In addition to the dazzling level of detail that goes into its homages to classic nonfiction films, Documentary Now is remarkable for its willingness to indulge a strain of pronounced melancholy, which is one of many reasons why the word “parody” doesn’t actually do the series justice.
In a public Q&A with me on Wednesday night—part of the University of Missouri’s Based on a True Story conference, which serves as a pregame for the True/False film festival—the series’ directors, Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono, talked about the intense preparation that goes into every episode and how it’s led to them inadvertently crossing paths with the movies they’re paying tribute to: For “The Eye Doesn’t Lie,” their takeoff on Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, they shot with the exact same lens used in the original film—not the same kind, mind you, but the actual piece of equipment—and inadvertently hired the same courtroom sketch artist who covered the original trial. Although Albert Maysles died before the series premiered with the uncanny Grey Gardens simulation “Sandy Passage,” he’d already taken the time to coach Buono on how to emulate his shooting style.
“Sandy Passage” ends with a twist, shifting from the handheld style of classic direct cinema to the found-footage aesthetic of Paranormal Activity–esque horror films. But the fact that the series’ on-screen Maysles analogues end that episode with their guts torn out didn’t prevent the show from bringing them back for Season 2’s “Globesman,” which draws on the Maysles’ classic Salesman. It’s one of Documentary Now’s most poignant episodes, finding genuine pathos in the struggles of a group of traveling globe salesmen—two of them played to perfection by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen—to eke out a living, but it very nearly ended in a dramatically different way.
Throughout “Globesman,” the men of Amalgamated Globes consistently feud with their unseen nemesis, an atlas salesman named Karl Richter who always seems to be one step ahead of them. Near the end of the episode, they pull up at a gas station next to a car with an “ATLAS” license plate, and decide its driver must be the notorious Richter. They follow him into the bathroom, one clutching a tire iron, and, it’s implied, beat him savagely. In the original ending, Thomas explained, Richter got his revenge.
“In Season 1, ‘Sandy Passage,’ there’s a little twist at the end where the Fein brothers are killed by their subject,” Thomas said.
So one of the first decisions made was we should kill them at the end of [“Globesman”], too—this really funny, odd callback. That final shot where they’re driving away down the street, nobody notices this, but the car that follows behind them is Karl Richter’s car, with the “ATLAS” license plate. So originally they were going to drive away, the camera would stay, and then like a block away they would get T-boned by Karl Richter at the intersection. We run up and get up on the scene, and meanwhile Karl Richter gets out of the car and just executes everyone. We really went to great lengths. We bought two period cars that we removed the engines from to make the crash safe. We had the whole thing all choreographed with stunt guys. In all fairness, it really frustrated me at the time, but Bill called me up the night before and said, “Do we really want to do this? It’s kind of a nice story. Fred’s giving a really great performance. I really care about him. It’s already sad episode, and it’s gonna bum me out.” It was a long conversation, and I acquiesced. I remember driving over in the morning, going, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, we’re not gonna be able to do it.” I was trying to think of ways I could convince Bill to at least let us shoot it. But he put his foot down.
Added Buono, “In retrospect, it seems crazy, but it was gonna be really bloody. We had already planned the whole thing. We had all of these squibs and guns.”
While the vividness of Thomas and Buono’s description makes one long to see the scene they never shot, it’s a good thing they didn’t, since it would have shattered the mood of what ended up being one of the series’ best, and most delicately balanced, episodes. And Thomas, with some distance, agrees. “I’m genuinely glad we didn’t do it,” he said. “Honestly, it comes from working in sketch comedy for a major network where you can’t do stuff like that.”
