I’ve long loved anything that gives me a window into the minds and creative processes of my heroes. This is one of the reasons I’ve come to love the documentary medium so much. No revisionist history, no dramatic embellishments (though certainly there’s always a bit of fudging reality in the editing process) to embrace a cliché. To put it simply, docs keep it real.
When a doc deals with a subject who defines the phrase “warts and all,” it always gets my attention. I particularly relish it when a doc deals with a person whose work I admire but who has always seemed like something of an enigma to me. For example, a week or two ago I wrote my “From the Vault” column about the film “Jandek on Corwood” and the film’s subject, the mysterious Jandek, is a perfect example. Ondi Timoner’s film “Dig” is another perfect example—a portrait of wild man revivalist rocker Anton Newcombe and his friends/rivals The Dandy Warhols.
Another example is Todd Philips or Kirby Dick’s films about GG Allin and Bob Flanagan, respectively. The subjects are too interesting to look away, but they aren’t the kind of guys you’d like to invite into your home for a mug of hot cocoa.
When I heard that brave filmmaker Erik Nelson–whose additional credits include executive producing films such as “The U.S. Vs. John Lennon” and “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man”—had taken on the mammoth task of making a doc about Harlan Ellison (one of the most notoriously cantankerous authors ever to put pen to paper), I knew I had to see it.
So there you have it folks—the next film I’m on a quest to track down. I’ll keep you posted, and if and when I see the film, I’m sure you can expect at the very least another blog entry laced to the gills with fan boyish praise. I do loves me some Ellison.

No, he’s not doing a straight-line doc about the torture and abuse committed by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib, as I indicated in my last posting.

Instead, Mr. Morris, according to his Web site, www.errolmorris.com, is working on a documentary about photography and image making. The well-known torture and abuse photos taken by soldiers who worked at the Iraq prison will be a focus of the film, for Morris has interviewed those men and women, and likely other photographers, too.

The idea for this, his latest documentary project, which might be titled “Standard Operating Procedure,” according to imdb.com, developed out of the Morris theory that 100 years from now those prison photos will come to define the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Morris’ inspiration for the documentary, according to his Web site, developed out of an examination of two war photos in Susan Sontag’s book “Regarding the Pain of Others.” The photos were taken by the same photographer, but in one, cannonballs sit on a road, while in another, they sit in a ravine alongside the road.

Was one of those photos staged? How often are “iconic” photographs staged, posed or performed? These are some of the tough subjects Morris may be exploring in the film. And that  is exciting because Rory Kennedy’s “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” already did an excellent and straight-forward job of documenting  the military’s torture and abuse.

Sorry to say it took me seven years to stumble on Errol Morris’ “First Person,” a two-season long documentary television show that aired on Bravo in 2000. God is it good.

Morris interviews a giant squid enthusiast, an autistic industrial engineer, a woman who dated a serial killer in high school, and even somehow he documents the fact that a parrot witnessed an asphyxiation murder. Each episode is about 25 minutes long. I was dead tired but still I couldn’t turn them off.

First and foremost the first-person stories are incredibly compelling. Secondly, the camera work for the “first person” interviews, the music, quirky story titles (i.e. “I Dismember Mama”) and the scene recreations all add up to create an ethereal production quality. The complete series can be found online for about $35. I can’t wait to order it.

As a side note, from the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), I found out Morris is working on “Standard Operating Procedure,” a documentary that examines the incidents of abuse and torture by U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

What is sure to be another blockbusting documentary from Michael Moore, “SiCKO,” his take on the state of the healthcare industry in America, is scheduled to be in theaters this summer.

Moore’s Web site, Michael Moore.com, delivered the news along with the announcement that “SiCKO” will be shown in the main program of Cannes Film Festival, May 16 to May 27.

His last film, “Farenheit 9/11,” won the top prize at the festival in 2004 and went on to make more than $119 million in American theaters and $103 million internationally, while it only cost $6 million to produce the documentary, according to boxofficemojo.com.

“I’m honored to be asked again to come to Cannes,” Moore says on his Web site. “It’s been a good luck charm for us and the perfect place to present our work to the rest of the world. I’m hoping that this film will have the impact I think it will have.”