The Documentary-Fairytale

July 31st, 2023

The Mandrake the Magician documentary-fairytale took me about ten years to complete. The reason it took this long was because I kept putting it back up on the shelf to work on other projects - whether it be at HBO or BBC or Cinemax, or working on other people’s documentaries, theatricals, or music videos. Mandrake was such an important and personal project to me that I wanted to do everything myself and be able to put my full heart into it.

Mandrake the Magician was my grandfather. Contemporary to the world famous comic strip character of the same name, my grandfather was essentially the live cartoon character. He traveled while producing and performing an elaborate magic show in theaters all across the country and the world. The William Morris Agency not only managed the comic but was also my grandfather’s agent for a while. And so there was a gentlemen’s agreement to cross-promote.

In the making of this film, I did extensive research on my grandfather, I followed his footsteps, traveled along the same roads, and interviewed people. I shot and edited footage, created the sound design, the voice-overs, everything. And throughout the decade of production for this movie, the story itself went through several evolutions as my perspectives in life changed over that time. And that’s one of the most beautiful things about the making of this film. And it was also the most difficult for me to contend with because I am naturally super fast. I have an idea and I need to execute it immediately and get it finished. Even working on multiple projects at once. That’s why working in television was such a great fit. The quick turn-arounds and multi-tasking were comfortable for me. And so it was great training to slow down and breathe into this movie. As a result it became an ever-evolving film over the course of a decade.

I remember when I was first putting together my grandfather's documentary. I asked the people who were closest to him to tell me about him. I was looking for the truth, some insight into who he truly was. But I soon realized that I could never get the truth that way because when I was gathering information about him I was also actually receiving a bunch of information about the person who was telling me about him - everything was mixed in, the conveying of that information. The lines were blurred between the subject (my grandfather), and the storyteller (the one giving me the information). Even if the one I was talking to believed they were conveying "just the facts," they were still automatically filtering everything through their own perspective, their personality, their thoughts, their beliefs from childhood, from past experiences - everything inside them was automatically entangled into the information that I was receiving. It was just organic, just a natural thing, like when a photographer shoots a photograph. It can seem that a photograph is objective - the subject is simply there and the camera is simply an instrument that captures it. But I believe that the photograph is always subjective. The imprint of the photographer is within that image - the angle it was shot, the framing, the shutter-speed used, the light exposure, if it was handheld or on a tripod, the kind of film used, and most importantly, the exact moment it was taken. These details reveal the photographer within the photograph.

This could have been frustrating to me as I was attempting an investigative biography film on my grandfather. Instead it was interesting and fascinating to think about. And so the whole thing inspired me to create a different kind of documentary about my grandfather. So I created (I invented, I think) a new genre called "The Documentary Fairytale."