PARK CITY, Utah — From crowd-funding to the visual language of online video, internet culture is slowly but surely seeping into independent film.
[bug id=”sundance”] Nothing illustrates the web’s growing influence on filmmakers more effectively than Me @the Zoo, a feature-length documentary that premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The movie offers an “all access” look at the life of internet celebrity Chris Crocker, the 24-year-old Tennessee vlogger who — despite a long history as a YouTube personality — is known primarily as the teary young man whose “Leave Britney Alone!” video went viral in 2007.
Tackling a subject who’s a prolific DIY filmmaker — and someone who’s perhaps a bit of an internet-enabled oversharer to boot — proved interesting to Me @the Zoo‘s newcomer directors, Valerie Veatch and Chris Moukarbel.
“A challenge that we had coming into this was, ‘How do you make a documentary about someone who’s making a living documentary?'” Moukarbel told Wired.com during an interview at Sundance. “You know, he’s always going to be making videos. He’s always going to be documenting his life, and [our film is just] one little cross-section of that.”
Compiled from hundreds of Crocker’s homemade videos, old-school YouTube clips and the directors’ own footage, Me @the Zoo delivers a compelling look at this expanding era of internet fame — the odd paths people take to achieving it, and the ways it consumes lives much like traditional celebrity.
The film follows Crocker as he rises to online fame (or, as Crocker calls it, being “famous for not being famous”), then traces what Crocker goes through during the fallout after his infamous Britney Spears video — including his stint in Los Angeles for an ill-fated reality show. It also traces Crocker’s family history and takes a look at his mother’s struggles with drug addiction, something that influenced his defense of Spears.
Despite the uniqueness of Crocker’s story, there’s a point at which many people can identify with him. “I see it not just about me,” Crocker said. “Even though it’s my personal story, there’s so many things that hit home, with the drug abuse, and the bullying and stuff. So that’s how I try to look at it.”
Wired.com caught up with Crocker and Me @the Zoo‘s directors at Sundance to talk about the film, which got picked up by HBO Documentary Films and should hit the air this year, and also to discuss internet fame, funding movies through Kickstarter, and YouTube reaction videos finding their way to the big screen. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Wired.com: Me @the Zoo started out with a much broader theme. How did it end up as a film that focused on Chris Crocker?
Valerie Veatch: Initially, our project was to examine people performing themselves on television and online and how changes in technology and cable laws and all of these things created an atmosphere where cheap, immediate content was what everybody wanted, and people began to deliver their own stories as that content. So the initial project was a timeline from like the late-1980s to early-’90s. And then, you know, kind of spinning into an internet story.
Chris Crocker: They were originally filming for a different documentary entirely, sort of how the rise of reality TV and cellphone cameras affected pop culture. And then when they started interviewing me, they realized that my personal story touched on all those themes. So it wasn’t originally supposed to be The Chris Crocker Story or anything. It just happened.
YouTube star Chris Crocker gained mainstream attention after his teary defense of Britney Spears.
Image: Chris Moukarbel and Valerie VeatchWired.com: What was it about Chris that drew you to him? I mean, everybody knows the Britney Spears video, but he really had a presence online before that.
“He’s kind of a social media genius.” Chris Moukarbel: It was like, “What is it about this one person that he’s able to get so many eyes on him?” Through this process I’ve kind of learned a lot about the YouTube partnership program and the idea of views as currency. And in that sense, in that paradigm, he’s very wealthy. This is a person that’s managed to achieve a really wide audience — cast a wide net — and a lot of people follow him regularly. He’s kind of a social media genius.
Veatch: Another thing about Chris’s story is that his fact set is so interesting. So many unique things happened to him with Britney Spears and his mother and all of these things that his story really is unique. And although it is so totally emblematic of a more general social phenomenon, it is totally unique and really fascinating, and the further we got into that rabbit hole, the more interesting all the media is.
Wired.com: That’s true. He has a lot of inroads, I think, to his personality. There are a lot of ways you can identify with him.
Moukarbel: He’s part of this first wave of young people that are putting their entire lives up online and filming themselves all the time. And so, you know, he’s already like a granddad within that … context.
Wired.com: How did you all find each other? Despite his internet celebrity, Chris has managed to be pretty hidden in the real world.
Crocker: It’s so hard [to explain], it sounds so made-up because it’s like it was so meant to happen. [Moukarbel]’s boyfriend, we found out that his mom lived five minutes away from me. I was friends with his boyfriend long-distance online. And when we found out his parents lived five minutes away from me, he was like, “Well, my boyfriend’s actually doing a film on pop culture and he’d love to interview you for it.”
Moukarbel: We were trying to reach out to him just to interview him. And he was at that time coming off of that whole thing in L.A. with a lot of crazy relationships and I think at first he would have had a hard time trusting us to tell the story. Because my boyfriend’s family is there, just down the road, we were able to spend time with him and become friends.
Veatch: It was very much this kind of organic, freaky coincidence that really made the film possible.
Wired.com: Chris eventually entrusted all of his videos to this documentary. How important was that to the film?
Moukarbel: It was like Christmas; like unwrapping presents.
Veatch: It was so thrilling. We got videos from 2006. I almost died. And we watched all of them.
Crocker: It was literally my entire [library]. I have three different hard drives. One from like 2005-2006. It was just filled with, like, 4,000 videos. So, they definitely got all-access…. It just felt like the right time to tell my story because after years and years of just being known as a crying lunatic, you at some point want people to see you on a bigger scale. So, for me, it took a little bit of just trusting them and giving them the benefit of the doubt. I’m really happy I did.
Wired.com: About how much of the final movie comes from his archives?
Veatch: It’s a third his media and probably a third archival and a third stuff we shot.
“In terms of Kickstarter’s effect on the industry, I think that models like this could only make for more diverse, more interesting films.” Wired.com: Chris also got involved with the production of the film in other ways. For example, he put a call on YouTube for people to donate to the Kickstarter. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Crocker: Well, when we were getting closer to wrapping up the film, we knew that we were going to need additional funds to pay for music rights and things like that. So we just posted a Kickstarter thing to see if the fans would donate, if they wanted to see the film. And it exceeded what we needed by $10,000.
Wired.com: It seems as though a lot of filmmakers with movies at Sundance got Kickstarter funds as well. Do you think it’s kind of a coming of age for that kind of financing for indie films?
Veatch: Kickstarter provides the scale of financing that is typical for finishing a documentary. And so for us, it allowed us to keep working in that final homestretch when your production money runs out, but you’re not quite ready for the festival.
Moukarbel: So It helped us complete the film, but crowdsourcing for the film was also a big part of it, because Chris has so many fans that really wanted to see the movie happen. So it was a way for them to engage it directly and participate in the funding of it.
Veatch: In terms of Kickstarter’s effect on the industry, I think that models like this could only make for more diverse, more interesting films, because you know you can sidestep the typical, more patriarchal environment.
Me @the Zoo examines Chris Crocker's life, both online and off.
Image: Chris Moukarbel and Valerie VeatchWired.com: What was it like watching it on the big screen at the premiere?
Crocker: Well, I had watched the film privately on the computer when they wrapped it, and I watched it alone by myself. But watching it in a theater with people and like hearing them laugh, or like shriek … looking around at their reactions was so different for me, because I’m so used to reading their reactions and comments on the videos on YouTube.
Wired.com: When I was watching the film, I noticed that it actually kind of looks like a long-form internet video. Was that intentional?
Veatch: Our film is a response video. It’s a fan-response video.
Moukarbel: It’s like long-form fan art, in a way…. It’s kind of an alternative history of something that maybe a lot of people have a preconceived idea about…. It’s like, “Well, what does it look on the ground? After that celebrity goes away, you know, what does a meme look like as a person?”
Wired.com: I’m curious what you think about the It Gets Better project. It seems like Chris was making those videos long before they had a name.
Crocker: I wouldn’t say that I influenced it. I just think that I maybe was the first wave of people that, you know, was comfortable with themselves on camera. I’ve had teenagers for years and years reach out to me and say, “I see the comments, and I see how you get harassed. How do you stay so confident?” And to me that means more than anything. I do videos for my own personal, therapeutic reason — my own silliness or whatever. But when they’re just happy to see someone confident that’s getting bullied, they want that same confidence, too. And that’s why I’m glad there are things like It Gets Better because there’s a whole community.
It’s crazy how much just the internet world has progressed in the last few years. Because when I was younger — growing up there wasn’t that. Before it seemed like you had to just sort of put out a video and hope that the people who were looking for what you were saying would find you.
Wired.com: Since Chris is so famous for the “Leave Britney Alone!” video, I’m wondering are there parallels between Spears’ fame and his online fame?
“But this process really did make me realize that video came from a deeper place than just loving Britney.” Crocker: Well, I thought it was really interesting, and the film showed how I went from defending Britney and standing up for her to like me needing — not needing people to defend me but cause I can defend myself… It does kind of show that parallel where, it goes from me defending her to my supporters defending me. Yeah, I definitely see the parallel.
Wired.com: In the film, there’s this allusion that the reason Crocker got so defensive of Spears might have had something to do with his relationship with his mother and desire to look out for her when she was struggling with addiction and other issues.
Crocker: I know people are like, “Oh that’s so …” It seems a little contrived. You know, if I weren’t me I would probably assume that. But I, honest to God, it never even dawned on me that all those things were happening to my mom. And the reason I’m defensive over women going through a hard time, is because in my family, I have a history of a lot of bad things happening to women. But, that definitely dawned on me during the interviews. There’s a lot of footage they didn’t put in the film that was really emotional. There is one interview in particular that they didn’t put in, where like it just hit me. I broke down, and I was like, “Wow.” It’s so crazy.
You realize things when you are being interviewed. It’s just a vulnerable, different experience introspectively when other people are asking you questions. Because when I’m recording myself it’s like autopilot. I’m not thinking about why I’m doing it, I’m just doing it and expressing myself. But this process really did make me realize that video came from a deeper place than just loving Britney.
