AMERICAN CANNIBAL: THE ROAD TO REALITY
** out of *****
Reviewed by Mandroid3000

Screening in the 2006 New Zealand International Film Festival
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Genres
Documentary
Movie & TV Making

2006
Directed by
Perry Grebin
Michael Nigro

American Cannibal: The Road to Reality is a documentary that follows two hapless comedy writers who, in 2005, tried to latch on to the reality TV bandwagon and earn a much-needed pay day. Going against their better taste and judgement, they wound up working with the distributor of the Paris Hilton sex tape on a project they mentioned to him only as a joke. This project was a show where contestants are sent to an island and starved, then led to believe one of them will be eaten. The actual production of this show was hampered by poor planning and ended in serious injury to one of the contestants (this part is shown at the start of the film, so no spoilers). The documentary shows how a solid partnership between two seemingly sensible guys could be destroyed by the reality TV world.

But in doing so American Cannibal only succeeds in making points about reality TV that seem de riguer in 2006. If you compared this film to Series 7, a scripted dissection of reality TV, you would have a compelling example of the advantages of scripted drama over reality (as well as making the advantages of making your points in 2001). American Cannibal is neither entertaining enough or insightful enough.

The subjects of the film are Gil Ripley and Dave Roberts, two out-of-work comedy writing partners. We see a clip of the duos rejected Comedy Central pilot, a quite lame-looking show called “Psychotic Episodes” that melds existing comedy shows into a wacky hybrid (the pilot mixes Sex and the City with the The Golden Girls, i.e. old women talking about sex). After the show’s failure their manager guides them towards the lucrative reality show market. However, these two have all the angst of artists without any of the humour you might expect from people who write comedy.

Like their comedy show, the reality show that eventually goes into production, American Cannibal is not forged from original elements (they have other ideas that they pitch which sound a bit better (I don’t mean the Virgin show)). They travel down the creative dead end that takes something existing (Survivor) and applies some ‘extreme’ and ‘dark’ to it. For legal reasons none of their actual show challenges can be shown in the film, so we may never know exactly what the show involved, but nothing they discuss gives any feeling that the show would have been worth watching. What we do see is the making of it; the bad planning, the egos and incompetence, the callousness, and the hunger for fame.

On the topic of reality TV industry and the people it attracts, I gained no insights from American Cannibal that I wouldn’t have gleaned from discussions with a person of reasonable intelligence back in 2000. There is the train wreck appeal to watching this, but if you want a reality TV train wreck there’s plenty of reality TV to watch.

In the end, American Cannibal feels similar to a voyeuristic reality show; the two writers like naïve contestants in a show about making a crappy reality TV show. We’re not left with a feeling of great creative gifts being wasted. When everything goes wrong on the set, there’s no Lost in La Mancha sense of loss. The only reason to watch this is if you really need your opinions confirmed for you.

This film will screen in Wellington on August the 3rd at 6:30pm and August the 4th at 2:00pm at the Paramount Theatre. Refer to the Film Fest homepage for more information.

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