Adventures in Streaming: Celebrity documentaries rarely give viewers the complete story

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On Sept. 10, filmmaker Rob Reiner will première his 40-years-later sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, catching up with the three would-be rock gods who made their hilarious debut in 1985.

It is, of course, a fake documentary, what would later be coined “mockumentary,” a simultaneous takedown of showbiz boobs, and the filmmakers who aggrandize them. Reiner himself took the name Marty DiBergi for his onscreen director with the understanding that even he would keep some professional distance from the heavy metal buffoonery on display.

The showbiz doc almost always falls under the category of hagiography, especially in the past decade or two when gossamer luminaries such as Katy Perry and Justin Bieber were the subjects of films that, we know in retrospect, conceal much more than they reveal.

The Bieber doc Never Say Never presents something like a PR fan fiction designed solely to sell the Bieber brand. Compare it to another documentary about an Ottawa-born pop star — the 27-minute gem Lonely Boy, a 1963 film about young Paul Anka – that actually exposes the pop star gladhanding mechanics behind Anka’s rise to fame. (It’s available to view at nfb.ca.)

It stands as proof the documentary portrait of any star should be a documentary first. That is certainly the premise at work in the recent two-part HBO series Pee-wee as Himself, available on Crave. Paul Reubens’ character Pee-wee Herman, an eccentric man-child, could be overbearing, so it doesn’t altogether surprise Reubens himself proves to be a prickly, self-protective interview subject, seen constantly challenging director Matt Wolf from the get-go over the course of this two-part, three hour, 25-minute production.

Reubens makes no bones about wanting to control the film’s narrative, and one could sympathize. At the time of filming, he was secretly battling cancer, a fight he ultimately lost in mid-2023 at the age of 70. Certainly, Wolf has lots of footage detailing Reubens’ creative genius, especially when it came to the creation of the eye-popping ‘80s kid show Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Reubens ultimately reveals the doc was intended to clear his name after he was wrongfully accused of possessing child pornography, the second big scandal of his career following a 1991 porn theatre bust.

It may be considered a lesser scandal that Reubens, a gay man, was closeted in a bid to protect his persona. Reubens cops to that.
In any case, the disproportionate prosecution he faced proved Reubens sadly correct.

As for Reiner, he finally demonstrates he had a real documentary in him after all. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, also on Crave, is a portrait of the comic actor-writer-director.

He and Brooks have been friends since high school. So the film is only as provocative as Brooks’s comedy was as he rose to fame in the 1960s.

That isn’t too much of a problem. Brooks, as a standup, anticipated future comedians – Andy Kaufman and Jim Carrey – with a willingness to bomb in the name of experimentation.

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