The Yes Men Fix the World chronicles the audacious pranks of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who pass themselves off as representatives of Dow Chemical Company, Exxon and Halliburton, appearing at industry conferences and, remarkably, on the BBC--all in an effort to expose the impact of capitalism on society and the environment. In between their jaw-dropping activities, they interview economists and others at free-market think tanks to examine the underpinnings of capitalism. And connecting all of these episodes are humorous, scripted scenes with the Yes Men, mostly shot in various locations in upstate New York. Bichlbaum and Bonanno directed the 90-minute documentary with Kurt Engfehr (co-producer and editor of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine). The film had its television broadcast premiere on HBO in July and opens in theaters this month through Shadow Distribution. Documentary interviewed Bichlbaum at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July.

Documentary: Why did you decide to have the television broadcast on HBO before the theatrical release?

Andy Bichlbaum: HBO said, "If we can show it first, we'll give you a lot of money, and if we show it afterwards, we won't give you very much money."

D: How much money did they give you?

AB: $400,000. We're making a calculation. Nobody really knows how these things work. We're just figuring, Well, we'll try it and have fun with it.

D: The 2003 documentary The Yes Men was directed by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price. What prompted you and Mike Bonanno to make your own documentary?

AB: Well, after that experience, which was great and easy because all we had to do was do these actions, we kept getting invitations for things and we kind of moved in this more concrete direction. The first thing that happened was that one of our friends at Greenpeace suggested [that we do] the same sort of thing, but around the Bhopal issue, and try to make Dow take responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. [In 1984 Union Carbide, now owned by Dow, released tons of toxic chemicals in the air, killing thousands of people.] And that's when we set up the Dow [web]site, got invited on the BBC and so on. When we got invited on the BBC, we realized we had a whole other movie. And for one reason or another, we just decided to do it ourselves.

With The Yes Men, we had a lot of input; we talked a lot with them. So we thought, Why not throw it together ourselves? We didn't realize what an absolutely crazy, murderous process making a movie is. I'm not sure we would have done it if we had; I wouldn't have done it. But I'm really glad that we did. We decided that in addition to documenting actions and our own thing in it, we would primarily go and talk to victims and bring awareness of these struggles and link the actions to the struggles really directly. So we would go to India after appearing on the BBC. We would go to New Orleans to do a thing about New Orleans. Everything that we do, we wanted to document it a lot and cast it against this backdrop and interview the bad guys as well. So there was a very ambitious plan, a lot of things that we wanted to do very specifically, so we thought, Well, we better just make it ourselves.

D: So you started filming when you got the invitation to appear on the BBC as a representative of Dow.

AB: Yes, that was the first one. We got promised a bunch of money by Arte France right then. They said, "We'll help you make this movie. We'll give you $200,000." And I thought that sounded really great, but then it turned out we couldn't really access that money. They didn't trust us until we had a complete finished film in the can and could say, "Here's the film, we've done it." But they still wouldn't give us the money until we had licenses for everything. It was a really horrible experience. We had to jump through so many hoops. We wasted weeks and weeks of time that we could have spent making the movie, trying to access this money. It was just really stupid. So for somebody who wants to make a movie, I would say, Don't waste your time looking for money. Just make it and then you'll be happy. You'll own the film afterwards.

If we had kept those rights in France and Germany, we would have been able to sell to broadcasters and do a theatrical [release] in those countries. We would have made a lot more money than we made with this "fake" production money.

D: So they thought because you were first-time filmmakers, you wouldn't work out?

AB: Yeah, nothing could make them trust us. It's a really corrupt funding system in France, in Europe and in the US. We didn't do that much better in the US either, with funds we were promised. The one exception was in Britain. The Channel 4 Brit Doc Foundation gave us $100,000; they actually delivered half of it two weeks after they promised it to us, and the rest incrementally. So they enabled [the film] to be made.

D: What was Arte's role?

AB: They're our broadcaster. They're putting it on French TV and German TV. They haven't been willing to move that so we could also do a theatrical. And they weren't willing to give us any money until the film was completely finished. So really, we got pretty much screwed by that whole deal by taking their help. After the film was finished, they gave a lot of money to do the color correction and all that stuff. But what we really needed the money for was to make the film, not to do the color correction. [laughs] About $60,000 went to the French producer, so we ended up with about half the money that was promised. We would have ended up with a lot more if we'd just kept the rights and sold it to a broadcaster like them, who would have paid that much, and a theatrical company. Live and learn.

D: So how were you able to fund it if you didn't get any initial financing?

AB: Well, our day jobs; we both teach at universities. And we would also write to our mailing list and say, "Help! Send us a little money we need to build a prop or something." There are those Survivaballs; we got them built from $5,000 from our mailing list. The movie was really, really cheap to make--up until the point when we had to finish it and do all the processing and post-production.

D: When did you actually start shooting?

AB: In 2004, when we did this BBC thing. We just went ourselves. Mike shot. I went in, [and appeared on the BBC]. We did some follow-up, some vérité. The 2003 film is all vérité; there's no narrator. It's all Mike facing the camera saying things. With this one, we decided we wouldn't bother with that. We would just film what happened and we'd think of the "glue" and how to hold it together afterwards. We were kind of aware of a plot in our heads as we were going along and we angled towards the deep issues we wanted to talk about in the film.

D: When did you decide when you would put in these stylized, humorous, transitional scenes?

AB: That was the idea of Kurt Engfehr, our co-director. We were wrestling together with him on how to build this film--how to make it, actually. Kurt had the brilliant idea: Let's go to "Absurdland." It doesn't matter that we don't have any footage of you guys thinking. We'll just recreate it in this completely stupid environment.

So we went underwater. We went to broken-down factories. We even shot some Bollywood in India. We just made these completely preposterous locations our mental home, and it's kind of truer than what really did happen because we can show ourselves doing these things; it's clowning. The main thing that that communicates, besides the plot elements, is that it's not rocket science. Here are these two bumbling guys living in this dilapidated warehouse, supposedly having these ideas, and you can see our thought processes and it's not very complicated.

We filmed for weeks in Absurdland and did all kinds of crazy things. But that's how we decided to tie it together--by creating a comic book version of our thinking because it's very simple thoughts that lead from one to the next. The main thing was to say, OK, we do this thing on the BBC, the stock tanks because of this thing [and] there's this whole system that prevents companies from doing the right thing. So how bad can that get, you know? Oh, global warming, and then the end of the world and these corporations, and then they'll lead us right into the wall gleefully. So everything we filmed after that was about that. The conferences were about how bad things could get and what we could do about it. And then finally there's the end--Let's change things, with the New York Times action. So the plot is really simple; we just had to plug in these things to make it work.

D: How many different Absurdland scenarios did you come up with?

AB: Dozens. All kinds of stuff. We're actually going to make a whole separate movie just from those. We'll work on that later. We're working on distribution and outreach for the film right now. We decided we would do it ourselves because we weren't so happy with the way United Artists distributed The Yes Men. They had a lot of muscle and they had a lot of money, but they didn't really listen to us and they ended up doing some really dorky promotion that didn't help the movie. So we decided, Well, we just spent five years making this thing; we should also distribute it.

D: How are you distributing it?

AB: We've teamed up with really smart people like Shadow Distribution, which did The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and some other great films. They're really dedicated and they work hard. And we've got a publicist here [in the Bay Area], Karen Larsen. In New York, we've got a run at the Film Forum in October. We got a big outreach grant from FACT. Juliette Timsit saw the film and saw the potential for activist involvement in it. So we've got an outreach coordinator. We're talking to activist groups around the country to make it effective for them and get people to theaters and somehow have those audiences be motivated to join up with these activist groups.

D: So that's your goal: to try to get audiences be active themselves?

AB: Yeah, that's the whole purpose of the film, really. And of course that's the purpose of all activist groups--to get people involved with what they're doing locally. There are reasons to be active everywhere in the country, everywhere in the world. And there are a lot of groups working on those issues. All they need is more people. We hope that people will go see the film because it's funny, and will then join a group afterwards when they're motivated to do something.

Chuleenan Svetvilas is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California.

In January 2008, I spent 13 days in Phnom Penh working on a documentary film about Cambodia 30 years after the fall of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Many Cambodians were talking about the upcoming international tribunal, in which five former Khmer Rouge leaders (Pol Pot, never put on trial, died in 1998.) face charges of crimes against humanity for their part the deaths of 1.7 million of their people. A former soldier named Nhem En had been called as one of the witnesses. Sixteen at the time, he was a staff photographer at Tuol Sleng Prison, also known as S-21, where he dutifully photographed 6,000 prisoners before they were tortured and killed. 

It was a difficult production in nearly every way, and I vented my frustration in e-mail reports to Sara Bernstein, the film's supervising producer at HBO Documentary Films.      

The film, The Conscience of Nhem En, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary and was broadcast on HBO in July 2009. The DVD is available November 2 through Farallon Films.

DAY 1

Dear Sara:

First day in Phnom Penh. I drop my luggage at the hotel and go directly to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where most of the film will be shot. I'm unprepared for the experience. It's not just a museum, but the site where thousands of people were tortured and killed. One is forced to consider the worst that humans can do to one another--cruelty beyond comprehension. 

In tiny, two-by-six-foot cells, the prisoners were chained to the floor. They pissed into coolant containers and shit into ammunition boxes. If you spilled a drop, the guards pushed your face to the ground and made you lick it up.

Photographs of the prisoners are on display throughout--startling images of men, women, children, the elderly, even infants, before they were tortured and killed. Most of them stare at the camera, shocked and bewildered. For me, the most disturbing images are of the people who seem unaware of what is about to happen--and reflexively smile for the camera. 

Six thousand of the photos were shot by the subject of our film, Nhem En.     

Later, we visit the Choeung Ek killing fields outside the city. 

On the edge of the field, there is a huge, beautiful oak tree, which was used to bash babies' heads in. Women were striped, gang-raped, killed and thrown into mass graves.

Our interpreter, Han Ong, tells me about a woman he met who escaped the killing fields. Her Khmer Rouge guard told her he wouldn't rape her, but told her to say he did. A group of soldiers came along, asked him if he had raped her and he said, "Yes." They said, "Okay, it's our turn," and started to pull down their pants. A voice yelled out that a pregnant woman was escaping, and the soldiers rushed off. The sympathetic guard told the woman to run. She slipped into the water and hid for several hours.

The associate producer, Singeli Agnew, goes off with the camera to shoot some b-roll, and I hang out with Han. He was 7 years old during the time of the Khmer Rouge. He points to a palm tree and tells me he survived because of his ability to climb the trees and collect the sugar from the palm flower. He smiles and notes that palm sugar tastes better than any other kind of sugar. We talk about his family and his reunion with his mother after the war. It takes him a moment to realize tears are running down his cheeks. He says, "I'm sorry," then turns away and disappears for a half-hour.

I watch people, mostly tourists from China, Japan and Europe. They take off their shoes and walk the four or five steps up to the shrine where hundreds of human skulls are kept. As they slip their shoes back on and depart, they look stunned. A 20-year-old Cambodian woman prays nearby. She looks up, notices me staring at her and glares back. I realize I've intruded, and I respectfully nod to her. Her expression softens to a smile. Later, walking and driving around the city, I notice the same defiance on many people's faces.

DAY 3

The pre-production work has been frustrating. People who have a lot to say suddenly know nothing when we ask about filming them. Both the government and non-governmental organizations that have offered their assistance seem more interested in keeping an eye on us than helping us. Getting the necessary permissions has been a wild goose chase. We've been sent all over the city, back and forth to the same places, chasing the Minister of Information, the Minister of Culture, the Deputy Minister of Culture, his Excellency somebody, his Supreme Excellency somebody else. I'm not sure if we're not getting results because we were not giving them an envelope with cash or they really don't want to help us.

Corruption and bribery are a way of life. On the street, you see gangsters openly making collections, which the people call "taxes."

DAY 4

We film an interview with a tough, four-and-a-half-foot tall man named Bou Meng, one of four known survivors of Tuol Sleng Prison. He survived because he was an artist. A Khmer Rouge guard came around and asked, "Can anyone paint?" Bou Meng eagerly announced, "I can." So they stopped his torture, which had been going on for 30 days, and handed him a pencil and piece of paper. The guard shouted, "Draw something! If it's no good, we'll kill you." Luckily, they liked the drawing and ordered him to paint a portrait of Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the Khmer Rouge. Again, he was warned, "If it's no good, we'll kill you."

At the end of the day, we walk through a Phnom Penh ghetto. There's poverty like I've never seen--naked children, amputees, a thin man with AIDS lying on a mat, whole families living in an area as big as a full-sized bed with cement or dirt floors and no electricity, just fire. Of course, my camera draws a lot of attention, so I can't film people going through their daily routines.

Instead, I film portraits of several people, asking them to stare directly at the lens, like the S-21 prison photos but considerably more cheerful. To thank them, I ask Han to buy corn on the cob for about 20 street kids. At first, he seems to disapprove, saying, "You don't need to give them anything. They're peasants." But he gets into it when the children start laughing, and he buys skewered fish for them as well.

It's miserable here, but also alive. Crowds of people everywhere--on the street, in cars, on motorcycles and bikes. Everywhere, all day long, it feels like a street fair.

Tonight, we meet Nhem En, the photographer of Tuol Sleng, and a dedicated Khmer Rouge soldier. I was told he wants to be famous and scam money from his experience. Others are less critical. Vann Nath, another survivor of Tuol Sleng, told me, "I met Nhem En. I don't blame him."  

We'll film him at the S-21 prison tomorrow. Later this week, we'll go to his village, a nine-hour trip by car, jeep, motorcycle and foot to a remote jungle area on the Thai border. The area is known as the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge.

LATER

We had dinner with Nhem En, the photographer. He was happy-go-lucky, kind of childish and a little strange. His reputation seems harsh, but we'll see.

11 AT NIGHT

We have to find a new interpreter before tomorrow morning's interview with Nhem En. Han can't do it anymore. The interviews are bringing back his own painful memories--he lost his father, brothers and sisters--and it's overwhelming him. Today, he went blank in the middle of the interview. He just stopped talking. I don't know if he realized it, but I asked him if he was okay, if he wanted to take a break, and he said, "Yes, I need to stop." After a long break, he was still distracted, so we limited the interpreting to just asking the questions and briefly summarizing the responses. Han is normally super cool, on top of everything, so it was unsettling to watch him go through this.

DAY 6

Dear Sara:

We made it through yesterday. Han was upset about letting us down, so I asked him to continue as the production coordinator and also contribute questions to the interviews. I think he feels relieved. 

We talked with several Cambodian/English interpreters but most were educated abroad and sound like snooty Brits or spoiled American college students. I didn't think they'd be a good match for the people we're interviewing.

We lucked out and found a man named Sok Chamrouen. He mostly works as a tour guide, but he's an excellent interpreter. He's easy-going, but professional and doesn't back away from or soften challenging questions. As it is with nearly everyone we meet, he suffered greatly during the time of the Khmer Rouge, and lost most of his family.

Yesterday, all day at the prison, we interviewed Nhem En. He smiled through my questions about what it was like to witness the last moments of thousands of people's lives. At one point, he bristled and said, "What am I supposed to do? Sit around and cry about the past?" 

He lied. He said he was unaware of torture at the prison, but later admitted he heard people screaming all day long. He said that the guards never touched the female prisoners because they would be punished if they did. But it is well known that they regularly and brutally raped the women. In some of the Nhem En's own photos, the young women's faces are swollen from being punched.

I pressed him hard. His casual tone about the suffering that passed in front of his lens made me hostile. I suppose I wanted him to apologize for his part in the horror. I told him that the photographs he took are cold and cruel, without compassion, and I felt it reflected the photographer. He got angry, threatened to stop the interview, and said we couldn't see any of his personal photos unless we paid him $10,000. I told him we would pay him the same honorarium we paid the other interviewees, about $500 to compensate for their time. Suddenly, he turned jovial again, slapped me on the back, as if to say "just kidding," and called me his friend.

DAY 7

We were set to spend the day in rural areas outside of Phnom Penh filming former Khmer Rouge guards, but our leads turned out to be false.

I'm exhausted. The day starts early, around 6:30, and goes late. 

The production is tense. It appears we're being spied on or, more politely, monitored. When we interviewed Nhem En, there was a man we thought was a bored janitor hanging around. Today, we saw him coming out of DC-Cambodia, the NGO that controls much of the media that flows out of Cambodia.  

More paranoia: Our interview with Nhem En was interrupted by his cell phone four times. According to Sok, one of the calls was from his wife and the three others were from a government minister. He answered, "Yes, Your Excellency," and said, "Don't worry, I'm not telling them anything."

I'm not sleeping well. I think about what I've experienced here and I can't process it. I call home and try to talk about it with Peggy, but the words won't come out of my mouth. Instead, we talk about what's up at home, how Daisy's doing in pre-school. Then I hang up, put my head in my hands and weep. 

DAY 8

Sara: 

On the lighter side:, the food is good--Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese dishes with wonderful seasoning, whole leaves and twigs. Last night, we had a fantastic Chinese dinner. Everything on the menu was on display in front of the restaurant, including the vegetables. You pick what you want to eat--live fish, lobster, prawns, crabs, frogs, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, green onions--and tell them how you want it cooked, deep fried or stir-fried.

Han makes sure we don't poison ourselves. He says the rule is, if it grows above ground it's safe, but if it grows in the ground or in water, it must be boiled or fried.

Although the production has been difficult, we are getting good footage. We shot a lot of strong b-roll material and completed four in-depth interviews with the photographer and the three known male survivors of the S-21 prison. 

Today, we interviewed a man named Vann Nath. Like Bou Meng, he survived because he could paint (the third man, Chum Mey, lived because he could fix sewing machines). Vann Nath was tortured with electro-shock, pliers to his hands and nipples, and beatings. His interview was rich in detail, but detached. Before we started, he said, "I will tell you everything, except I will not talk about what happened to my wife, and I will not cry."   

DAY 11

Sorry, I've been out of touch.

We found a female S-21 survivor named Chim Math. There is some controversy as to whether she is a true S-21 survivor. No other women are known to have survived. But I walked through the camp with her, into the torture rooms, and I believe her. She has a full life--a husband and children, works as a social worker in a ghetto outside of the city. She said, if she met her torturers today, she wouldn't hesitate, no matter what the consequences were: She would kill them. It was shocking to hear those words from such a gentle person.

It's been impossible finding a Khmer Rouge soldier who will talk. We met Gung Ni, a former soldier who was mistreated by his comrades because he's an amputee (they often shot the badly wounded). He was not involved with the atrocities but introduced us to his neighbor, who had, on previous occasions, admitted his direct role in several executions. Of course, when we arrived he said, "I'm nobody. I didn't see anything. I didn't do anything."

I like Sok Chamrouen a lot. We hang out together while Singeli and Han do the hard work of making arrangements. He's helped me understand some of the history behind what we heard in the interviews. He explained Cambodia's geographic vulnerability to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. He told me about the vicious rivalry between the Vietnamese and Cambodians, how both sides used acts of extreme cruelty to intimidate each other. Before one particular story he asked me, "Are you sure you want to hear this?" I said, "Yes," without thinking. Now the story lives inside me. It is too horrible to share with anyone and I fear I'll never get it out of my head.

The news here is full of violent acts, from political assassinations to domestic disputes, many involving hatchets.     

DAY 12

We spent the day filming in the document room at the museum. I worked with Sok Chamrouen, going over the confessions of prisoners of S-21--meticulously recorded documents written in pink or blue high school essay books (S-21 was a former high school). One farmer was tortured until he gave the names of all the men in his village as CIA agents. He probably had no idea what the CIA was.   

DAY 13

This morning, I heard a heartbreaking story on Radio Free Asia. Early in 1975, the Khmer Rouge put out a call to Cambodians around the world to return and be part of the country's bright new future. There were around 5,000 Cambodians living abroad at the time, mostly in France--students, business people, artists and foreign service people. Four thousand responded and boarded specially chartered planes, which flew from Paris to Beijing to Cambodia. It turned out to be a ploy to eliminate any interference from Cambodian expats who might speak out or plot against the Khmer Rouge. When they arrived, they were immediately executed. I imagined a young man, studying at the Sorbonne, excited about returning to help his country, then stepping off the plane and realizing the horrible deception. When the radio story ended, I had trouble speaking for a few minutes.

I'm sitting in the airport, having coffee and a sandwich, waiting to come home. I'm reading a report, "Understanding Trauma in Cambodia," given to me by the Center for Social Development in Cambodia, which estimates that a huge percentage of the population--essentially everybody--suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The report states, "The most evident symptom in Cambodia today is fear." They also studied Cambodians in America and found similarly high rates of depression.   

On the first day here, I wrote about the angry faces of people on the streets of Phnom Penh. I was wrong: It's not anger. It's fear.

In our interview with Chim Math, she talked about returning to her village when the war was over. Everyone was shocked to see her; they thought she had been killed. One of the village women kissed her and said, "Life is precious." I think of that and cling to it.  

Steven Okazaki received his fourth Academy Award nomination for The Conscience of Nhem En. He also won an Oscar for Days of Waiting in 1991 and a Primetime Emmy for White Light/Black Rain in 2008.  

As the Dodgers faced off against the St. Louis Cardinals in the first game of the National League Division Series on TVs above, guests talked about their new projects, news of the day (including Roman Polanski and current Supreme Court discussions), exchanged info and mixed and mingled into the evening.

The crowd included Roadside Attractions co-presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d'Arbeloff (enjoying the success of  The September Issue, with Good Hair coming out this week), Zeus Quijano, Jr. (director/writer of DocuWeeks 2009 participant point of entry), Adam Chapnick (President, of DocWorkers and IDA Board Member), producers and editors with projects in the works, some just getting started, and many IDA staffers and friends. Check out some pics from the night below.

Read about the August, 28, 2009 IDA Mixer here.

See pictures from the July, 15, 2009 IDA Mixer here.

See pictures from all 2008 IDA Mixers here.

While the Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law was specifically aimed at stopping a certain type of sexual fetish videos which involve crushing small animals to death, it has been used against filmmaker Robert Stevens, who produces dogfighting videos.

Stevens became the first person ever prosecuted under a 1999 statute for selling videos such as Japan Pit Fights, Pick a Winna and Catch Dogs and Country Living. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. He didn't stage the fights or even film them. He pieced together films made by others, mainly in Japan, where dogfighting is legal.

A federal appeals court threw out the conviction and struck down the law. The appeals court said it was written so broadly that it could apply to too many other instances that aren't cruel by law, including pictures in hunting magazines, scene in classic Hollywood movies, even documentaries such as The Cove and Food, Inc., that may use certain imagery to illustrate a point.

The IDA filed an Amicus brief, telling the high court why the case being heard is important to the membership of IDA and urging the court to rule in favor of the filmmaker. Attending the hearing for IDA was former President, Michael C. Donaldson.

National Public Radio ran a great wrap-up of the arguments by the judges.

From NPR:

Seeking to revive the animal cruelty law, the government appealed to the Supreme Court. The Obama administration contended that depictions of animal cruelty are not covered by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, just as child pornography is not covered. Defending the statute today, Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal argued that Congress wrote its ban narrowly by creating exemptions from prosecution for depictions that have a serious educational, scientific, or artistic purpose. Chief Justice John Roberts bore in on those exemptions as evidence that prosecutions would depend on the views of the speaker.

As we await the judgment, audio and text transcript of piece detailing the arguments can be found here.

Regina Kimbell filed the $5 million copyright infringement lawsuit in United States District Court, Central District of California, alleging that Rock's film is a little too similar to her doc My Nappy Roots: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage which she claims she screened for Rock in on the set of his TV show Everyone Hates Chris two years ago.

Rock’s representative had no comment.

Good Hair opens in select theaters this Friday and wide on Oct. 13.

Read a Documentary magazine interview with Rock about his new film right here.

Plus, get the latest updates about the movie (but probably not the lawsuit) on the movie's website.

Canadian heavy metal band Anvil (recently spotlighted in hit doc Anvil! The Story of Anvil) is set to launch their first major tour in more than a decade.

Read more about the rocking doc in the Documentary magazine article "This Is Anvil: Heavy Metal Doc Follows Band's 30-Year Quest for Fame."

"The Anvil Experience" will be a 30-date North American trek in support of both the September 15 release of their most recent CD, This is Thirteen and the October 6 DVD release of Anvil! The Story of Anvil. The tour kicks off on January 7, 2010 and includes dates in New York and Los Angeles..

Audience members will be treated to a screening of Anvil! The Story of Anvil, before the group (singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow, drummer Robb Reiner, and bassist Glenn Five) takes the stage for a set of heavy Anvil classics.

For the hardcore fans, a limited number of 50 "VIP Anvil Experience" packages will be made available for each show. Those include a ticket to the concert, a copy of the This is Thirteen CD, a copy of the Anvil! The Story of Anvil DVD, a fanny pack (a constant fashion companion of Reiner's as seen in the film), and a meet 'n' greet with the band.

VH1 Fan Club Pre-Sale tickets go on sale Tuesday, October 6, with the regular on-sale starting Friday, October 9.

For more info, check out the band's website.

The case involves Robert Stevens of Pittsville, Va., a dog-fighting expert whose videography includes such titles as Japan Pit Fights, Pick a Winna and what is now his best-known effort, the hour-long, Catch Dogs and Country Living, reports The Wrap.

For his work, he became the first person ever prosecuted under a 1999 statute called the Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law due to a dog-fight clip in his film, Catch Dog, even though those actions are legal in Japan, where the footage was filmed and he didn't take part in the dogfight.

The law applies to any recording (audio or video) of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed” even if it is legal where it occurred and was filmed. Lawyer and former IDA President, Michael C. Donaldson points out, "The threat to the documentary community is obvious when one considers films such as The Cove and Food, Inc., to name two recent ones or Roger and Me, to go back just a little ways. Certainly videos concerning hunting could fall within this statute, even though, as in Stevens case, the hunting was legal where the video was shot."

Read a lengthier explanation of the issue and the IDA's involvement below by lawyer and former IDA President, Michael C. Donaldson.

A district court convicted Stevens of animal abuse and cruelty and sentenced him to 37 months in prison (more than NFL quarterback Michael Vick served for running a dogfights).

His conviction was overturned when a divided appeals court refused to create an exception to the First Amendment that applied to cruelty to animals, striking down the law as unconstitutional, The Wrap story continues.

Today, the government is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling and treat depictions of cruelty to animals the same as child pornography.

The conclusion of this Hollywood cliffhanger are still developing. In the meantime, read the following issued by Michael C. Donaldson regarding the case and the IDA's involvement:

The US Supreme Court case in which IDA filed an Amicus brief is set to be heard on October 6, 2009. The case has been called “the next great First Amendment battle” by the New York Times. It involves a documentary filmmaker--Robert Stevens--who made a film that concerns the history and status of pit bulls. The film included a clip (not taken by Stevens) of a Japanese dog fight. In Japan, dog fights are legal and the dogs are not killed. They are different from American style dog fights. Stevens was sentenced to over three years in federal prison under a 1999 federal statute that makes it a crime to show any cruelty to animals in a film with certain limited exceptions.

An Amicus Brief means that IDA--acting as a friend of the court instead of a party in the action – is telling the high court why the case being heard is important to the membership of IDA and urging the court to rule in favor of the filmmaker. Attending the hearing for IDA will be former President, Michael C. Donaldson. Donaldson is a lawyer in private practice and arranged for IDA to a part of the Amicus filings in this case.

The threat to the documentary community is obvious when one considers films such as The Cove and Food, Inc., to name two recent ones or Roger and Me, to go back just a little ways. Certainly videos concerning hunting could fall within this statute, even though, as in Stevens case, the hunting was legal where the video was shot.

A federal appeals court struck down the statute last year on first amendment grounds. The government appealed to the Supreme Court. The court will have to decide whether the depiction of animal cruelty is so vile and so harmful that it must be banned across the board.

The origins of the law are, in themselves, a bit bizarre. The motivation for its enactment was a House report about people who are sexually aroused by watching videos of small animals being crushed. President Bill Clinton signed the bill with an instruction to the Justice Department to limit prosecution to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” Nevertheless, the Bush administration prosecuted three cases under the law that didn’t have the “prurient interest in sex.”

The law applies to any recording--audio or video--of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed” even if it is legal where it occurred and was filmed. It is only important that it be illegal where the video is sold or exhibited. It would be illegal to possess, sell, or exhibit a travel documentary containing footage of a bull fight in Spain or Mexico in the US or a hunting video in Washington DC, where all hunting is illegal. There is an exception for films that have “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value” but that, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

In addition to IDA, Film Independent and IFP signed the Amicus brief. The New York Times and several other news gathering organizations also filed briefs. It is interesting that courts have already struck down statutes involving cruelty to humans. And Mr. Stevens sentence was 14 months longer than the sentence imposed on Michael Vick, the football player who organized dog fights and was very harsh on the dogs who did not perform well.

In a year that saw a significant downturn in box office performance for documentaries, one might speculate on the ebbing of the so-called Golden Age of Documentary, a period which arguably began with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine in 2002, crested with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 in 2004 and declined with Michael Moore's SiCKO this year. It was a dramatic decline, indeed from the dizzying heights of 2004, which saw 11 films top the $1 million mark, seven of which grossed over $2 million. With Fahrenheit 911 earning a gargantuan $119.5 million, one would think that in a volatile year, and one of most divided politically in recent US history, that the Moore effect would touch primarily issue-driven, get-out-the-vote films, but with films like Touching the Void, Born Into Brothels, Riding Giants and The Story of the Weeping Camel all faring well, the overall picture reflected the breadth and depth of the genre.

In three short years, and many great films later, what can one attribute to a year in which only three films--SiCKO, No End in Sight and In the Shadow of the Moon--made $1 million, and that In the Shadow of the Moon, having earned $1.1 million, was considered a disappointment? So many films, freighted with acclaim, festival honors, publicity and, in a couple of cases, impressive distribution deals, failed to live up to expectations--in some instances, earning just four or five figures.

One bright spot was Into Great Silence, Philip Groning's a stunning, three-hour film about Carthusian monks, which defied expectations, quietly earning nearly $800,000 in a carefully strategized marketing and roll-out plan by Zeitgeist Films and positive word-of-mouth, primarily  from New York's Film Forum audience. The film opened in February and was still showing up on IndieWIRE's Box Office Table in December.

Panelists at festivals and markets speculated about a glut of films, as well as a glut of festivals and markets. Theatrical distribution is an expensive endeavor, whether for a major studio like Sony Pictures Classics, which paid $2 million for Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That, which in turn underperformed; to mid-sizers like THINKFilm, which fell short with the aforementioned In the Shadow of the Moon, as well as with festival hits War/Dance, Lake of Fire and Nanking.

With these festival favorites tanking at the box office, perhaps the festival audience is the main audience for these films. With festivals of every stripe--high-profile, genre-specific, regional, community-specific--continuing to proliferate across the country, can over-exposure on the festival circuit, despite audience awards and jury prizes, actually hurt a documentary's crossover potential to a more mainstream audience in the less forgiving world of the multiplexes? Is an award at Sundance, whose audiences are primarily made up of journalists, distributors and filmmakers, a true indicator of how the film will fare with audiences made up of doctors, lawyers and teachers on a night off? Filmmakers I've spoken to at Sundance over the years have always enjoyed the screenings in Salt Lake City--in some instances, more than those at Park City--since the Salt Lake audiences are more representative of the end-users. But then, if a doc also generates heat at regional fests like Seattle or Fort Lauderdale, both of which run for several weeks, what becomes of these docs when they come around again to those regions? While the festival circuit can be a vital means to test-drive an audience, plug into a community of fellow docmakers, and, it is hoped, score a distribution deal, one might run the risk of saturating your potential market while running up a fairly significant festival circuit tab in the process.

Perhaps cases like Into Great Silence, or, in previous years, Rivers and Tides and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, were those rare exceptions of documentaries that found and sustained their audiences over long periods of time.

But another encouraging note of 2007 was the introduction of the word "filmanthropy" into the lexicon, thanks to AOL mogul Ted Leonsis, who bankrolled Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturnam's Nanking, as well as Susan Koch's upcoming Sundance premiere Kicking It, about a South Africa-based tournament for homeless soccer players. Other filmanthropists who were there before Leonsis include Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen of Vulcan Productions, and Jeff Skoll, who cashed in on his eBay largesse to found Participant Productions. Leonsis delivered a PowerPoint keynote address about filmanthropy at Silverdocs this past year; here's the link: ted.aol.com/docs/Silverdocs_Presentation_files/v3_document.htm.

Over the past decade of the digital revolution, we have seen many innovative models for films trying to reach their core audiences--day-and-date releasing from Red Envelope, IFC First Look and Mark Cuban's companies; Four Eyed Monsters, the fiction film from Susan Bruice and Arin Crumley; Film Movement--and we'll undoubtedly see more. With all the choices out there to see documentaries--from theaters to cell phones--it may be that the audiences are simply staying home, but still watching. Witness Robert Greenwald's model from a few years back of encouraging neighborhood viewings and discussions of his films, thus balkanizing the mass audience into smaller, living-room sized communities.

In the cusp of year's end and year's beginning, we find ourselves in the middle of awards season, and the critics are weighing in overwhelmingly for Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, with scattered plaudits as well for Seth Gordon's The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and Michael Moore's SiCKO. The Academy Awards, ever the crescendo to this drumroll, will see a significant change in the rules for qualifying one's doc for consideration in 2008, with the 14-city theatrical roll-out being eliminated, while sustaining a two-screening-a-day/one-week run in both the County of Los Angeles and the Borough of Manhattan.

But the real big news and note on which to end this reflection is the launching of a new award for nonfiction--the brainchild of filmmaker AJ Schnack and Toronto Film Festival programmer Thom Powers, with the assistance of distributor IndiePix. Schnack hatched this idea in response to the Short List for the Academy Awards, which prompted a heated viral conversation about how the Academy had overlooked many worthy, groundbreaking docs. And so, with the help of a committee of festival programmers who see these innovative films before the rest of us do, this new award, to celebrate the craft and breadth of nonfiction filmmaking, has a time and place--March 18, at the IFC Center in New York City, a few weeks after the Oscars telecast, and perhaps, the true curtain closer on the 2007-2008 Awards Season.

Thomas White is editor of Documentary and content editor of www.documentary.org.

The screening of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at UCLA last Thursday was not the Katie-bar-the-door turnout one would have expected, but the James Bridges Theater was a respectable 85 percent full. Director/producer/writer Marina Zenovoch wasn't there; she had been in Switzerland since Tuesday, with plans to shoot there as well as in Paris and Warsaw in the coming weeks.

But it wasn't Polanski's arrest that spurred this sequel; Zenovich had been thinking about it over the past six months, according to P.G. Morgan, one of the writers and co-producers on the film, who presided over the Q&A with researcher/associate producer Michelle Sullivan. As reported in The New York Times last February, Zenovoch was on hand earlier this year to film at the Criminal Courts Building in downtown LA, site of a series of hearings about the case.

At the October 1st screening, Morgan said that HBO, which had acquired the film at Sundance 08 and aired it later that summer, had recently put the film back into rotation, and the film itself had been subpoenaed as evidence by both the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and Polanski's defense team. With the report last week that former Assistant District Attorney David Wells had lied on camera about coaching Judge Laurence Rittenbrand about sentencing guidelines, this sequel has potential as a post-postmodern, mobius strip kind of work: It was born as a documentary about a famous, still-open case, about which the filmmaker unveils questionable legal wranglings; her film then spurs the defense team to call for hearings about the case, which compels the prosecution team to step up its pursuit of the fugitive defendant, which then calls for a sequel about, in part, a film's impact on its subject. The film takes on a new life as evidence, some of which itself turns out to be tainted.

Sequels about legal cases are not unprecedented--and often necessary: witness Nick Broomfield's films about convicted and executed serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2; in both instances, the filmmakers become part of the story in Act II. Given the breach of trust by one of her subjects, and the role her film has played over the past year in the Polanski case, Zenovich may well become a character she never intended to be.

Photo: Los Angeles Times/UCLA Library Department of Special Collections