A movie, starring ... Me
By Justin Juul
Val Kilmer introduces the rock biopic “The Doors” with death poetry from Jim Morrison. The last line, “Did you have a good life before you died; enough to base a movie on?” hovers in the air as the camera pans over a stark and mystical Mojave landscape, giving the audience ample time to ponder. Would a movie based on one’s personal experience be the ultimate proof that life was worth living? And just how dramatic does a life have to be to occupy 90 minutes of someone else’s time?
If biopics were once reserved for the biggest of cultural icons — Fidel Castro, Hunter S. Thompson, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — their cousins, biodocs, are now being made available to anyone with the resources to commission one. A new crop of filmmaker/personal historians are offering at least a downsized version of full feature treatment for those of us not in Oliver Stone’s pipeline.
Teri Duff, of Family Archive Films in Oakland, became a personal historian the day she turned her camera on her quirky grandmother. A seasoned broadcast journalist, Duff knew that a simple talking heads piece would lack depth — so she supported her grandmother’s stories with old family photographs, home movie clips, and archival footage of the places and times her grandmother spoke of. The end result was a polished documentary. Her children would watch the tape frequently, and friends of the family began requesting that Duff lend her expertise to the documentation of their parents’ and grandparents’ life histories.
The personal history field has been gaining momentum in the last few years, manifesting in the form of small businesses like Family Archive Films and Storyzon in the Bay Area, as well as with larger organizations like The Association of Personal Historians, and in online networking platforms like YouTube and MySpace.
According to personal historians like Duff, the natural human desire to pass on knowledge has traditionally been accompanied by a frustrating lack of resources. Most people don’t have the time or patience to put their stories down on paper, and most don’t possess the expertise with editing equipment needed to make a film digestible. A personal biography video from Family Archive Films is set to music and edited into a coherent narrative.
Most of Duff’s films are commissioned by the children of people 65 and up and are given as anniversary or birthday gifts, but the window is wide open for other uses. Imagine bringing a first date home and popping in a movie about yourself to cut out all those annoying questions, like, “Where are you from?” or “What do you do for a living?” Some people even use Duff’s videos as a supplement when arranging their estates. While Duff’s films have yet to reach a wider audience, she does see room for her services in the recent wave of consumer-driven media and entertainment.
She cites the popularity of YouTube sensation “Your Old Man” — a daily dispatch from aging soccer fan Graham, from London, who shares from his chair or garden thoughts on everything from movies to death — as a sign that the world, especially the older generation, is yearning for a service such as hers. “The stories older people tell,” says Duff,” are always interesting because things were just so different back then.”
Justin Juul is an intern with SF360.org.
10.25.2006