When people ask me what my favorite type of movie, I always get a bit sheepish. I love documentaries, but I donʼt love that I love documentaries. When I think of someone who says they like documentaries, a picture of a pretentious "film-student" comes to mind. Someone who wears a sports coat with elbow pads over a faded Beatles tee shirt. Hipsters, would-be intellectuals, Starbucks-philosophers. This is not a group of people I would readily associate myself with, but I canʼt help it. I love them. They seem so much more relevant than scripted films. Itʼs the same philosophy I have about books. Iʼd much rather read non-fiction over fiction. Why just be entertained when you can be entertained and learn at the same time. Now donʼt get me wrong. I love scripted films and fictional novels, but real life will almost always be more interesting than anything that you make up. Writers work their entire lives to capture and be able to reproduce believable characters and situations, but they can only come close. As we delve deeper into my love of documentaries, we come to my favorite sub-genre: travel documentaries.
I have a serious case of wanderlust. When I was a kid, we didnʼt have a whole lot of money. Because of that, we didnʼt go on “vacations”. Instead, we camped. We lived in San Jose, CA at the time, so we camped all up and down the west coast. Since then, I have loved traveling the country, backpacking and camping wherever I can. When I watch these travel docs, I get a taste of that feeling I get when I travel. Actually, it mostly just fuels the fire. One documentary that always puts me in a traveling mood is 10mph. Itʼs a full length documentary entirely available on Youtube. The concept of the film is simple. A crew of filmmakers take a transcontinental trip from Oregon to Maine... on a Segway. As a future filmmaker, this type of movie would be a dream to work on. Everyday, waking up in a new city. Having to overcome all of the problems we encounter along the way. Dealing with crew member conflict. The key to this film is in itʼs simplicity. There is enough of a framing devise to keep the story consistent, but itʼs not so distracting as to over shadow the interactions and story arc of the filmmakers themselves.
A couple of summers ago, I went on the quintessential road trip. 3 of my friends and I loaded up a van and took off to explore the West. We werenʼt exactly sure where we were going, where we wanted to end up, or even how long weʼd be gone. We wanted to just see where the wind took us. Well, three weeks later, the wind had taken us from Indianapolis to St. Louis, down Route 66, to the Grand Canyon, into Las Vegas, over to Los Angeles, up Californiaʼs coastal highway, into San Francisco, around Crater Lake, through Yellow Stone, to Chicago, and finally back home. If only I had filmed the experience. Then, someone could live vicariously through us.
