Films president Eamonn Bowles. “He used techniques as a standup comic and entertainer to help engage the audience.”

Before the 1989 arrival of “Roger,” the only theatrical documentaries commercial enough to form major blips on box office radar were star-driven concert movies like “Woodstock,” “Richard Pryor Live In Concert” and “Eddie Murphy Raw.” An NSNSFD smash of the pre-Moore era was defined as “Koyaanisqatsi,” Godfrey Reggio’s arty, wordless meditation on man and nature (domestic gross: $1.7 million), or “The Thin Blue Line,” Morris’ broody 1988 indictment of the American justice system (domestic gross: $1.2 million).

“Roger” turned a tidy profit for Warner Bros., but it also turned America’s perception of the documentary on its head, inspiring audiences to seek out subsequent NSNSFD releases in numbers never before witnessed. “A Brief History of Time,” released two years later, became Morris’ first multimillion grosser. Other acclaimed NSNSFDs soon began sprinting across the once-elusive million-dollar mark, most famously “Paris is Burning” (1991), “Brother’s Keeper” (1992), “Crumb” and “Unzipped” (both 1995) and “Microcosmos” (1996).

“A couple of years ago, there was the expression that you never wanted to be called ‘the d-word,’ and now you wear it proudly,” says Magnolia’s Bowles, who oversaw the release of the hit 2004 documentary “Control Room.”

The old concept, says Samuel Goldwyn Films president Meyer Gottlieb, “was that documentaries were pretty dry and pretty straightforward, and as a result, the public heard ‘documentary’ and they knew they were going to get something that was going to be a little harder to swallow than something that was pure entertainment.”

The unprecedented 1989 success of “Roger” was also, not incidentally, a likely factor in inspiring MTV to launch in 1992 its long-running smash documentary series “The Real World” – which in turn inspired the ubiquitous tidal wash of “reality” programming that now saturates American airwaves.

*It is still extremely rare for a major studio’s distribution apparatus to release a non-sports/non-showbiz feature documentary. To date, only two NSNSFDs have been distributed by major distributors subsequent to 1989’s “Roger & Me”: Moore’s “Bowling For Columbine” (a 2002 MGM release) and the wholesome 2004 Disney documentary “America’s Heart and Soul.”

“Bowling” Point
In the dozen years following the release of “Roger & Me,” Moore wrote and directed a non-documentary political satire (1995’s “Canadian Bacon,” starring John Candy), authored a book (1997’s “Downsize This!”), concocted a lower-grossing documentary about Moore’s cross-country book tour (1997’s “The Big One”) and created two short-lived non-fiction TV series (Fox’s “TV Nation” and Bravo’s “The Awful Truth”).

Then, in 2002, Moore made history again.

Top Non-Showbiz/ Non-Sports Feature Documentaries 1990-2004 (as of 2/3/05; domestic grosses in millions)
1.	Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).	$119.0
2.	Bowling For Columbine (2002).	21.6
3.	Supersize Me (2004)	11.5
4.	Winged Migration (2003)	10.7
5.	Spellbound (2003).	5.7
6.	Touching The Void (2004)	4.5
7.	Fog of War (2003)	4.2
8.	Paris is Burning (1991)	3.7
9.	Capturing the Friedmans (2003)	3.1
10.	Crumb (1995)	3.0
11.	Unzipped (1995)	2.8
12.	My Architect (2003).	2.7
13.	Control Room (2004)	2.5
14.	Endurance: Shackleton's/Expedition (2001)	2.4
15.	A Brief History of Time (1992)	2.3
16.	Rivers and Tides (2003)	2.2
17.	The Farm (1999).	2.2
18.	The Corporation (2004)	1.8
19.	The Story of Weeping Camel (2004).	1.7
20.	Microcosmos (1996).	1.4
21.	startup.com (2001)	1.3
22.	Brother's Keeper (1992).	1.3
23.	Baraka (1993)	1.2
24.	The Architecture of Doom (1991)	1.2
25.	Anne Frank Remembered (1996)	1.1
26.	35 Up (1992).	.9
27.	The War Room (1993)	.9
28.	Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997)	.8
29.	Trembling Before G-d (2001)	.7
30.	Sex is (1993)	.7

With “Bowling For Columbine,” an examination of America’s obsession with firearms, Moore completely realigned industry expectations for the big-screen documentary. Again. With a domestic take of $21.6 million, it became the highest-grossing NSNSFD ever released, a record it maintained until “9/11” came along two years later.

“Bowling for Columbine’s’ significance lies in the fact that it was the first documentary to cross over to the mainstream,” says ThinkFilm distribution head Mark Urman, who oversaw the release of two smash post-”Columbine” documentaries, 2003’s “Spellbound” and 2004’s “The Story of the Weeping Camel.”

“When you talk about the gross for ‘Columbine,’ statistically, you know for a fact that ‘x’ number of people saw it that had never seen a documentary before,” says Urman. “And guess what? They went to see one and it wasn’t dry, and it wasn’t talking heads, it had personal expression, it had a hero, it had a nationally recognized person and bestselling author.”

And it precipitated some of the most successful documentaries in history. Eight feature-length NSNSFDs have now grossed over $4 million, including “Columbine,” “Fahrenheit,” “Winged Migration,” Morris’ “The Fog of War,” Kevin Macdonald’s “Touching the Void,” Jeffrey Blitz’s “Spellbound” and Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me.” “Roger & Me” is the only one of the eight released before “Columbine.”

“We owe ‘Columbine’ on two levels,” says Sandra Ruch, executive director of Independent Documentary Association (IDA). “The subject matter is of interest to the country and to the world, but it also made exhibitors open their eyes to the genre.”

Moore, says Century Theatres marketing chief Nancy Klasky, “has definitely helped pave the way for a lot of films to be shown to a more mainstream audience in a movie theatre. I think a lot of these documentaries would have been relegated to public TV in the past.”

Berlinger remembers the industry’s attitude as different when “Brother’s Keeper,” his first theatrical documentary, was released in 1992. “My filmmaking partner and I went to Sundance, we won the audience’s award, we got lots of great press, but every distributor said, ‘Nice little film. No one will go see it. Documentaries are box office poison.’ We didn’t accept that, and we developed our own distribution company and schlepped our little film around the country, and it ended up grossing two million bucks,” he says.

But while NSNSFDs are clearly making a great deal more money than they were five, 10 or 20 years ago, few expect to see anytime soon another documentary success the size of “9/11.”

“9/11,” says Landmark Theatres head film buyer Ted Mundorff, “is this generation’s ‘Star Wars’ of documentaries – you’re not going to see documentaries grossing $119 million again.”

Reel Politic
Roughly half of the 52 NSNSFDs released in 2004 could, like “9/11,” be classified as “political” documentaries, and it is far from a certainty that the number of theatrically released documentary titles will continue to grow now that the presidential campaign season has concluded. Many industry insiders, however, believe that the recent surge in big-screen political documentaries is a reaction to a frustrated public, and that a huge number of Americans are as frustrated now as they were a year ago.

Top Showbiz/ Sports Feature Documentaries 1990-2004 (as of 2/3/05; domestic grosses in millions)
1.	Jackass: The Movie (2002)	$64.2
2.	The Original Kings of Comedy (2000)	38.1
3.	Martin Lawrence: Runteldat (2002)	19.1
4.	Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)	15.0
5.	You So Crazy (1994)	10.2
6.	Hoop Dreams (1994)	7.8
7.	Tupac: Resurrection (2003)	7.7
8.	Buena Vista Social Club (1999)	7.0
9.	The Real Cancun (2003)	3.7
10.	Step into Liquid (2003)	3.6
11.	Fifty (1999)	3.3
12.	Ride (2000)	3.1
13.	When We Were Kings (1996)	2.8
14.	Comedian (2002)	2.7
15.	Freeriders (1998)	2.7
16.	The Show (1995)	2.7
17.	Snowrider 2 (1997)	2.3
18.	Black Diamond Rush (1993).	2.3
19.	Riding Giants (2004)	2.2
20.	DysFunktional Family (2003)	2.2
21.	Beyond the Mat (2000)	2.1
22.	Endless Summer II (2004)	2.1
23.	Ballanchine's The Nutcracker (1993)	2.1
24.	Snowriders (1996).	2.0
25.	Vertical Reality (1994).	2.0
27.	Standing the Shadows of Motown (2002)	1.7
28.	Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000)	1.7
29.	Rhyme & Reason (1997)	1.6
30.	The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)	1.4

“Because of the direction the world is going and the feeling that something’s gotta be done, we’re not in this ‘everything is OK’ period,” says Zeitgeist’s Russo, who oversaw the the release of the hit 2004 political documentary “The Corporation.” “People need to take some action and try to change the course, and there’s a lot of stake in terms of making docs, and believing that some film can change the way people think.”

“We have again an unpopular and very suspect war abroad; we have terrific polarization,” says Mark Jonathan Harris, a USC cinema-television professor who wrote and directed the 2000 Oscar-winner “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.” “Given the polarization and political crisis, there’s a hunger to know the truth; that’s why there’s so many political films right now.

“The Project for Excellence in Journalism recently reported that the number of news stories about government dropped from one in three to one in five,” adds Harris, “while the number of stories about celebrities rose from about one in 50 to nearly one in 14.”

Morris, whose politically charged 2003 hit “The Fog of War” is his highest-grossing effort to date, suggests that growing popularity of the political documentary stems from impatience with conventional news outlets. “It’s no accident that people, myself included, go to Jon Stewart [host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”] for the daily news, as opposed to the various networks. Part of it is a statement [to the media]: ‘You’re failing us out there.’”

“I think there’s a request and demand from moviegoers for the other side of the story,” says Ruch. “For a story based on real situations, not reality that’s fictionalized. It’s a huge alternative to the media that we have. I don’t think the public trusts the corporate media. I don’t think the public trusts the news. They need an alternative.”

A $3,000 Camera
While demand is certainly driving the growth of the big-screen documentary industry, so too are the tools of the trade. Thanks to low-cost digital cameras, independent filmmakers no longer have to buy costly film stock, and can realize their visions for a fraction of the money they required a decade ago.

“Gone are the days when you had to really make an investment in film stock and equipment,” says Zeitgeist’s Russo. “The floodgates have opened because the technology has become so much more accessible to everyone.”

Last May’s “Super Size Me,” now the 3rd-highest-grossing NSNSFD in history, was shot with a $3,000 camera and edited on an Apple computer with software that cost another $5,000. Total budget: $65,000. Domestic theatrical gross: $11,529,368.

Robert Greenwald’s “Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” released last August, was even less expensive, shot with a borrowed digital camera and edited with a few thousand dollars worth of software.

“I’ve been at USC teaching documentary filmmaking for nearly 20 years and, suddenly, my students are now making theatrical documentaries and making money,” says Harris. “First time I’ve seen this happening.”
With readily accessible handheld devices, says ThinkFilm’s Urman, “everyone is photographing everything now. One third of the world is making a spectacle of themselves, one third of the world is photographing it, and the other third of the world is watching.”

Morris agrees, adding that as more and more people acquire cameras, more and more people are videotaping themselves and their families, resulting in more media being produced. Films such as “Capturing the Friedmans” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he says, are examples of projects utilizing media that had been overlooked by the traditional press or media that no one looked at at all. Although repurposing media is an old documentary tradition, Morris predicts that the genre is going to see far more use of it in the future.

The Reality TV Factor
Those familiar with the big-screen documentary industry often cite the “reality TV” genre – pioneered by MTV’s “The Real World” in 1992 and introduced to network television in 2000 with the launch of “Survivor,” “Big Brother” and “Making The Band” – as playing a key role in moviegoers’ increasing acceptance of the spontaneity and “look” associated with non-fiction film.

“People used to see documentaries as good for you, in a way they were like spinach or casserole,” says Harris. “People have begun to realize, partly through the proliferation of reality shows, that documentaries can also be entertaining.”

“The Real World’ started this voyeurism on TV, and I think people are fascinated by real life and truth,” says Marcus Theatres exec Michael Ogrodowski. “Reality TV has had a huge effect on audiences. People like watching unscripted situations. It’s not the normal Hollywood storyline. You don’t know where it’s going to go.”

“One of the byproducts of the reality TV craze has been that people have gotten used to watching other everyday people, and they now realize that there’s drama inherit in people’s everyday lives,” agrees Magnolia’s Bowles. “People are getting used to seeing non-actors in very dramatic situations, finding there’s real excitement and visceral thrill to everyday people’s lives.”

“I think that the reality-based TV programs have obviously had a significant part to play in the evolution of the documentary moviegoer,” adds Goldwyn’s Gottlieb, who shepherded “Super Size Me.” In the pre-”Real World” days, he says, consumers “used to think when they heard ‘documentary’ that it wasn’t entertainment. They thought of documentaries as information.”

“People are more willing to accept something as entertainment that doesn’t have sets, costumes and actors,” says ThinkFilm’s Urman. “Whether it’s ‘Temptation Island’ or ‘Survivor,’ the star could be your next door neighbor – it isn’t Julia Roberts.

“Capturing the Friedmans’ was a perfect example,” says Steve Bunnell, head film buyer for exhibition giant Loews Cineplex. “That was a reality show if I’ve ever seen one,” he laughs.

The remarkable and ongoing success of reality TV may also be responsible for pushing more traditional nonfiction projects off the small screen and onto the large.

Harris says that when he first started making documentaries in the 1960s most were being aired on TV, as each of the three big networks had a regularly scheduled documentary series. Today, he says, “TV no longer has regularly scheduled long-form documentaries – the only programs are ‘Frontline,’ and ‘American Experience.’”

“There’s really very little interesting documentary filmmaking on TV anymore,” says Russo. “PBS occasionally does these Ken Burns series [“The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “Jazz”], but beyond that it just doesn’t offer what it used to – people feel like they need to get it now from other sources. Theatrical releases are perhaps one of those.”

Power to the POV
Where certain documentaries were once criticized for their lack of objectivity, a point of view is now, ironically, perceived as a big selling point in the post-”Roger & Me” era.

“When I was growing up, documentaries were on PBS and pointedly objective – they went out of their way to show both sides of every story,” says Loews’ Bunnell. “Historically, from our end of the business, the word ‘documentary’ was almost too milquetoast, too vanilla, if you will.” People are more willing to pay for their documentaries, he says, “if they’re in strong agreement with the film’s point of view.”

Moore was by no means the first documentarian to be accused of throwing objectivity out the window. Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 “Triumph of the Will” and even the 1922 classic “Nanook of the North” were seen as propagandistic.

“There’s this crazy idea that something based on reality should be objective,” says Morris. “That somehow if you hear from both sides, that it assures you of objectivity. It’s that faulty idea that balance is the same thing as truth – but everything we hear is biased on one way or another.

“Real people can say things that are false. Godard says that ‘cinema is truth 24 frames per second.’ My version is that it lies 24 frames per second.”

“When ‘The Thin Blue Line’ first came out,” Morris remembers, “it was criticized for breaking ‘documentary rules,’ as if documentaries had to be made in a certain way or it wasn’t a documentary at all. For ‘The Thin Blue Line,’ the problem was the use of reenactments. But the use of reenactments does not make my film more or less of a documentary.”

Today, he says, “there’s been an explosion of different kind of styles – you’d be hard pressed to compare the style of ‘Fog of War’ to ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ to ‘Spellbound.’” What all three have in common, he says, is “a connection with the real world.”

And The Oscar Goes To…
For decades, the Oscars were famous for ignoring some of the most popular and acclaimed feature documentaries ever made. Forget about winning an Oscar; breakout hits like 1983’s “Koyaanisqatsi,” 1988’s “The Thin Blue Line” and 1989’s “Roger & Me” could make dozens of critics’ top-10 lists, yet never muster as much as a nomination.

Top 15 Large-Format Documentary Shorts 1997-2004 (as of 2/13/05; domestic grosses in millions; bold type indicates films still in release and being tracked at press time)
1.	Everest (1998)	$76.4
2.	Space Station 3D (2002)	56.4
3.	Mysteries of Egypt (1998)	40.5
4.	Nascar 3D (2004)	19.8
5.	Michael Jordan To the Max (2000)	18.6
6.	Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)	16.6
7.	Thrill Ride (1997)	16.6
8.	Anarctic Adventure (2001)	15.5
9.	Galapagos (1999)	14.4
10.	Bugs! (2003)	14.4
11.	Extreme (1999)	12.7
12.	Africa's Elephant Kingdom (1998)	13.4
13.	Island of the Sharks (1999).	10.6
14.	Adrenaline Rush (2002)	9.0
15.	Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey (2002)	7.9

“It was a real scandal that Moore had not been nominated, and Errol had not won,” remembers ThinkFilm’s Urman. “How could you not, year after year, see these great films being made and this ground being broken? It came down to the nominating committee for ‘best documentary’ was still very much sticking to the old definition of what a documentary was, and they were nominating the talking heads and completely bypassing these new kinds of documentaries.”

Berlinger remembers 1992’s “Brother’s Keeper” as “the straw that broke many critics’ backs.” “Critics went on a tirade. ‘Brother’s Keeper’ was yet another example of [a non-nominated] film that had done well theatrically. It was almost as if theatrical success was anathema to the academy.”

With the explosion of NSNSFD box office in 2002 and 2003 came what many saw as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ long-overdue recognition of Moore and Morris: Both finally won “best documentary feature” Oscars, for 2002’s “Bowling For Columbine” and 2003’s “The Fog of War,” respectively.
Most concede the victories had less to with Moore and Morris suddenly growing more talented, and more to do with changes within the academy.

In 2002, says IDA’s Ruch, the academy established a board of governors that represents an 120-person documentary branch. Now, she says, documentaries have specialized representation just like every other branch of the academy. “Sixty years ago they awarded documentaries, but they never had a branch, or a board of governors, so everybody who didn’t know anything about documentaries voted [on documentaries],” she says.

Additionally, in 2003 the academy added a “4-city rule,” requiring that nominated documentaries show in a commercial cinema for seven days every day, at least once a day, followed by expansion to four additional cities, where the documentary must show on two consecutive days.

She notes that documentaries were always required to be released theatrically to be considered, but previously many filmmakers simply elected to rent (or “four-wall”) a cinema, which led to the nomination of many films which, even today, remain little-seen.

Ironically, Moore decided in September not to submit “9/11” for “best documentary” Oscar consideration, citing lingering Oscar rules (since eliminated) that might have impeded his ability to televise the film before the 2004 presidential election.

“I told my crew who worked on the film, let’s let someone else have that Oscar,” Moore wrote in a Sept. 6 letter posted to his website. “We have already helped to ignite the biggest year ever for nonfiction films. Last week, 1 out of every 5 films playing in movie theaters across America was a documentary! That is simply unheard of. There have been so many great nonfiction films this year, why not step aside and share what we have with someone else? Remove the 800-pound gorilla from that Oscar category and let the five films who get nominated have all the attention they deserve (instead of the focus being on a film that has already had more than its share of attention).

“Thanks for all of your support,” Moore’s letter concludes. “And go see ‘Super Size Me,’ ‘Control Room,’ ‘The Corporation,’ ‘Orwell Rolls in His Grave,’ ‘Bush’s Brain,’ Robert Greenwald’s films and the upcoming ‘Yes Men.’ You won’t be sorry!”