Mockumentary

Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (or simply Borat) is a 2006 British-American mockumentary comedy film written and produced by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen who also plays the title character, Borat Sagdiyev, a fictitious Kazakh journalist travelling through the United States recording real-life interactions with Americans.

A mockumentary (a portmanteau of mock and documentary) or docucomedy is a type of movie or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary.

These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictional setting, or to parody the documentary form itself. While mockumentaries are usually comedic, pseudo-documentaries are their dramatic equivalents. However, pseudo-documentary should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events. Also, docudrama is different from docufiction; a genre in which documentaries are contaminated with fictional elements.

Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries, with B roll and talking heads discussing past events, or as cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events. Examples emerged during the 1950s when archival film footage became relatively easy to locate. A very early example was a short piece on the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that appeared as an April fools' joke on the British television program Panorama in 1957.

The term "mockumentary", which originated in the 1960s, was popularized in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.

Mockumentaries are often partly or wholly improvised, as an unscripted style of acting helps to maintain the pretense of reality. Comedic mockumentaries rarely have laugh tracks, also to sustain the atmosphere, although exceptions exist.

Early examples

Early work, including Luis Buñuel's 1933 Land Without Bread, Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, various April Fools' Day news reports, and vérité-style film and television during the 1960s and 1970s, served as precursor to the genre. Early examples of mock-documentaries include The Connection (1961), A Hard Day's Night, 1964, (written by Alun Owen, purporting to describe several days in the lives of The Beatles, that would be the first feature-length mockumentary), David Holzman's Diary, 1967, Pat Paulsen for President, 1968, Take the Money and Run, 1969, The Clowns, 1970, by Federico Fellini (a peculiar hybrid of documentary and fiction, a docufiction), and All You Need Is Cash, 1978. Albert Brooks was also an early popularizer of the mockumentary style with his film Real Life, 1979, a spoof of a PBS documentary.

Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run is presented in documentary-style with Allen playing a fictional criminal, Virgil Starkwell, whose crime exploits are "explored" throughout the film. Jackson Beck, who used to narrate documentaries in the 1940s, provides the voice-over narration. Fictional interviews are interspliced throughout, especially those of Starkwell's parents who wear Groucho Marx noses and mustaches. The style of this film was widely appropriated by others and revisited by Allen himself in films such as Zelig (1983) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999).

Early use of the mockumentary format in television comedy may be seen in several sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974), such as "Hell's Grannies", "Piranha Brothers", and "The Funniest Joke in the World". The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour (1970–1971) also featured mockumentary pieces which interspersed both scripted and real-life man-in-the-street interviews, the most famous likely being "The Puck Crisis" in which hockey pucks were claimed to have become infected with a form of Dutch elm disease.

Since 1980

In film

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the mockumentary format has got considerable attention. The 1980 South African film The Gods Must be Crazy (along with its 1989 sequel) is presented in the manner of a nature documentary, with documentary narrator Paddy O'Byrne describing the events of the film in the manner of a biologist or anthropologist presenting scientific knowledge to viewers. In 1982, The Atomic Cafe is a Cold-War era American "mockumentary" film that made use of archival government footage from the 1950s. Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig stars Allen as a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he is near, and Allen is edited into historical archive footage. In 1984, Christopher Guest co-wrote and starred in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner. Guest went on to write and direct other mockumentaries including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, all written with costar Eugene Levy.

Tim Robbins' 1992 film Bob Roberts was a mockumentary centered around the senatorial campaign of a right-wing stock trader and folksinger, and the unsavory connections and dirty tricks used to defeat a long-term liberal incumbent played by Gore Vidal. Man Bites Dog is a 1992 Belgian black comedy crime mockumentary written, produced, and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde. In 1995, Peter Jackson and Costa Botes directed Forgotten Silver, which claimed New Zealand "director" Colin McKenzie was a pioneer in filmmaking. When the film was later revealed to be a mockumentary, Jackson received criticism for tricking viewers. In 1998, director Mike Clattenburg wrote and directed a short film titled One Last Shot, which was shot in black-and-white. The film followed the exploits, in documentary style, of Ricky (Robb Wells) and Julian (John Paul Tremblay), two criminals doing what they did just about every day. In 1999 a sequel feature film Trailer Park Boys, also in black-and-white, was released. Both films serve as prequels to the Trailer Park Boys television series. In 1999, Drop Dead Gorgeous by Michael Patrick Jann used the mockumentary style to narrate a fictional small-town beauty pageant as a way to satirize Middle America.

Dark Side of the Moon is a 2002 French mockumentary by director William Karel. The premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick. FUBAR is a 2002 Canadian mockumentary film, directed by Michael Dowse, based on the lives of two lifelong friends and head-bangers living out their lives, constantly drinking beer. King of Bollywood is a 2004 film, in fact, the first Indian film in the mockumentary genre. Directed by Piyush Jha it starred the late Om Puri and British supermodel Sophie Dahl. It tells the story of an aging Bollywood Superstar and showcases the hilarity, colour, and zany-ness of his many comeback attempts. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary presenting an alternative history in which the Confederacy won the American Civil War.

First on the Moon (Russian: Первые на Луне, Pervye na Lune) is a 2005 Russian mockumentary about a fictional 1930s Soviet landing on the Moon. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a controversial yet successful film from 2006 which uses this style, as does Brüno, a similar film from 2009. Sony Pictures Animation released their second animated feature, Surf's Up in 2007, which was the first of its kind to incorporate the mockumentary style into animation. REC, a 2007 Spanish film by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, uses journalism aesthetics to approach a horror universe set up in a real building in Barcelona. The film was remade in the United States as the 2008 film Quarantine. As the first installment of the REC film series, it was followed by three sequels; REC 2 in 2009, REC 3: Genesis in 2012, and REC 4 in 2014.

On the Ropes is a 2011 mockumentary film written and directed by Mark Noyce. The film follows a fictional martial-arts instructor and his rivalry with a local boxing gym. The Dirties is a 2013 comedy mockumentary film written and directed by Matt Johnson. Johnson also directed the film Operation Avalanche (2016), a mockumentary about a faked moon landing. What We Do In The Shadows is a 2014 horror/comedy mockumentary film directed and written by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement; the aforementioned directors also star in the production. The film is centered on vampire flatmates living in Wellington. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a 2016 mockumentary musical comedy starring Andy Samberg as Connor4Real, an over-the-top parody of a commercial pop star. It is filmed in the style of a typical concert documentary such as Katy Perry: Part of Me and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Population Zero (2016) a mockumentary environmental scare film starring activism film maker Julian T. Pinder. We Make Movies (2017) is a "Making-of" mockumentary that follows an egotistical student filmmaker as he gathers his friends to help him make a movie for their local film festival.

In television

The 1983 The Comic Strip Presents... film Bad News Tour was a spoof rockumentary about a British heavy metal band. It preceded Spinal Tap by a year, but is not known to have been an influence on the U.S. film. The film led to LPs being released and the band really touring, and was followed by a sequel, More Bad News in 1987. Stella Street was a mockumentary which ran on the BBC from 1997 to 2001. It was written by Phil Cornwell, John Sessions, and Peter Richardson, and featured Cornwell and Sessions playing all the characters between them. The series was shot on handheld camcorders. Operation Good Guys, another low-budget BBC sitcom, ran for three series starting in 1997.

In television, the most notable mockumentaries in the 2000s have been: ABC Australia's The Games (1998–2000), Canadian series Trailer Park Boys (2001–present), the British shows Marion and Geoff (2000), Twenty Twelve (2011–2012) (which follows the fictional Olympic Deliverance Commission in the run-up to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games) and W1A, which follows the main characters of Twenty Twelve as they start work at the BBC, The Office (2001) and its many international offshoots, Come Fly with Me (2010), which follows the activity at a fictional airport and its variety of staff and passengers. British comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French often presented short mockumentaries as extended sketches in their TV show French & Saunders. Discovery Channel opened its annual Shark Week on 4 Aug 2013 with Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, a mockumentary about the survival of the megalodon. Notable popular examples include sitcoms Trailer Park Boys and its films (1998–present),The Office (U.S.) (2005–2013), Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), and Modern Family (2009–present); the American improv comedy Reno 911! (2003–2009); the comedy series The Muppets (2015); the UK streaming sitcom Derek (2012–2014); the Australian Chris Lilley shows Angry Boys, Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year, Ja'mie: Private School Girl, and Jonah from Tonga.

The series Documentary Now! (2015–present) on IFC, created by Saturday Night Live alumni, spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style and subject of each documentary. Hight argues that television is a natural medium for mockumentary, as it provides "for extraordinarily rich sources of appropriation and commentary" .

On radio

The BBC series People Like Us was first produced for radio in 1995 before a television version was made in 1999.

See also

• Docudrama - a fictional recreation of past events
• Docufiction - a blend of documentary and fiction
• Documentary comedy
• Found footage (pseudo-documentary)
• List of mockumentaries
• Mockbuster
• Pseudo-documentary - a fake documentary, often presented as real

Further reading

• Hight, Craig 2008: Mockumentary: A Call to Play," in Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong (ed.), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. Berkshire: Open University Press.
• Hight, Craig 2010: Television mockumentary. Reflexivity, satire and a call to play. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.
• Juhasz, Alexandra/Lerner, Jesse (eds.) 2006: F is for Phony. Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Visible evidence, vol. 17).
• Rhodes, Gary D. (ed.) 2006: Docufictions. Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
• Roscoe, Jane/Hight, Craig 2001: Faking it. Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester/New York.

External links

• Fake and Mock Documentaries (list) at the Media Resources Center of the UC Berkeley Library
• Mockumentary – Reflexivity, satire and a call to play at The University of Waikato, New Zealand