Is Unknown White Male another Million Little Pieces?

Since we're going down this path - I'd like to nominate Grizzly Man as "Documentary most likely to be a satire". Perhaps Christopher Guest is the man behind Werner Herzog's doc. Or actually, behind Werner Herzog's entire LIFE lately.

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^ Sure you don't mean Project Grizzly?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117395/

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unknown white male the film is not a hoax - ruper murray believes doug is for real. however doug himself is a construction - his amnesia entirely fictional.
he has given himself away a few times, even in the film if you watch carefully.
he planned it all quite meticulously & has essentially created a new identity for himself. meet the new doug same as the old doug but more interesting.
and with no baggage. genius in a way, really.

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D.W. Griffith: “Birth of a Nation”. Rupert Murray, “Birth of a WASP”.

Firstly, did anyone else notice the subtle Christian messages sprinkled throughout the film. To wit: while recalling Doug's experiences in New York's Times Square, we see a nun carrying a placard with a picture of Jesus on the Cross and the words "His Pain, Your Gain". When he "visits" the Metropolitan museum of art, we see Botticelli’s "Jesus on the Cross" as well as an elaborate silver cross. We also see medieval knights in armor (crusaders?), along with a blue and white heraldic banner on the wall which I have yet to identify. Secondly, did anyone notice that while hearing how Doug has to learn about history, we see Nazi storm troopers marching in formation? Thirdly, there is a noticeable absence of Jews through the movie. I live in New York, I work on Wall St, I attended private college, and I’ve seen various doctors as necessary. I can go a fair amount of time without having a serious interaction with Blacks or Spanish, somewhat less time without dealing with Asians, but for me to exclusively deal with non-Asian, non-Black, non-Spanish, non-Indian, non-Jewish, co-workers, colleagues and professionals would be nearly impossible without willfully doing so. So, between the Psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker at Coney Island hospital, Neurosurgeon (Germano), and philosopher (who quotes John Locke, the founding father of capitalism), where is everybody? Think about the videos of Barbados and Bolivia, the parties in London. The only obviously non-Christian, non-White person with speaking role I can recall is Lt Pena from the Coney Island police dept. To my way of thinking, this is one of the most overtly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (or Anglican) movies I have seen. I thought for a moment yet another piece of religious symbolism, a Jesus allegory with Doug being “reborn”. However after his rebirth he makes no effort to help anyone except himself (a hot new model girlfriend and a sparkling new career as a photographer) quashed that thought. I see it more as the story of the birth of a WASP out of the chrysalis of his former self-centered, narcissistic, homoerotic, self-doubting self.

And yes, I feel that Doug is faking it. As the character in “My name is Earl” says, “I once faked my own death to break up with a girlfriend.” Doug is faking amnesia to break away from his former life.

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Whether or not it's a fake, it's very intriguing to consider losing one's entire history. Are we the product of all out previous episodic memories, or are we predetermined to be who we are based on our genetic makeup?

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I have no inside information, I know nothing of the people in and behind this film, but I can confidentally suggest to all that the film like most films is untrue. All films are you know.
Memories are clusters of neurons that learned to fire together or in series, over time this bond becomes stronger and chemical changes occurr. only a sever chemical change in the brain can cchange this bond. these develop all over the brain, they are physiological. the brain is pysiological of course. now these memories morph over time in their relation to other parts of the brain that provide perspective on the memory be it sensory, emotional or logical, etc. every time we remember we can put this cluster into a different relationship with others. this is why memeories are never reallly reliable.
so the premise of this movie is absurd. you can not wipe the slate clean. that is not how it works. you can lose connections and have trouble finding memories, like losing short term memeory versus long term, but the memories remain and they have some connections, you can not lose all the connections, especially the emotional connections down into the older parts of the brain such as the hypothalalmus. you especally could not lose all these connections with no physiological damage as the film suggets. does Doug pull his hand from fire? does he know what fire is?
and so this film ponders an ineresting philosophical issue that is abusrd which is typical of most philosophical issues.
here is a simple test, put Dougie boy under a scan and show him photos from the past and watch the screen light up everywhere. that is the end of Dougie and his hokes. Doug is full of shit and so is this movie.
Henry Dribble

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how does a man who has lost his memory know to go to the police for help? how does he know who the police are? yet he is astonished to see the crowds waiting to witness the changing of the guard. he very apparently does not remember them. strange considering all the history classes he supposedly took to "relearn all those years of history." i suppose they didn't cover london.

there are certainly some interesting concepts and questions posed by this film, but there is really nothing new here. the film was not nearly informative enough to leave the theater feeling as though we've learned something from all this. frankly, i thought it was mediocre and i started to get bored and essentially lose curiosity about the same time doug decided, you know, he really isn't all that interested in getting his memory back. oh really, doug? THEN, WHO THE HELL CARES? i've read text books, taken courses, and had dinner table conversations that were far more fascinating, philosophically intriguing, and enlightening than whether or not some wealthy dude who doesn't have to work for a living gets his memory back.

so i must say this, i'm not really sure whether i think this film is real or not. But, i do believe that if it were a hoax, the filmmakers would have opted for a "character" that was a bit more likeable, as it were. how many people that are going to see this film can relate to this man? can't be that many. if it were a fake, i feel as though we would have been watching a middle class, working stiff from nowheresville fight and suffer through the axiomatic human nature that is the desire to know one’s self. but if doug doesn’t really care who he is (or was, as the case may be), then where’s the story?

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ITS A DOCUMENTARY! Why does nobody get it? Its not a hoax and it wasn't faked. All the questions we have about it is what makes it such an interesting film. It clearly speaks for itself whether you think its a fake or not. The idea was that it is such a mystery surrounding this man's problem and it is something very hard for us to imagine. If there were clear answers, there wouldn't be any point in making the film. You came to see this man's DOCUMENTARY and thats what you got. Sorry if the film wasn't Hollywood enough for you or you didn't get enough sex and explosions. It was there to make you think which apparently nobody in this forum did.

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