HBO might not be TV, but it shouldn’t sell itself short when it produces movies — documentaries at least.The documentary branch of HBO Films has really knocked it out of the park twice this year with the films Gasland by Josh Fox and Teenage Paparazzo by Entourage star Adrian Grenier. It’s just a shame that HBO being HBO, these films are only shown a couple of times with their cushy premier time slot and then are pushed back to late night on HBO13 or relegated to On Demand. Not that there is anything wrong with On Demand, but I often wonder how many people who are bored on the couch at night are flipping through On Demand and will choose to watch a sobering documentary about the effects of hydraulic fracturing and how it’s poisoning our water supplies with little to no oversight by our government. Probably not many.
But I see this film as every bit as important as Academy Award-winning docs like The Cove, and should get a 20-minute standing ovation like Fahrenheit 9/11 did at the Cannes Film Festival when it premiered.
Austin Visschedyk
I had read about Austin Visschedyk in the November 2009 issue of GQ and my interest was certainly piqued. Though I suppose it spoiled the movie for me a bit because it meant that I knew what he was up to at 16 before the film had been released, the produc
tion of which began when he was just 14. Grenier is a masterful fimmaker and once Entourage (finally) ends its run after next season, if he isn’t getting leading man roles he should feel confident in his abilities to create interesting, enlightening documentaries.
Hell, with his star power he might be able to produce a few new fans of documentaries so they’re not relegated 3 a.m. time slots on HBO 37.
[...] visited Normandy and genuinely loving documentaries, I was shocked that she made me turn off the HBO documentary Wartorn: 1861-2010, which features interviews with veterans, families of veterans and military [...]