Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/760821
DGA QUARTERLY 21 PHOTOS: (TOP) ELIZABETH MORRIS/IFC; (BOTTOM LEFT) PHOTOFEST; (BOTTOM RIGHT) ALEX BUONO & RHYS THOMAS DIRECTORS STRADDLE FINE LINE BETWEEN REVERENCE AND PARODY IN DOCUMENTARY NOW! BY ROBERT ABELE Go With the Faux V E R T W O S E A S O N S of IFC's parody series Documentary Now! it isn't just the on-camera talent—comedy stars Fred Armisen and Bill Hader—who get to act in spoofs of every- thing from Grey Gardens to Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Directors Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono, in aping the styles of famous documentarians like the Maysles brothers and Errol Morris, are performers in a sense, too, with their Red Dragon digital camera. "We're giving ourselves the constraints of being characters as filmmak- P A Y I N G H O M A G E ers," says Thomas of their imitation-game rigor. "You're saying, 'This is where Albert Maysles would have stood in the room.' It's the fun of getting it right." Here, the pair, who first collab- orated as segment directors on Saturday Night Live, offer background on the making of some of the show's memorable episodes. Robert Flaherty's own writings gave Buono and Thomas a good idea of how the direc- tor made one of the earliest feature-length documentaries, a silent, partly-staged glimpse at an Inuk fisherman in the Canadian Arctic. They even tracked down Panchro lenses from the '30s. "We ab- solutely were pretend- ing to be Flaherty," says Buono, "limiting our- selves to a panning shot at most, because he had a big heavy cam- era, locked off most of E P I S O D E » KU N U K U N COV E R E D S O U R C E » NANOOK OF THE NORTH ( 1 9 2 2 ) , N A N O O K R E V I S I T E D ( 1 9 9 0 ) the time because he was trying to do every- thing himself." Directing the actors—Armisen as Kunuk, and John Slattery, as their version of Flaherty—involved specific blocking, since dialogue wasn't an op- tion. Says Thomas, "It was all physical, in the posture, the gestures. It was like staging a play, where you had this pro- scenium. It was defi- nitely a weird exercise. John Slattery, bless him, he came all the way to Iceland with us not to say a single line." O FOCUS