This review originally appeared, in a slightly different form, during Sundance 2008. Bigger, Stronger, Faster* opens on six screens today.
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 constant narration, can be hackneyed and a bit too reliant on a faux-naivete which belies some of its stronger conclusions, 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 relies on footage from Rocky 4 to explicate its thesis argument––that steroid criminalization amounts to hating the player whilst willfully ignoring the dynamics of the game.
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I’m typing this from Columbia, MO, where the True/False Film Festival is just getting underway. Shortly before I flew in yesterday, I found out that Christopher Bell’s surprisingly strong Sundance entry Bigger, Stronger, Faster had been added to the True/False program. Shortly after arriving, I found out that the film has been acquired by Magnolia, for theatrical distribution followed by broadcast on HDNet.
Bigger, which I saw at Sundance and reviewed here, has a real shot at Super Size Me-style success, although marketing is going to be key. Bell puts himself at the center as a character, but the film doesn’t feel self-indulgent at all––for a first-time filmmaker, he shows remarkable skill both as an interviewer and as a polemicist. In selling the film to audiences, I think it’s going to be key to showcase Bell as a personality, without undermining the fact that this a convincingly and seriously researched film.
I’ll have more from True/False later today.
A lot of folks are talking about Sundance doc Bigger, Stronger, Faster, including Karina (full review here). Director/narrator Chris Bell explores the hot-button issue of steroid use with both intensely personal passages and darkly comic Moore-esque exposés. In this interview we talk about steroid use, the war on drugs, stumbling into documentary filmmaking, and a new script about the LA dating scene.
Chris Bell Interview [6:16m]:
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Chris Bell
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.
…Read more
