Catfish (film)

Catfish
Directed by	Henry Joost Ariel Schulman
Produced by	Andrew Jarecki Marc Smerling Henry Joost Ariel Schulman
Starring	Melody C. Roscher Ariel Schulman Yaniv Schulman Angela Wesselman-Pierce
Cinematography	Henry Joost Ariel Schulman Yaniv Schulman
Edited by	Zachary Stuart-Pontier
Production companies	Relativity Media Rogue Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (US) Momentum Pictures (UK) Alliance Films (Canada) Eagle Films (non-US)
Release dates	January 22, 2010 (2010-01-22) (Sundance) September 17, 2010 (2010-09-17) (United States)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Box office	$3,479,614

Catfish is a 2010 American documentary film, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and involving a young man being filmed by his brother and friend as he builds a romantic relationship with a young woman on the social networking website Facebook.

Plot

Young photographer Yaniv (Nev) Schulman lives with his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost in New York City. Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old child prodigy artist in rural Ishpeming, Michigan, sends him a painting of one of his published photographs. They become Facebook friends in a network that broadens to Abby's family, including her mother, Angela (Wesselman); Angela's husband Vince; and Abby's attractive older half-sister Megan, a veterinary technician, dancer and songwriter who lives in Gladstone, Michigan.

For a documentary, Ariel and Henry film Nev as he begins a long-distance relationship with Megan, conducted over the Internet and phone calls, and they discuss meeting in person. She sends him MP3s of her songs, but Nev discovers that they are all taken from performances by other people on YouTube. He later finds evidence that Megan and Abby have made other false claims.

Ariel urges his upset brother to continue the relationship for the documentary. The siblings and Henry eventually travel to Michigan to make an impromptu appearance at the Pierces' house and confront Megan. When they travel to Angela's house, she takes a while to answer the door, but she appears very happy to see them. She casually announces that she will begin chemotherapy for uterine cancer soon. She drives them to see Abby, who says "you're confusing me" when Nev repeatedly asks her about her art.

The next morning, Nev wakes up to a text message from Megan saying that she was checking in to rehab and that she would not be able to meet him. A Facebook message from one of Megan's friends confirms that she is checking in to rehab. Later that day, Nev suggests to Angela that they have a serious talk, and she breaks down, admitting to making everything up. She claims that the pictures of Megan she used were from a friend of a friend, and Angela worries that she betrayed her. In fact, the pictures are from a completely unrelated woman from Washington. Unable to stop lying, Angela claims that her real daughter Megan really is in rehab downstate, but it turns out that Megan has been estranged from the family for a long time.

All of the artwork that Abby was supposed to have created was actually by Angela. Nev spends some time sitting for a portrait with Angela, and they talk more about her lies. She confesses that all the various personae were fragments of her personality, usually enacting some fantasy of what her life would have been like if she had not made the choices she had. Her husband Vince is under the illusion that Nev is a patron of Angela's, commissioning all the artwork that she sent to him. Vince has twin sons with severe disabilities from a previous marriage.

Sitting on his front porch, Vince tells the story that gives the film its name. He claims that when live cod were shipped to Asia from North America, the fish's inactivity in their tanks resulted in mushy flesh in the Asian markets. Eventually, the fishermen discovered that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active. Vince feels that people like Angela are catfish, who keep other people active in life.

Production

Angela used pictures that Vancouver-based photographer Aimee Gonzales had posted on Facebook to portray Megan and her family. Catfish's filmmakers compensated Gonzales for her involuntary appearance in the documentary, and she participated in publicity for the film. A photograph Angela described as a son, Alex, is that of rapper Joshua Paul Liimatta, also known as "The Sisu Kid".

Authenticity questioned

In an interview Ariel Schulman related that some viewers believe Catfish to be a fake documentary, or a hoax. Morgan Spurlock, director and subject of the documentary Super Size Me, walked up to the producers of the film during one of its initial screenings and told them "it was the best fake documentary I have ever seen." Comedian Zach Galifianakis also has stated that he does not believe the events in the film to be true.

Kyle Buchanan at Movieline questions why the filmmakers would begin obsessively documenting Nev's online relationship so early on, and argues that it is highly improbable that media-savvy professionals like the Schulmans and Joost would not use the Internet to research Megan and her family before meeting them. Others have also questioned the trio's decision to begin filming, as well as the seemingly improbable coincidence of them catching everything of importance to the story on film as it happens. It has also been pointed out that the group's supposed movements in Catfish are not documented in their public blog postings at the time and that at least one website mentioned in the Internet conversations shown in the film does not appear to have existed.

Since the movie's release, Angela has been interviewed by ABC's 20/20 and the Los Angeles Times have spoken with neighbors familiar with her family. In the summer of 2011, The Mining Journal ran a two-part profile of Angela in connection with the North of the 45th Parallel 2011 exhibition at the DeVos Art Museum on the campus of Northern Michigan University.

Release

The film had a limited release on September 17, 2010. The Rogue Pictures unit of Relativity Media acquired Catfish in a bidding war with Paramount Pictures, after Brett Ratner endorsed the film. Catfish was released on Blu-ray and DVD on January 4, 2011.

Reception

The film received an 82% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the site's consensus being "Catfish may tread the line between real-life drama and crass exploitation a little too unsteadily for some viewers' tastes, but its timely premise and tightly wound mystery make for a gripping documentary".

Time magazine did a full page article, written by Mary Pols in a September 2010 issue, saying "as you watch Catfish, squirming in anticipation of the trouble that must lie ahead―why else would this be a movie?―you're likely to think this is the real face of social networking."

At the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Alison Willmore of IFC described it as a "sad, unusual love story." John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter called Catfish "jaw-dropping" and "crowd-pleasing" but said that it "will require clever marketing in order to preserve the surprises at its core." Kyle Buchanan of Movieline asked if "easily the most buzzed-about documentary" at Sundance had "a truth problem", and reported that an audience member questioned whether it was a documentary at all. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times referred to these questions as a "severe cross-examination" and states that "everyone in the film is exactly as the film portrays them."

Total Film described the film as: "Funny, unsettling and thoroughly engrossing... the end result is a compulsive, propulsive study of relationships virtual and real".

Very Aware said of the film: "All of the above information doesn’t prove that the film is entirely fake. What it does prove is that much of the film has been recreated, and its possible that they did it in such a way to create a story where there might not have been one to begin with.".

Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost became co-directors for Paranormal Activity 3 after this film received attention from film festivals.

Lawsuits

The movie itself has been the subject of two lawsuits, with Relativity Media concluding that the movie will never be profitable because of them. Both of these lawsuits have to do with songs used within the movie not being attributed to their creators.

External links

• Official website
• Catfish at AllMovie
• Catfish at Box Office Mojo
• Catfish at IMDb
• Catfish at Rotten Tomatoes
• 'Catfish' Creators Catch Digital Life In Action at NPR