Nobody Speak: Trials of
the Free Press *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Brian Knappenberger.
Written by: Brian Knappenberger.
The
documentary Nobody Speak starts out as an examination of the bizarre legal case
in which Terry Bollea aka Hulk Hogan sued Gawker for posting an excerpt of a
sex tape featuring him and the wife of his best friend – a radio personality
known as Bubba the Love Sponge. That case really should have been enough for
one documentary to be about – but that doesn’t satisfy director Brian
Knappenberger, who spins off into other stories in the back half of the
documentary – like billionaire Sheldon Adelson buying a Las Vegas newspaper
that was critical of him in order to control them, to Donald Trump and the rise
of “Fake News”. Undeniably, there are connections between all of these cases –
cases in which billionaires try to manipulate the press into giving them the
coverage they want, and trying to actively shut down those who don’t – and yet
because the film is only 95 minutes long, the film starts to feel more
scattershot than it should. I couldn’t help but think of the excellent doc from
a few years ago – Best of Enemies – about the infamous Vidal/Buckley debates
during the 1968 Presidential campaigns, which in the last few minutes contains
a montage about the unintended consequences those debates spawned. That was a
smart, effective and efficient way of taking a smaller story and giving it
larger relevance – Nobody Speak does essentially that for 45 minutes, and isn’t
as effective. By the end, as the music soars, you’re watching a sermon.
That
doesn’t mean that the film is bad – far from it – just that I wish the film had
followed the crazy Terry Bollea vs. Gawker case throughout – because that case
is bizarre enough to support it, and the case may well be stronger had they
done that. By cramming that into 50 minutes or so, it kind of just hits the
highlights, and doesn’t give as nuanced a view of anyone involved in the case
as it should. For instance, Gawker was a journalistic cesspool, but the doc
brushes by that quickly, in order to make Gawker into Free Speech heroes. I do
believe Gawker had the right to publish what they did, and their right to
freedom of speech should be upheld at all costs – because even if it is a
cesspool, they still have those rights. By making them into heroes, the film
makes things easier on the audience than it should be to side with Gawker –
they were right, but saying so should make you feel a little dirty.
Knappenberger
– who has made two other, rather laudatory docs, about the internet – We Are Legion
about the hacker group Anonymous and The Internet’s Own Boy – about Aaron
Swartz, another activist, hounded by the government until he committed suicide –
doesn’t much work in shades of grey though – he likes things black and white
morally speaking. And while here, there is clearly a right side and a wrong
side, it would be nice to at least see what that other side was – from someone
other than Bollea’s poorly touped lawyer.
Still,
my problems with Nobody Speak aside, it is a fascinating movie about the
slippery slope of journalistic integrity in America when billionaires can
essentially control the media. Hogan’s suit against Gawker was funded by
billionaire Peter Thiel, who apparently didn’t like previous stories they had
done on him. Perhaps sensing that audiences may not like the Gawker people (one
of whom did say that they only celebrity sex tape that wasn’t newsworthy would
be if the celebrity was under 4 – and even if he was clearly being sarcastic,
that doesn’t really help) Knappenberger switches focus to the Las Vegas Review
Journal – a newspaper that was bought by another billionaire, although he tried
to cover his tracks, and was only ousted by the dogged work by the reporters at
the paper he had just acquired.
As
with Knappenberger’s previous two films, I agree with a lot of what
Knappenberger is saying in this film – and think that the connections are
there, and they are important, and we do need to defend full, free journalism.
I also wish that Knappenberger could impart that message without resorting to
flattening everything into moral black and whites, and speechifying in the
final act. There is a great doc to be made of this material – to be honest,
there’s probably two or three great docs to be made of it. This one is merely
ok.
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