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A personal interrogative doc, more Morgan Spurlock than Doug Block, Christopher Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster uses his family’s experiences with steroids as the in point to tackle the larger roles of body perception, performance inhancement and competition in contemporary American culture. The voice of the film, delivered via Bell’s narration, can be hackneyed and a bit too cute, but on the whole Bell mounts a surprisingly sophisticated argument––surprising because he’s a first time feature-maker, surprising because it’s clearly on Bell’s agenda to please his crowd, surprising because this is a film that uses footage from Rocky 4 to make its thesis argument––that steroid criminalization amounts to hating the player whilst willfully ignoring the dynamics of the game.
The second born of three brothers who grew up worshiping Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan, Bell examines how his and his siblings attempts to mold themselves in the image of their idols might be a “side effect” of a late-20th century revision of the American dream. He introduces us to a childhood under the influence of a pop culture tapestry that, coming into full force in the mid-1980s, united Ronald Reagan, pro wrestling, sex, violence, celebrity and war, ultimately brainwashing a certain class of adolescent male to strive towards a certain type of competitive physical perfection…and all in the name of being a good American.
Bell hunts down all manner of experts and luminaries, doctors and scientists, athletes and academics and even Arnold himself, and weaves their thoughts and findings into his family’s story to bolster his conclusions. For a first-time filmmaker, Bell is an incredibly adept interviewer, capable of asking the right questions without losing the trust of his subjects. This is certainly a personal film, but it’s also clearly a calling card. Where so many self-reflexive docs give the sense that the filmmaker could be blowing their wad––ie: everybody’s got *one* story to tell, but does s/he have anything else?––Bell looks to have the talent and intelligence to tackle subjects outside of his immediate purview.
Fittingly for a film about the disorientation of living real life in the shadow of popular culture, some of the Bigger’s strongest points are made via appropriated footage. Essentially, the whole enterprise boils down to a clip borrowed from The Simpsons: Lisa asks Mark McGuire to answer to allegations of steroid use; McGuire says he could tell the truth about his physique, or he could wow the assembled Springfieldians by hitting a bunch of baseballs really hard, and the masses overwhelmingly vote for the latter. It’s all about not wanting to know how the sausage is really made.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
well written and I argee Bell has talent!
CHRIS IS AMAZING—and a great friend!
I am so proud!!!!!!
Congrats Chris!!! I’m glad your doing what you love to do. Just rememmber your first training partner, and keep reaching high.
I just saw the screening of this at Sundance, and I was appalled. The filmmaker initially makes it seem as if he will be painting an unsympathetic portrait of steroids. Then he glosses over the Benoit tragedy with a curt few minutes and an ultimate dismissal of the possibility of the violence being attributable to steroids. He moves on to handpicked interviews with experts he disagrees with (who he presents as incompetent and who are universally anti-steroid) and experts he agrees with (always presented as intelligent and pro-steroid).
During the Q&A when I asked him why in the glib and ultimately pro-steroid message of the film he whisked right over the possibility of tragedy to women and children and whether doing so was because real violence and death would have darkened the comedic tone of the film, or whether he did so simply because he wasn’t a woman and couldn’t relate or didn’t care, he replied that no woman or child harmed was ever proven to be harmed because of steroids. Proven. I guess not enough dead bodies to prove it to him just yet. So if you think in light of those tragedies this film is going to enlighten everyone, think again.
Everyone else in the theater spent the rest of the Q&A kissing his ass and telling him how great it was and how enlightened they now were about the harmLESSness of steroids, and he even wrapped it all up by perkily announcing that after the festival circuit he plans to hand-peddle his movie to high schools and colleges to dispell the negative assumptions about steroids!! Like the bring your father to career day scene in Thank You For Smoking, and not one person in the entire theater was shocked and appalled. Amazing that he wants to do his part to actively encourage steroid use in children and young adults when steroid use among kids as young as 8th grade is alarmingly on the rise.
Remember that this guy is no elbow patch tweed jacket wearing milquetoast, he’s a huge powerlifter who because he himself doesn’t dope (but his brothers do) can easily hold his own with any violent guy on steroids. Most women and children can’t. Apparently not a concern for this guy. And funny, all his friends (and brothers) use steroids, think he’s biased? You’ll need a lot more than a grain of salt for this one.
Melissa…..you’re a moron. Dear Lord, stop sucking from the teet of the MSM and do some research. You are making yourself look like an idiot. Here is a good start for you…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8162930835755001242&q=hbo+real+sports+steroids&hl=en
Chris, are you a woman who has been harmed by someone whose personality you watched in person change before your eyes when they began steroids?
Dear Lord, stop commenting on things you haven’t experienced firsthand.
My guess is that your research would do far less to ensure your safety were you to meet a real live aggressive steroid user on a bad day than the filmmaker who is a power lifter and understandably has little to worry about from his steroid abusing friends and brothers. Tell that pumped up meathead who is about to snap your neck that you did the research.
Oh, and he kept saying “the effects are reversible” - what effects? He kept insisting there were no ill effects, right? If there are in fact ill effects, which a sentence like “the effects are reversible” would indicate, and as he kept petulantly insisting steroids should be legal and openly available because tobacco and alcohol are (don’t understand that logic, but hey it makes for great film huh), why not peddle films to high school children that talk about how cigarette smoking and heavy drinking are just fine, because hey, when you do decide to stop the effects are reversible, right?
He kept using examples of HIV patients and guys with low testosterone who could benefit from steroids - and what does that have to do with a normally developing high school student with normal testosterone levels? Why does a young man who needs no kind of supplement whatsoever need to be ENCOURAGED to try something that his body does not need??
His buddies in the film said that steroids wouldn’t make you crazy, just enhance a crazy person. GREAT! So let’s support the cause of the filmmaker and make them unregulated and readily available to everyone - including the crazy people! So that guy who would normally just kick your butt in a bar fight now might just kill you instead.
NONE of this is necessary for the vast majority of healthy normally developed males who have, as the filmmaker stated initially, pathological Adonis complexes and who should be dealing with that positively rather than feeding it. Yet as the film wore on, even after admitting that type of body image complex, like anorexia or bulimia, was pathological, by the end of the film he was comfortable with his own unhealthy body image and that of his friends and encouraging supplementing that pathology with replacing the body’s own natural healthy levels of testosterone with injections of synthetic hormones. And why? So that the 85% of casual gym rat users, not professional athletes (another statistic from the film) can do what, exactly? Compete? No, they’re just all working out at the gym. So completely healthy guys shutting off their natural testosterone production by shooting fake hormones into their butts so they can get ripped at the gym. Why, again?
At the very least, in a society that is constantly talking about recycling and reducing waste, how can all those unncessarily produced, used, and discarded bottles of synthetic hormone that their users DO NOT NEED be justified?
After seeing the film, it is crossing the line for a documentary film maker to have a vested interest in the outcome. Having brothers and relatives taking steriods favors taking the position that these drugs are harmless, if not for love of your family alone. The correlation between steriod addiction and other negative behavior (violence, drugs, etc) is not adequately explored and the claim that they are harmless is not well documented as the “expert opinions” aren’t put into context e.g. number of doctors that are pro/con, reputable sports doctors that have direct experience with seeing steriod use over a continued period. It is unfortunate in our drug-laden society that the “gloss-over” of harmful side-effects is often accepted without being questioned. It extends to drugs such as anti-depressants and the birth-control pill - one has to ask why the spike in difficulties of getting pregnant and the popularity of invitro as well as the increase in breast cancer in younger woman is not examined in conjunction with the increase use of birth-control pills. It usually boils down to money and how people can use the system these days (e.g. lawsuits, shallow journalism) to suppress important information.
Melissa,
First…did you watch the HBO vid? I provided the link.
Also, I have used AAS for quite a while. And one thing is for sure, they work. I have lost 75 lbs and just finished a half-Ironman. I was destined for a heart attack and most likely death…and at my age my body could have never produced the amount of testosterone that I can supplement. (Not to mention my wife LOVED the libido effects)
Lastly…your “roid-rage” theory is BUNK…if you’re an A-hole before using…your a bigger A-hole while using. One is barely connected to the other. You just happed to have picked an A-hole.
ONCE AGAIN…I invite you to watch the HBO documentary at the link provided.
Oh…and I would be happy if you would inform me as to the location of all the dead bodies produced by AAS. You know…the ones our government and the “experts” claim exist. On the other hand, I could provide for you countless names of adult men that have been using for 10,20 and even 30 years. Al in great shape and in great relationships.
By the way…you say it’s not “justified” for healthy adult men to use AAS. Who says? You? Thanks mom…but I can make that decision on my own. And your claim that there are people being killed by AAS users is crap. Prove it. Funny how all these so called “experts” can always spout statistics but never have the ACTUAL people to back them up.
I invite you to Google Robert (Bob) Clapp from Arizona. He’s a 70 year old bodybuilder who has been using for DECADES. The guy is walking around with a six-pack. If I can do that at 70…screw you and my government. I don’t need a nanny state telling me to grow old and deteriorate.
Odd…Melissa is allowed to spew conjecture and misinformation while my posts go unapproved and deleted. Typical….
Chris, none of your comments have been deleted. I am at a film festival so I can’t be at the computer every second to approve comments, so it might take a couple of hours, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that there’s some kind of commenting double standard.
Karina…my apologies. Usually it says something similar to “awaiting moderator approval” but the message is still viewable to me. But I wasn’t able to see it. Sorry
Just the fact that Melissa has gotten so upset an enraged enough to write all that clearly demonstrates how emotionally unstable she is. Maybe she’s having a bit of “Roid Rage” herself. Seriously, lighten up lady, it’s a movie.
Seriously guys… its so hard to understand that steroids are much less harmful than other drugs like heroine, cocaine or even tobacco/alcohol (at reasonable doses of course…)???
Why in the medical community is always necessary to show thousand of studies to prove that something can be done safely but they only need one single adverse experience to start a battle against it (curiously it usually happens when that drug is employed by a small group of citizens, everybody knows what happens with alcochol…im pretty sure alcohol is a well documented “rage producer drug” but nobody is going to make a documentary about their brutal effects, that would not be sexy enough…)
On the other hand I must say to Chris that steroids is well known that can kill you (maybe just like any heavily abused drug), but you cant tell me people like matarazzo or jesse marunde did not experiment/are experimenting its side effects…
However, often names like Curtis Leffler, Momo benaziza, Andreas Munzer and others are brought as an argument against steroids(but people fail in realize that bodybuilders use much more dangerous drugs than steroids like diuretics, insulin or other drug cocktails). A good argument are people like bodybuilding old timers at 60+ years who used them medically supervised and still are with us
My last words are for melissa: why people like you are still trying to protect the rest of the world from steroids and other drugs when maybe half of them have a lot more knowledge and research done than you, and are maybe 20 years?? older than you!! If you want to do it to save the america’s teens from the evil drugs then fine, props to you!! (thats what politicians use to say ironically) but Who the hell are you to tell the rest of the people what to do or what to not do??? c’mon…
[Sorry for my poor spanglish)
Get over it Melissa. The Boars doc is awesome!
Melissa isn’t real, kids.
She’s just some guy in his mid-30’s, whose testosterone levels have dropped dramatically and has since grown manboobs and gotten all weepy over it.
Get back on the juice, ‘Lissa…
… and congrats to the filmmakers. You told a story that some people just don’t want to hear.
Like that one time… at band camp…
As a 13 year ER/shock-trauma nurse, i can tell you the VAST majority of problems i see can directly be linked to alcohol and smoking. Now kiddies, gues how many people end up in the ER for steroid related problems? ZERO! Not once! And, which one is illegal???
I’ve been a bodybuilder for 18 years, and have seen hundreds of different people use/abuse steroids.
The ones who were assholes, or were unstable with ego problems before the drugs wound up being magnified versions of that on the juice.
The ones who had the athlete mentality, and did it for their own reasons…..well take a guess how they did.
I’m also a 12 year veteran of the bar/nightclub industry and have seen WAY more major problems from my time in that scene. I’ve seen many health problems, some severe. Horrible addictions, and lives lost from the club scene.
Funny how all my juicer buddies have more stable lives and much better health that many of the people I know from the bar scene.
I’ve seen alcohol cause violence on a daily basis. I also find it funny how whenever a big guy gets mad, it’s “roid rage”. There is a terrible double standard about that. I remember getting in violent situations back in my bouncer days, even having weapons pulled on me, and then getting questioned by the cops about why I felt it necessary to beat a guy down………”You’re bigger than him, why did you hit him like that.” Like I’m not supposed to beat someone down when they pull a knife on me. Gimme a break. Must have been roids!
I have seen some guys experience severe health problems while taking massive amounts of juice. These guys just don’t represent the majority of steroid users, and it is expected to have something go wrong when the abuse levels get ridiculous for any drug. I also know a guy who died from using toxic doses of over the counter anti-inflammitories too.
It’s gotten to the point where one of the most common things I hear people say after they meet me is, “You’re actually a really nice guy.”
Gee, thanks.
As a former user I am dying to see this movie. Melissa does need to put her personal feelings aside. She was in a bad situation with a steriod “ABUSER” obviously.
Personally I am a former user just beccause of the reasons that Chris mentioned - I was an A-hole! Seriously, I was diagnosed with depression, not manic or anything, just depression. So I soon realized that I was NOT a good canidate for steriod use in any dosage and my fiancee also helped me realize that. I was not raging, but mood swings were there. So as a mature responsible scientific person I did my research and stopped using. Of course I have also had friends who were not as smart and began abusing. When I say abusing I mean going way over the reccomended dosage just like ANY drug. If an anti-depressant make you feel better do you take 50 times the dosage to be really happy????
Honestly, it’s obvious that steriods are under attack because of lack of responsibility and ignorance. Remember the perfectly safe epherda?? A few idiots take 10 times the dosage and whamo - banned, thanks guys. With steriods you get great effects from it, your performance increases, so what do you do next? Take 75 times the reccomended dosage??!!! Are you freaking kidding me? So now the responsible people have to suffer? I’m just waiting for that one guy to take 75 times the Viagra dosage….who do we blame then???
There needs to be a clear distinction which I know will never happen - there are users and abusers - know who the real culprit is here.
[...] review originally appeared, in a slightly different form, during Sundance 2008. Bigger, Stronger, Faster* opens on six screens [...]