TIFF 2017 - Documentaries, Stories Based on Real Events

The documentary is not my favourite form of cinema because I find many of them to be about depressing topics and I don’t really like the interview style of information dissemination.  Surprisingly, this year there were multiple documentaries that interested me, dealing with a wide range of topics including investment fraud, celebrity sex secrets, corruption in the chicken industry and the Toronto Raptors basketball team.  We also watched a couple of movies that were neither biopics (which I previously wrote about) nor documentaries, but rather, fictional stories spun around real people and significant real-life events.

The China Hustle deals with the latest crisis to hit the US financial markets since the sub-prime mortgage fraud caused banks to fail in 2008.  The scam involves listing companies based in China on the New York Stock Exchange with falsified value, revenue, profit and growth projections in order to lure investors into purchasing overvalued stock.  To accomplish this, a Chinese company would take part in a “reverse merger”.  This involves finding a defunct American company (often a mining company) that is still listed on the stock exchange, merging with it and taking over its stock ticker.  A Chinese subsidiary of some big name auditing firm like Deloitte or Ernst and Young would then be paid (bribed?) to certify the new stock offering, giving it the air of legitimacy.  Since there are no Chinese laws governing improper financial dealings abroad, the Chinese companies can act with impunity.

Third-tier US banks and investment firms such as Roth Capital and Rodman & Renshaw jumped on what they thought was their new “golden goose”, pushing for their clients to buy these stocks, whose prices seemed to soar higher and higher.  It was not until Carson Block, an investor based in China, decided to visit Orient Paper Inc., a pulp and paper company which his family was invested in, that the truth came out.  Instead of a multi-million dollar company doing bustling business, Block found a decrepit building with 40 employees, 1 truck and a yard full of rotted wood.  Block published an analysis on his finding, but first “shorted” Orient Paper’s stock, betting that his revelations would cause the price to plummet, which it did.  Block made a bundle off this transaction, then started his company “Muddy Waters” to continue finding fraudulent Chinese companies, shorting their stock, then exposing them.

The documentary mainly focuses on Dan David, a Pennsylvania money manager who was initially also pushing these Chinese stocks.  Once he realized what was happening, he joined in shorting the stocks.  But unlike Block who was satisfied with just profiting from the situation, David has tried to raise awareness and get Congress to step in to protect the investors through legislation.  So far, David has been unsuccessful and none of the perpetrators of this fraud has been prosecuted or held responsible.  It was frustrating watching several of them be interviewed and smugly deny any wrong-doing.  It was also heartbreaking to watch the interviews of several small-time investors who have lost everything in these scams.  Mutual funds and pension funds were also fooled into investing, thus affecting even more people.  It seems incredible that after what the US went through in 2008, they would not have learned by now that there is no such thing as a “fast buck” and if something seems “too good to be true”, it usually is.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood follows around the now 90-year-old George Scotty Bowers, who acted as a “purveyor of sexual partners” for Hollywood celebrities from the 1940s-1980s.  In 2012, after decades of remaining silent about the secrets that he knew, Bower wrote a tell-all book called “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars“, which revealed the sexual preferences and shenanigans of a bunch of high-profile stars and celebrities.  Scotty was a former marine who worked at a gas station after the World War II, where he met and had a sexual encounter with actor Walter Pidgeon.  This led to a new “party service” business for Bowers, who fulfilled any request for sexual encounters by the Hollywood jet-set, be it gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, threesomes or orgies.  The sexual preferences of some of his clientele, such as Cary Grant or Rock Hudson, are common knowledge today.  But some revelations were a surprise to me, such as the true nature of the relationship between Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who were never lovers and never lived together, since he was gay and she was a lesbian.  I was also surprised to learn of the bisexuality of Edward, the Duke of Windsor, and his paramour Wallace Simpson.  Scotty himself boasted of quite the bisexual sex life, including an infamous threesome with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner and many gay affairs.  His business ended in the mid 80s with the arrival of the AIDS epidemic and in 1984, Scotty settled down and married Lois, a former lounge singer who is with him to this day.

Supersize Me 2 – Holy Chicken is Morgan Spurlock’s follow-up to his 2004 exposé on the nutritional value (or lack-thereof) of MacDonalds menu items.  This time, he turned his attention to the chicken industry and chicken sandwiches in particular.  The gimmick this time would be Spurlock’s attempt to open a healthy chicken sandwich restaurant.  The problem is that no one really wants to eat a healthy (grilled) chicken sandwich, preferring the much tastier but less healthy deep-fried chicken sandwich.  So with tongue in cheek, the rest of the documentary is spent investigating ways to make his “crispy, never say fried” chicken burger joint appear to be healthier.  This included painting charcoal grill marks on the chicken and heaping vegetables on top of it, using green paint and wood décor in the restaurant to give a natural feel, and only using the "best" chickens.  To be able to say his chickens were “farm to fork”, he started his own chicken farm, which he called Morganic (play on Organic and Morgan) Fresh Farms.   Next came an indictment on the meaningless labels placed on poultry, including “organic”, “natural”, “no hormones”, and “free-range”, with no real standards being enforced for any of these terms.  Then he examined the modern chicken breeding practices which result in chickens so big that their legs cannot support their weight and cause heart attacks. This is followed by a segment that compared the “Big Chicken” industry to mob bosses who used immoral tactics to keep chicken farmers indentured to them.  The finale features the grand opening of the Holy Chicken restaurant, which Spurlock uses as a means of trying to educate the public on truths about the chicken industry.

When basketball first expanded into Canada in 1995, Toronto was still primarily a hockey city.  Attendees to the early Toronto Raptors games did not really understand the ins and outs of basketball and the rest of the American teams in the NBA all thought of Toronto not just as a foreign country, but almost as if it were some alien planet.  Much of this changed when the Raptors acquired Vince Carter in 1998, and his impact in creating interest in basketball within Toronto, and interest in Toronto from the rest of the league is explored in the documentary The Carter Effect, produced by Toronto superstar rapper Drake and NBA superstar Lebron James.  Vince Carter was a superstar in the making, with powerful and innovative dunk shots that excited fans, teammates and opponents alike.  Carter’s addition to the team helped the Raptors reach the playoffs for the first time in the 1999-2000 season, and to repeat the trip in 2001 and 2002.  During this period, the Raptors set league-wide attendance records and the term “Vinsanity” was coined to describe the hype surrounding Vince Carter.  Suddenly Toronto seemed like a basketball town and other NBA teams started to take notice.

Carter’s tour with the Raptors ended on a sour note when several years of poor performances by the team, resulting in missing the playoffs, and Vince’s chronic injuries led to his being traded to the New Jersey Nets in 2004.  Fans did not take this well, with rumours abound that Carter had demanded a trade and abandoned the city that loved him.  For years, the fans booed Carter mercilessly every time he returned to play in Toronto.  In the documentary, Vince claimed that he never wanted to be traded but was forced out by a change in management.  Eventually the fans forgave Carter and gave him credit for all that he had done for the city.  In 2014 while celebrating the Raptors 20th anniversary, a tribute reel featured Vince’s accomplishments and the fans responded with a standing ovation.  I watched the game that day, and like Vince Carter, I had tears in my eyes when this happened.  The Carter Effect allowed Raptors fans to relive all these memories.

The two movies we watched that spun fictional stories around real life events were coincidentally both related to historic situations that occurred in the former Soviet Union or USSR.  Sergio and Sergei is a sweet tale of friendship that blossoms in spite of different ethnicities, cultures and religions and in the face of oppression, political and economic strife.  Sergio is a Cuban university professor and amateur ham radio operator, trying to support his young daughter and his elderly mother.  It is 1992 and the Soviet Union had just collapsed, leaving Russia and its major ally Cuba in financial straits.  Sergio receives a new ham radio from his American friend Peter, who has ties to NASA.  This causes the Cuban secret police to regard Sergio with suspicion and to monitor his transmissions.  One day, Sergio makes contact with Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev who is on a tour of duty on the space shuttle Mir, awaiting approval to return home.  As time passes, it becomes clear that Russia is stalling regarding sending Sergei home because they don’t have the funds to do so.  Sergio tries to enlist Peter to get aid from NASA to help Sergei.  This is a delightful and touching movie that does not totally shy away from the hardships faced by Cuba and Russia during this period, but in general keeps the tone light and comical.  While the fall of USSR and the plight of Krikalev are based on real events, as is the astronaut’s contact from space with ham radio operators around the world, the interactions with Sergio and Peter are fictional.  The movie lost me a bit at the end when it injected minor elements of fantasy to make the story more fairy-tale-like, which I thought was unnecessary.  Otherwise I really enjoyed this movie.

The Death of Stalin is a hilarious satire and black comedy that describes the days leading up to and the aftermath following the demise of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953.  The cruel and sadistic General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was feared by his people and his Council of Ministers alike.  Stalin ordered the arrest, incarceration or execution of perceived enemies at a whim.  These orders were carried out by his secret police, the NKVD.  Somehow this movie made you laugh, despite depicting what should be horrific acts including torture and executions, although I must admit that I felt a twinge of guilt for being amused.  Most of the humour comes from the frantic and inane interactions and infighting between Stalin’s inner circle including Malenkov, Molotov, Beria and Khrushev, as they “kissed ass” while he was alive and then turned on him and each other after his death.  The movie is all the more funny because all the Russian roles are played by American and British actors including Steve Buscemi, Jeffery Tambor and Michael Palin, speaking English in their native accents.  What made this movie so amazing was how historically accurate the depicted events were, despite the buffoonery and exaggerated situations that were played for laughs.  As an example, according to Wikipedia, Stalin was found unconscious in his bedroom, having urinated in his collapse and was subsequently moved to a couch.  All these points were faithfully depicted in the movie, but the hilarity that ensued when the bumbling ministers tried to lift Stalin while not stepping on his urine brought roars of laughter from the audience.  This was such a fun movie to watch, while also being educational.