DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME
Jesus. DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME was the kind of “documentary” I hate. It’s one of those non-narratives where the subject becomes the filmmakers just focussing on themselves and their narcissistic journey. In it, they attempt to get an interview with reclusive writer/director John Hughes (who died a few months after they go knocking on his door).
So lame is this thing, we’re told three times their plan of attack includes going to the Starbucks close to where Hughes resides to sniff him out. So lame is this thing, their idea of research is asking a bunch of over-excited teenagers on the street what their favorite Hughes movie is. So lame is it, they splice in one of the teen’s answer twice (I’m pretty sure they would have caught it, but I assume they didn’t want to watch their meandering doc again either).
There’s no insight here. We learn absolutely nothing about Hughes’ biography, and they don’t mention zip about his non-teen films. What’s worse, they commit the unforgivable mistake of every shitty, lazy fan-doc: they drag out Kevin Smith to yak on-and-on. Since this was the third documentary in a week I’ve endured Smith showing up, I looked up how many times he’s appeared as “Self” in these things. 215 times. It’s a fucking cottage industry for this guy.