Documentaries are neat-o
I enjoy watching documentaries, and I watched one tonight for the second time called "My Date With Drew." It is about a guy who tries to get a date with Drew Barrymore in 30 days. He won $1,100 on a game show by answering the final question correctly...the answer: Drew Barrymore. He took the money, bought a video camera, and with the help of his friends sets out to get a date with Drew. Bottom line: if you have a dream, no matter how crazy or unrealistic it may seem, it's worth trying. It's a great film and I highly recommend it.
Another cool one I saw earlier this year on PBS is "Country Boys." It follows two boys in Eastern Kentucky for four years and their struggles growing up in Appalachia. Each boy has a different home life with unique challenges. I'm sure it's available in most libraries by now.
If I were to make a documentary it would be one of the two of these. 1) Japanese-American Internment Camps during WWII. I have a keen interest in the subject and still can't fathom the idea that America would round up a group of people (US Citizens, no less) and send them to concentration camps. Even after all these decades, very few of their stories have been told or heard, and now most of those who were a part of the events are dying. 2) I'd like to make a film about growing up in a German Catholic village (<800 people) in Western Kansas as an outsider. There are so many wacky people who live there and I think it would be a funny story to tell, like Virginia who went to every funeral held at Cookie's Mortuary (yep, the mortician's name was Cookie). What's funny about Virginia going to every funeral is that she usually didn't know the person; she just knew that they always had a big dinner at the church afterwards. Needless to say, Virginia was a "well-fed" woman.
I think everyone has a story to tell, but sometimes we don't realize it unless we think about it. What story would you like to tell?
6 Comments:
OMGoodness- I JUST finished watching "My Date with Drew", what a crack up! I was giggeling with him when he finally got his date with Drew.
oh, I guess I should read the WHOLE post before commenting...
I suppose if I could go back in time and do a documentary I would love to interview the colonial mothers, the women who helped shape our country. There is so much out there about the founding fathers, but very little about the women in their lives. What was daily life like for them, how did they feel politically,socially etc. I've read some good books on the subjects but they are lacking in some areas.
Another sad thing about Japanese internment camps is that the young Japanese men in the camps were ultimately drafted to fight for the United States even though they were not considered "citizens." There actually is a good PBS documentary on some men in the Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming who refused to answer the draft and were sent to prison. It's called "Conscience and the Consitution."
If I did a documentary it would be with homeless people and how they got there. I always wonder "their" stories when I see them on the street. The problem is it could be dangerous interviewing them maybe and getting a straight story out of some of them might be hard too. I saw a kid (under 20) get on the bus the other day and he had his cardboard sign and a old backpack but didn't look like he had been out on the street very long but I almost asked him what his story was but he was toward the front of the bus and I was in the back. Ohh that would be another good documentary...people on the public bus(I'm sure "pop" could tell some stories and I know I see some crazy things riding the bus to school too).
I watched a great documentary on PBS that was hosted by Brad Pitt about three different places in the world that had terrible diseases and the people who were able to help change the situation. One group of doctors actually smuggled medicine to the people who had a rare-form of TB.
Ok, Tom totally stole my idea for the documentary on homeless people! He thinks that he came up with the idea and I think I came up with the idea.
Well, I would make a documentary on handicapped kids and/or parents raising a handicapped child. I have read many good books where parents share their experiences raising a handicapped child. They are very inspiring, even for someone who isn't around a handicapped child all the time. There is just so much that people do not understand and it would be great to show people what handicapped children and their parents face everyday.
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