Burnstein's American Teen is no exception. She sought out to tell a story, and through that story convey the emotions, dreams, hardships, etc. of an American teenager. Any and all criticisms of the film should be derived from how well the critic believes Burnstein met that goal. The first criticism, "too glossy," is almost completely irrelevant to anything regarding the validity of documentaries. I am assuming the speaker of that complaint expects all documentaries to heavily rely on the Cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking, but that is simply untrue and to believe otherwise would in fact stifle the truth's ability to shine in a film. The second criticism, "too willfully mainstream," is one I actually do agree with. American Teen's gravitation towards small town whiteys severely detracts from its ability to portray the story of the average American teenager. Admittedly, minority demographics outside of Warsaw, Indiana can still probably find pieces of themselves in the given Breakfast Club defaults, but the film could have benefitted so much more had it forced non-minority audience members to empathize with the problems of a more balanced Breakfast Club. Lastly, the dreaded accusation of inauthenticity in a documentary... Heavens to Betsy, a documentary that skews contexts in order to more precisely convey truths?! Unheard of! Whether or not she gave the subjects of the documentary dramatic direction is irrelevant. Whether or not any of it is dramatized at all is irrelevant. All that is relevant is how her choices brought her closer or further from the holy truth of the American teen. If she decided to tell one of the subjects to act a little more awkward, or get one of them to cry on camera, or whatever... So long as the audience receives her message in as untarnished a form as possible, (and by untarnished I mean TRUE)((and by TRUE I mean accurate)) then it shouldn't matter whether or not she was 100% honest. Which by the way is impossible in any documentary anyway.
As for what I would have done differently, I probably wouldn't have made a movie about American teenagers from Indiana because I don't care about American teenagers from Indiana.
So, let's say the filmmakers made an effort to trick you into thinking the high school was actually Clarksburg High School, here in good ol' MOCO. You know, changed the experior shots, edited out anything that might give the real location away. Would it be a documentary? I think the spectrum argument sounds good but doesn't really hold water. At some point, ice becomes water. I know if I was standing on a frozen lake when that moment when ice stopped being ice. I'm also curious if you thought it was Gaithersburg High School, would it suddenly be interesting to you? You give the impression that you don't care about the film because of where it was filmed. Where would it have to be filmed to be interesting? What's your hangup on location?
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