random dudes department:
Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story: ok so basicyl there were/are these companies that would take out ads in the back of magazines like "we want your lyrics! send em in! we'll turn them into a song!" regular non-musician people would then send their lyrics in, the company would go "these are great! we'll put it on a record for you if you pay us," and then the lyrics writers would go "ok." the lyrics could be bad, bizarre, or boring, and the musicians were basically just trying to please the customer, not make a star songwriter out of them. anyway it's a good doc because the filmmakers talk both to some song-poem writers (usually people who are compelled to make music but can't play a lick) and to some of the mysterious session musicians who (dubiously) make dreams come true
forum moderator scooby doo gang vs. single random dude department:
Resurrect Dead: 2011 documentary that mostly gets to the bottom of the Toynbee tiles, which were these guerilla linoleum tiles that said "TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOVIE '2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER" that would be randomly embedded in streets and crosswalks. they were mostly in the northeastern US but were also scattered as far afield as their creator could manage. I dunno if I can adequately express the experience of seeing a Toynbee tile in a crosswalk, without any context, and thinking "wtf does this mean and how did they embed it in the street like that," and just... not having any of the answers for years. the toynbeeidea.com website linked from Wikipedia is associated with the filmmakers, so you could also browse that and learn a lot of what's revealed in the doc, but it's the kind of doc that strived to have a camera rolling while pieces fell into place live, so there's that
celebrity doc department:
The Eyes of Tammy Faye: the documentary (2000) not the biopic based on the documentary (2021). if you don't know who tammy faye bakker is, she's the former wife of jim bakker, a scummy big-money tv preacher who was a punchline in the 80s and famously fell from grace for sleeping with a playboy model. and probably some other stuff i forget i wasn't alive then. anyway Tammy Faye wears a shitton of mascara and at the time she was absolutely on this prosperity gospel TV conservative Christian commercial gravy train, and i dunno that might make you assume she's just a terrible person by default, but the documentary actually kind of makes her out to be a sympathetic character (who wears a shitton of mascara) and I thought it was interesting for that reason
Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story: ok so basicyl there were/are these companies that would take out ads in the back of magazines like "we want your lyrics! send em in! we'll turn them into a song!" regular non-musician people would then send their lyrics in, the company would go "these are great! we'll put it on a record for you if you pay us," and then the lyrics writers would go "ok." the lyrics could be bad, bizarre, or boring, and the musicians were basically just trying to please the customer, not make a star songwriter out of them. anyway it's a good doc because the filmmakers talk both to some song-poem writers (usually people who are compelled to make music but can't play a lick) and to some of the mysterious session musicians who (dubiously) make dreams come true
forum moderator scooby doo gang vs. single random dude department:
Resurrect Dead: 2011 documentary that mostly gets to the bottom of the Toynbee tiles, which were these guerilla linoleum tiles that said "TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOVIE '2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER" that would be randomly embedded in streets and crosswalks. they were mostly in the northeastern US but were also scattered as far afield as their creator could manage. I dunno if I can adequately express the experience of seeing a Toynbee tile in a crosswalk, without any context, and thinking "wtf does this mean and how did they embed it in the street like that," and just... not having any of the answers for years. the toynbeeidea.com website linked from Wikipedia is associated with the filmmakers, so you could also browse that and learn a lot of what's revealed in the doc, but it's the kind of doc that strived to have a camera rolling while pieces fell into place live, so there's that
celebrity doc department:
The Eyes of Tammy Faye: the documentary (2000) not the biopic based on the documentary (2021). if you don't know who tammy faye bakker is, she's the former wife of jim bakker, a scummy big-money tv preacher who was a punchline in the 80s and famously fell from grace for sleeping with a playboy model. and probably some other stuff i forget i wasn't alive then. anyway Tammy Faye wears a shitton of mascara and at the time she was absolutely on this prosperity gospel TV conservative Christian commercial gravy train, and i dunno that might make you assume she's just a terrible person by default, but the documentary actually kind of makes her out to be a sympathetic character (who wears a shitton of mascara) and I thought it was interesting for that reason