So is Catfish Real? An Interview with the Director and Star
Like most of the internet I walked out of the film Catfish with one main question, “is Catfish indeed REAL and a documentary?” Well luckily for me last week both Ariel Schulman (the Director) and his brother Nev Schulman (the Star) were in town and nice enough to sit down with me, and talk about some of the criticism the film is getting about it’s authenticity on the internet in our little Geekadelphia piece Catfish Descaled. Enjoy the interview and please check out the film at the Ritz East this weekend!
Check out part 2 after the jump!
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Great interview! Really liked the movie.
I’m inclined to believe it’s real, certainly the people and interactions are real. There is only one thing I do question, and I wish you would have asked about this.
It’s actually the first scene in the movie. In the interview you just did, they said that it was in Colorado that they first decided they were making a feature length documentary. Before that, Nev’s brother said that he was just filming Nev off and on for months because crazy stuff happens to Nev, and he wanted to get it on film.
But if they didn’t decide to make an actual documentary of Nev’s experience until Colorado, how come in the first scene of the movie, which comes before that, does Nev’s brother say to Nev, ‘Don’t you understand, we’re making a documentary of Abby, through you.’
So their story there doesn’t really hold up. Supposedly it was just random filming of Nev before Colorado, and they hadn’t decided it was officially a documentary until Colorado, but then right there Nev’s brother is quoted as saying this is a documentary about Abby, from your perspective.”
That’s the first part of it. The second part of it is, okay, so say they knew they were making a documentary before Colorado. Let’s just say the “when did they officially decide this was a feature length documentary” question is just a misunderstanding on my part based on semantics, or whatever. It’s not just the “when” that I have questions about, it’s the what.
I mean, again, let’s say we take the word of Nev’s brother in the actual film, in the first scene, over his word in the interview here. What he said in the movie is that ‘Nev we’re making a documentary about Abby through your perspective.’ What I really have questions about is, if they didn’t already know something weird was going on, why would you make a documentary about a 11 year old girl from Michigan, who you cant even film? What motivated them to make a documentary about Abby from Nev’s perspective? That seems like an extremely odd documentary to make unless you know something fishy is going on.
I mean one day Nev’s brother wakes up and decides, “ok, I’m going to make a documentary about the girl who sent Nev a painting. I’m going to make a FILM documentary about someone I can’t even film, because she lives in Michigan.” I mean it’s obvious why you do it once you already know there is something mysterious going on, but at that point?
That’s what’s really fishy to me, it just doesn’t make sense why they would have started filming in the first place. Sure, maybe if you’re a documentarian that likes to film, and you always have your camera on, it would make sense that they just caught the first half of it all by accident, just because theyre people that always have their cameras on, and then once they knew there was something mysterious started doing it really consciously.
That would make more sense. But the fact that he actually says, at the beginning, that they are deliberately making a documentary about Abby, that makes it fishy. They didn’t just have their cameras on by accident, they were looking to make a documentary about Abby from the start, Nev’s brother says at much, and it makes you wonder why. Did they possibly know something was mysterious at that point without saying so? Or more likely, did they go back and shoot that scene afterwards because otherwise the view might be lost?
Like I said, the people all appear very real in the film, I personally believe it’s real, which means there is probably an explanation for these things. I just wish you would have gotten those explanations in your interview because right now Im still wondering about them.
But great job on the film to Nev and his brother and friend. Excellent! Also the music score when you first begin on the freeway was great and intense.