- Written and directed by Harry Rasky
- Narrated by Christopher Plummer
As you may have noticed throughout Documentary Month, I have trouble separating the subject matter of a documentary from the documentary itself. The reason is pretty obvious, when you stop and think about it: I’m used to reviewing fictional features, where the events/story depicted exists only in the confines of the movie, and thus one can critique form and content as a single unit. Documentaries are different, though; the subject of observation exists independently of the production. The Nazis exist outside Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy; Mark Borchardt exists and has a life (such as it is) which is not depicted in American Movie. By rights, then, I should be focusing my comments on the techniques and effectiveness in presenting the subject, rather than on the subject itself. In many cases this month I’ve not maintained the distinction and talked about the same thing that the documentary was talking about, instead of talking about the documentary itself. For that, I apologize.
For this one, though, I should be able to maintain the distinction. Being Different is an overview of several “human oddities” — people who would, in an earlier, crueler era, have been called “freaks.” (Even the term “human oddities” seems a bit insensitive, but so far I don’t think anyone’s come up with a good term which fulfills the unstated PC mandate of “distinction without qualitative judgement.”) Our narrator, Christopher Plummer, makes allusions to both Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver’s Travels while gazing thoughtfully into a funhouse mirror. What would it be like, he muses, if we stayed that way?
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Fore!!! |
You got it. This isn’t just a documentary about human oddities; it’s a pretentious documentary about human oddities. Because we won’t just be looking at freaks, oh no — Plummer informs us that we’ll be looking at the lives of people who are “profoundly human.” (Plummer, by the way, is using the same Valiumed-out diction that characterized his stop-by-for-the-paycheck performance in Starcrash.) Cue the dissonant electric piano soundtrack…
Our first few subjects all live in Gibsonton, Florida, the traditional “winter quarters” of carnival folk. (Flashbacks to the incredible X-Files episode “Humbug” are entirely appropriate.) Here the most mundane person we meet is a fire-eating dwarf. More prominent are Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, thirty-year-old conjoined twins linked face-to-face at the large intestine. The boys have been on display since their early childhood despite their parents’ initial determination not to exhibit the boys; as their father says, “Regardless of where they go and what they do, they’ll always be on exhibition,” so at least this way they’ll get something out of it.
Also among the denizens of the town are Paul Fishe, who at 29 years old weighs in at 729 lbs, and “Big Bertha from Boston,” of similar proportions. To illustrate the other spectrum, we have Icelander Johann Petursson, who at his advanced age has to support his 8′2″ frame with two canes (in his younger days, he appeared in such movies as Prehistoric Women). His opposite is Dolly Reagan, whose infantlike body with mature head made her a “human doll.” Dolly becomes something of a poster child for the standard answers to the questions they all are asked: Do you feel like a freak? Do you feel sorry for yourself? To the latter, she replies, “I suppose I have at times. I bet you have too.” When the interviewer also tries to use circumlocution to ask about her, ah, physical social life, she breaks in, “You mean sex?”
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We can see who wears the beard, but who wears the pants? |
The most famous of the people here are Emmett and Percilla Rejano, who are respectively the Alligator Man and the Monkey Girl; together, they’re billed as the world’s strangest married couple, and they seem very happy together. But Percilla’s hairy face demonstrates that, even in Gibsonton, there are limits to the extremes that the “normal” locals can accept easily; Percilla habitually wears a concealing wrap when out in public.
We’ve seen a lot of people on display so far, but what have we actually learned about them? Well, we’ve learned that fat people aren’t always jolly, and that oddities can still find true love. And we also learn about their sex lives, at least in vague terms. The Galyon twins have no exposed genitalia. Dolly Reagan did “very well, thank you” with her three husbands. The Rejanos aren’t asked specifically, but their son does show up to answer a few questions about growing up with them; it seems that any oddity shown here without offspring will be asked the question.
And what else have we learned? Only that writer/director Harry Rasky is being recalcitrantly uninformative. We learn almost nothing about what causes any given condition, progression through their lives, associated health problems, or any of the meaty stuff. Instead, we see people that we’re not supposed to call “freaks” — but in a carnival town, each introduced by an archetypal busker. This is still a freakshow we’re watching here, folks; kinder and gentler and interspersed with feel-good truisms a couple of degrees less satisfying than Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but it still concentrates on exhibition rather than understanding — of showing us their deformities, while trying to proclaim their inherent normality.
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At least we’re spared the ugly trousers that would complete this ensemble. |
(We also get a helluva lot of filler footage — whirling amusement park rides, hot-air balloons, and various other unrelated segments accompanied by forgettable music.)
And all of those flaws of presentation intensify as we leave the carnie world and profile “different” people living in the “normal” world. For transition we have Sandy Allen, world’s tallest woman at age 24 (7′7″), who lives in Niagara Falls and works at the Guinness Museum; and Billy Barty (at last, some true star power!), who founded Little People of America. Still somewhat in showbiz, these two also live and work in communities not specifically dedicated to exhibition. But each is still getting paid for their unusual qualities. (Scenes from the Little People’s annual convention goes on for quite a while. If you ever wanted to see dwarfs playing baseball, or roller-skating, or in bikinis [does it make me shallow to think that was just plain wrong?], this is the movie for you.)
The next segment takes us a little closer to the real world: Montreal. There, a differently-sized couple (he’s six-foot-something, she’s three-foot-something) live in a house first made for a couple of midgets, and where the idea is that he can bend down easier than she can climb up. Now this — this could really have been interesting, exploring the husband’s feelings of being the outsized person in his own house. Instead, we get footage of him flushing the miniature toilet. (And yes, the sex question comes up. He says it’s probably better than it was in his previous marriage.)
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Of course I feel sorry for him. But I also feel sorry for whoever’s sitting behind him in the movie theater. |
At last, we get to the most distinctive segment: Bob Melvin of Lancaster MO, whose outsized head graces the cover. And what do we learn? Well, that he’s got an outsized head. And that everyone in town loves him. And that’s about it. I’m sitting here saying, “Tell me about it! Did his face start out normal when he was a baaby, then grow incrementally? Is it bone growths or tissue? Is it squishy? What’s the deal with his tongue? Can he see out of his right eye?” Nope, none of that. Just footage of him biking around town with his grandson, and being memorialized (more than a little creepy while you’re still alive, I think) by his local church — for no particular reason that we’re told, though.
And then, after a long disco dance scene which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever (except perhaps by the oblique thematic correspondence of the title, “Freak Out”), we continue in the same vein for far too long. The man born without feet and with crab hands, who became a marathon runner and motivational speaker. The stub-armed, single-legged karate instructor. The fellow who fell asleep on the railroad tracks and ended up legless. The similarly legless young mechanic. (Naturally, he got the sex question.) and to cap it off, Louise Capps (it’s a pun, see), an armless southern lass who doesn’t let it get her down. Far from it; she’s twenty-eight, been married three times, and can put on her own pants and sign checks with her toes.
All of which, according to Plummer’s concluding monologue, is supposed to be indicative of the triumph of the human spirit and other such falderall. Glad they told us that, because it’s not what I got from the film itself. Instead, I saw a movie that tried to be both a freak exhibition (come on, the predictable questions about sex should clue in the most dunderheaded viewer that we’re being presented with spectacle for the sake of novelty here) and inspirational “We’s just normal folks” glurge. (All of them are just beloved in their hometowns, naturally — but none of that’s from pity, obviously, because pitying the handicapped is insensitive, right?)
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Yeah, okay, that’s impressive… but can she handle a stick? Huh? Huh? |
Even without the shallow moral, the documentary lacks pretty much anything in the way of structure. The fact that the first segments all deal with carnie types and the latter ones are all living in the “normal” world seems less an intentional transition than a sign of what order segments were filmed in; apparently the filmmakers first went to Gibsonton, as oddities are pretty thick on the ground there, and then started hunting up others who weren’t on display. The lofty theme isn’t even given much support: Footage of the footless marathon runner plays under the opening credits, but instead of using him and his inspirational speaking to bookend the documentary, his segment comes somewhere in the shapeless middle; our finale is instead Louise Capps, who comes across as an armless pincushion. “Armless people can still be married at age twelve” doesn’t seem like a good example of the triumphs Rasky’s ostensibly trying to showcase.
Each of these individuals would be a great subject for a more substantive, Nova-style documentary (and in fact, many of them have been — some even using footage from this project) that goes into more depth as to the specifics of the condition and a more honest look at how one’s condition affects one’s life, instead of the “different but normal” sketches shown here. As it is, this movie simply makes good “Hey honey, come lookit this!” fodder, while bringing its own band-aid for those consciences wounded by enjoying a freakshow.
A Notable Quotable:
“Actually, the ‘jolly fat man’ is a myth, as far as I’m concerned. You figure we’re more susceptible to heart disease, kidney disease, lung failure, liver trouble… What the hell we got to be jolly about? Ho, ho, ho.”
- Paul Fishe
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 0
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- Christopher Plummer played General Chang in Star Trek 6
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