Mockumentary
A mockumentary or docucomedy is a type of movie or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary.
These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictional setting, or to parody the documentary form itself. While mockumentaries are usually comedic, pseudo-documentaries are their dramatic equivalents. However, pseudo-documentary should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events. Also, docudrama is different from docufiction; a genre in which documentaries are contaminated with fictional elements.
Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries, with B roll and talking heads discussing past events, or as cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events. Examples emerged during the 1950s when archival film footage became available. A very early example was a short piece on the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that appeared as an April Fools' prank on the British television program Panorama in 1957.
The term "mockumentary", which originated in the 1960s, was popularized in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.
Mockumentaries are often partly or wholly improvised, as an unscripted style of acting helps to maintain the pretense of reality. Comedic mockumentaries rarely have laugh tracks, also to sustain the atmosphere, although exceptions exist.
Music "is often employed to expose the ambiguities and fallacies of conventional storytelling; for instance by pointing at the paradoxes of the distinction between diegetic and extradiegetic music".
Early examples
Early work, including Luis Buñuel's 1933 Land Without Bread, Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, various April Fools' Day news reports, and vérité-style film and television during the 1960s and 1970s, served as precursor to the genre. Early examples of mock-documentaries include The Connection, A Hard Day's Night, David Holzman's Diary, , Take the Money and Run, The Clowns, by Federico Fellini, Smile and All You Need Is Cash. Albert Brooks was also an early popularizer of the mockumentary style with his film Real Life, 1979, a spoof of the 1973 reality television series An American Family. Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run is presented in documentary-style with Allen playing a fictional criminal, Virgil Starkwell, whose crime exploits are "explored" throughout the film. Jackson Beck, who used to narrate documentaries in the 1940s, provides the voice-over narration. Fictional interviews are interspliced throughout, especially those of Starkwell's parents who wear Groucho Marx noses and mustaches. The style of this film was widely appropriated by others and revisited by Allen himself in films such as Zelig and Sweet and Lowdown.Early use of the mockumentary format in television comedy may be seen in several sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus, such as "Hell's Grannies", "Piranha Brothers", and "The Funniest Joke in the World". The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour also featured mockumentary pieces which interspersed both scripted and real-life man-in-the-street interviews, the most famous likely being "The Puck Crisis" in which hockey pucks were claimed to have become infected with a form of Dutch elm disease.
All You Need Is Cash, developed from an early series of sketches in the comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, is a 1978 television film in mockumentary style about The Rutles, a fictional band that parodies The Beatles. The Beatles own 1964 feature film debut, A Hard Day's Night, was itself filmed in mockumentary style: it ostensibly documents a few typical days in the life of the band as they travel from Liverpool to London for a television appearance.
Since 1980
In film and television
Since the beginning of the 1980s, the mockumentary format has gained considerable attention. The 1980 South African film The Gods Must be Crazy is presented in the manner of a nature documentary, with documentary narrator Paddy O'Byrne describing the events of the film in the manner of a biologist or anthropologist presenting scientific knowledge to viewers. In 1982, The Atomic Cafe is a Cold-War era American "mockumentary" film that made use of archival government footage from the 1950s. Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig stars Allen as a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he is near, and Allen is edited into historical archive footage. In 1984, Christopher Guest co-wrote and starred in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner. Guest went on to write and direct other mockumentaries including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, all written with costar Eugene Levy.Tim Robbins' 1992 film Bob Roberts was a mockumentary centered around the senatorial campaign of a right-wing stock trader and folksinger, and the unsavory connections and dirty tricks used to defeat a long-term liberal incumbent played by Gore Vidal. Man Bites Dog is a 1992 Belgian black comedy crime mockumentary written, produced, and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde. In 1995, Peter Jackson and Costa Botes directed Forgotten Silver, which claimed New Zealand "director" Colin McKenzie was a pioneer in filmmaking. When the film was later revealed to be a mockumentary, Jackson received criticism for tricking viewers.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a controversial yet successful film from 2006 which uses this style, as does Brüno, a similar film from 2009. Sony Pictures Animation released their second animated feature, Surf's Up in 2007, which was the first of its kind to incorporate the mockumentary style into animation. REC, a 2007 Spanish film by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, uses journalism aesthetics to approach a horror universe set up in a real building in Barcelona. The film was remade in the United States as the 2008 film Quarantine.
In television, the most notable mockumentaries in the 2000s have been ABC Australia's The Games, the Canadian series Trailer Park Boys, the British shows Marion and Geoff, Twenty Twelve , and W1A, which follows the main characters of Twenty Twelve as they start work at the BBC, as well as The Office and its many international offshoots, and Come Fly with Me, which follows the activity at a fictional airport and its variety of staff and passengers. British comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French often presented short mockumentaries as extended sketches in their TV show French & Saunders. Discovery Channel opened its annual Shark Week on 4 Aug 2013 with ', a mockumentary about the survival of the megalodon. Popular examples in the US include sitcoms Trailer Park Boys and its films, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and Modern Family ; the American improv comedy Reno 911! ; the comedy series The Muppets ; Derek ; People Just Do Nothing and the Australian Chris Lilley shows Angry Boys, Summer Heights High, ', and Jonah from Tonga.
The series Documentary Now! on IFC, created by Saturday Night Live alumni, spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style and subject of each documentary. Hight argues that television is a natural medium for a mockumentary, as it provides "for extraordinarily rich sources of appropriation and commentary".