History of Reality Film
"The thinking behind these pics is not new," wrote Gabriel Snyder in Variety about the techniques employed by recent reality movies. "In the 1950s, Samuel Arkoff tapped into teen auds with quickies like Rock All Night and Reform School Girl and beach films such as Bikini Beach ("It's where every torso is more so, and bare-as-you-dare is the rule!"). London's Evening Standard called Andy Warhol's 1966 film Chelsea Girls a reality film and noted that the Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 stated it was "to blame for reality television." The film consists of drugged-out conversations between Warhol Superstars Nico, Ondine, Brigid Berlin, Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga. "I was the only one who memorised my lines," said Woronov, "and no one even noticed." In 1970, Candid Camera creator Allen Funt made the film What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, where he secretly filmed people's reactions to unexpected encounters with nudity in unusual situations. However, it was with the advent of reality television, which presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors, combined with the smash box-office success of Jackass The Movie in 2002, that made reality film a genre studios began to consider seriously. The Real Cancun billed itself as "the first reality feature film", causing Scott Foundas to remark in his review in Variety that such a claim is "apparently ignoring last year's Jackass The Movie". In 2003 Comedy Central aired its feature length reality movie Windy City Heat, starring Tony Barbieri and Bobcat Goldthwaite (who also directed). In the movie, friends of real life aspiring actor Perry Caravello convince him he is playing the lead (as a "sports memorabilia private eye") of an action movie titled "Windy City Heat," itself faux-directed by Bobcat Goldthwait; everyone is in on the elaborate joke except Caravello.
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Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, reality and/or film:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
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“Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor- mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliché-shouting publicity agents.
Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance,
Ignorance bringing them nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)