“This film is a start for me on the
journey to understand who my dad is and why he’s done the things he has. And through the process, I hope to better
understand myself,” says Scott Christopherson at the beginning of Only the Pizza Man Knows. The title, one learns, alludes to
Christopherson’s failure to meet the goal of the film, at least concerning his
father. He never truly finds out why his
father has managed money poorly or what led to his nervous breakdown. As he reflects on his experience creating the
documentary, though, it is evident that he is satisfied with his personal goal:
“I think I’m clear about what I am;” “I may never understand the challenges and
trials life can bring, but I think I’m better prepared to take responsibilities
for them.” This statement of
self-reflexivity demonstrates Only the
Pizza Man’s use of critical rhetoric, which, according to Nichols,
“[stresses] the ambiguous motives and uncertain impulses that surround human
action” (108).
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| Christopherson, admitting he still doesn't have all the answers he was looking for while editing Only the Pizza Man Knows |
The motives that govern human
action always circle back to the filmmaker in the Autobiographical mode of
documentary. For Christopherson, it’s a
matter of looking at his (then) current practices and how they are possibly
shaping him to become like his father—something he hopes to avoid, despite his
newfound appreciation for his father. In
Convert, the crux of the story isn’t
so much about his subjects’ decisions to leave the church (or remain in it in a
very conflicted state) as it is about Christopherson’s role in their conversion
and whether he caused more harm than good.
Doug Block’s 51 Birch Street,
on one level, is the story of one woman’s struggle through an unhappy marriage;
however, regarding ambiguous motives of human action, it is more a story about
digging into one’s family history at the risk of discovering secrets that might
better be left hidden (contrast this with Berliner’s Nobody’s Business in which he explicitly asks his father to open up
about the events that led to his parents’ divorce). Should Block read his mother’s journals or
not? That her story has already been (literally)
written makes the conflict primarily his.
In Tajiri’s History and Memory
the history of Japanese-American internment during WWII is centered around the
filmmaker’s struggle to remember (and, consequently, preserve) an event that
she did not experience herself.
The
delicate nature of “baring oneself to a public” (Fox 41) invites questions
about the appropriateness/ethics of the Autobiographical mode. Why would someone want to air dirty laundry
to those willing to watch? As Fox
explains, universals can be found in the personal, thus making the intensely
individual story applicable to a larger audience: “At its best, the autobiographical
mode not only closes the gap between photographer and subject but also the
space between filmmaker and audience—brought together through a subjective
familiarity and an invitation to know the ‘I’ behind the camera” (41).
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