Sit down for lunch with a documentary filmmaker and before the burgers arrive they’ll probably tell you a story “you’re not going to believe!”
It just so happens that a lot of those amazing stories don’t make it into their films. They just don’t fit the narrative. Or they had to cut that character. Or maybe the story is something that happened behind the scenes to the filmmakers themselves.
Of the hundreds of hours of footage shot for almost every documentary, only a tiny bit ever makes it to the screen. The rest gets buried on hard disks in some back office. The Document goes on an archeological dig with filmmakers to rediscover great people, places and events. We use their footage to tell stories to take you there, right now. These pieces aren’t based on a true story, they are the true story
Like the chef who made a movie about the medicinal uses of human placenta and decided to cook up his own wife’s afterbirth. Or the man released from prison at the age of 42 dating for the first time ever. Or the director filming a movie about fireworks makers in Mexico who got run over by a flaming, papier-mâché bull the size of a bus.
The Document host and producer Matt Holzman is obsessed with radio and documentaries and he’s mashed up his two favorite things to create a whole new kind of show.