I love when a documentary gets hyper-focused. Takes on a topic that few people know about and/or has a passionate fanbase. It’s cool watching something and realizing there’s a world I didn’t even know existed. That’s the power of documentary. Narrative film loves to use “Inspired by a True Story”. Documentary is for when the true story is interesting enough to maintain itself. The danger of targeted documentaries tough is getting too myopic. Getting too focused on a single aspect and ignoring some larger context that may matter. For a lazy example, imagine a documentary about Hitler’s paintings that doesn’t bother reckoning with his other activities.
Z-Channel: A Magnificent Obsession has this problem. Z-Channel is legendary for a subsect of people. It exposed many in Los Angeles to a world of films they never would’ve known about otherwise. It’s cool seeing all the filmmakers heap praise on Z-Channel. This is a perfect deployment of Quentin Tarantino. I may not always love the guy, but it’s hard to find a more energetic film fanboy. This movie does a wonderful job of suggesting the range of films that were on Z-Channel. And I personally enjoyed the backroom politics of HBO and Showtime as competitors.
I did have a couple problems with the film though. It doesn’t know how to cope with programming director Jerry Harvey. Z-Channel was his baby, and his ability to curate does seem very impressive. He did murder his wife before killing himself though. It reminds me of listening to Serial then realizing that Hae Min Lee’s family didn’t approve of any of this. Z-Channel felt like a lot of Harvey’s buddies trying to respectfully downplay hid dark actions. I think the film should’ve focused more solely on the channel itself or been more overtly a documentary about Harvey.
Also, how unique was Z-Channel? Am I hearing about this because it went to the right 80,000 households in the heart of the movie capital of the world? Were there other cable channels elsewhere doing something similar, just in a smaller market? Something wasn’t sitting well with me about how aspects were talked around. Harvey is painted as a Hollywood outsider or insider depending on what that part of the story needed. How much of the success of Z-Channel was because he was able to make friends with directors? Perhaps I just wanted the movie to acknowledge the many factors working in Z-Channel’s favor rather than always insisting that it was the little guy getting squeezed out.
If nothing else, this documentary gave me a long list of movies I’d like to check out from the 70’s and 80’s in particular. And maybe if there are enough documentaries about the early days of cable like Z-Channel or The Orange Years, I’ll eventually get what I really want: A 10-part docuseries about the creation and evolution of cable.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
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