Doug Pray Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Art & Copy director Doug Pray offered during the film's Q&A at the Prospector Square theater that he didn't want to make a documentary that did nothing but re-play classic advertising, and he didn't want to make a talking-heads documentary. He achieved in both those aims, but there's also the uglier question of if he made a documentary at all. Backed by The One Club -- an organization, as the press notes observe, "dedicated to the craft of advertising" -- Art & Copy talks to some of the greatest names in the field and recounts their successes. Combining clips of ads with interviews with titans in the field like Dan Wieden (Nike's "Just do it"), Hal Riney (Ronald Reagan's "It's Morning in America") and George Lois ("I want my MTV!"), Art and Copy is meant as a celebration of creativity; it winds up being a circular tautology: Great advertising is great because it's great advertising. Art and Copy is, essentially, an ad for advertising -- all of the attractive features of the business are shown in a glorious and shining light, and any concerns or deeper questions are brought up briefly before being shoved away briskly, or, more often, simply left unasked.

It's unfortunate, really, because Pray's an inventive and quick-minded documentarian who can normally show the fullness and contradictions of a topic; Hype! chronicled the rise (and fall) of the Seattle music scene; Scratch captured the quicksilver world of turntablism and of DJ'ing; Big Rig showed the lives of America's truckers and their role in commerce. I was excited by the prospect of Art & Copy, if only because Big Rig did such a great job of showing how consumer goods get from point a to point b; I was hoping Art & Copy would examine exactly how the people at point a make the people at point b want their consumer goods. (And, yes, I was hoping for a little hint of Mad Men's bleak, chic look at the industry, as well; I'm not proud to say it, but it's still true.) Opening with the Oscar Mayer and Meow Mix jingles, Art & Copy then shows us ancient stone carvings, while one of the film's ad men notes that there's not much difference between modern advertisers and the ancients who painted "on the walls of caves." Well, actually, there is -- whoever painted the bison on the walls at Lascaux was not, in fact, attempting to sell bison at a tidy profit. Art tries to encourage you to think; advertising wants you to stop thinking and buy. (And trust me, I'm aware that as you read this, you scrolled past several ads telling you how you can lose weight fast and promoting Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so let me briefly mention that you can lose weight inexpensively and safely by eating less and exercising more, and that our own Nick Schager found Paul Blart: Mall Cop an uninspired mess of fat jokes.)

Hearing about connections between churches and movie studios never sits well with me, whether it's in reference to Evan Almighty or Lars and the Real Girl, but I completely understand why a studio would go for it. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense -- go to the audience keg you want to tap, and do what you can to make that happen. Now there's a new distribution twist in the world of moviemaking, and while I understand it, I can't quite believe it.

Variety reports that Big Rig, Doug Pray's documentary about truckers, will be released on June 3. Why is that significant? It's not just a nice, almost-summer day. Variety says that it "will be released just as drivers fed up with rising fuel prices and job cuts are contemplating an industry-wide strike." One, I guess that truckers won't be shipping this movie to its selected theaters. Two, is this the new craze? Will movies be made to tap into political unrest, or a potential market that will have some free time on their hands?

Documentary film maker Doug Pray wasn't so sure he wanted to do a film about graffiti. The director of Hype and Scratch had been approached to do a documentary about the subculture of graffiti artists but wasn't interested. That all changed though when he finally spent some time with one of those artists.

The documentary Infamy is being released Tuesday on DVD. The film followed graffiti artists to chronicle what it really took to be a graffiti artist in a major city – it goes way beyond scrawling "I wuz here" on a bathroom stall. Pray's film isn't the first to take a look at the art of graffiti – and here is where I say: Yes, I do think it is art. Almost 25 years ago, Style Wars was the first film to bring graffiti into mainstream pop culture. Well, it looks like no trend is being left unturned because Pray's film is just the first in a line of movies being released on DVD that are about graffiti. Not all of these films are documentaries either, narrative films like The Graffiti Artist and Quality of Life -- both made in 2004, are also getting a second look.

Considered "this ultimate form of urban rebellion," its too early to say whether these films will finally lift graffiti artists in to the mainstream art world or whether it just might be another exercise in mining a subculture for some easy "youth-oriented" dollars.

[via New York Times]