135: David Holzman’s Diary

           The upcoming DVD/Blu ray release of Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary (1967) has sparked some interesting conversation on the net.  Mubi.com writer Ignatiy Vishnevetsky dedicated his most recent “Hot and Now” pick on Ebert Presents… to the film after his cohort at the website, Jaime N Christley, suggested that the movie is a landmark piece of “False Cinema,” an emerging subgenre of the mockumentary.  False Cinema can trace it roots all the way back to early Bunuel, and includes such noted pieces as Peter Watkin’s The War Game (also 1967) and the popular 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project.  However, recent releases such as last year’s Exit through the Gift Shop have spawned new interest in these ostensive pieces of vérité, causing the retrospective labeling of the movement.

Whether or not this style deserves such labeling is still up for debate, but there can be no question about the inclusion of McBride’s picture in such a conversation.  Likewise, there should be no question as to its achievements.  Shooting on a minuscule budget of $2,500 and using friends and relatives as cast members, McBride created something uniquely personal and at the same time strangely universal.  Holzman, played by screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, is an obsessive film addict and would-be philosopher who decides to search for truth in his own life by making 16mm journal.  He quotes Truffaut’s contention that film is “truth, 24 times per second,” convinced that if he films and then watches his own life over and over he will glean some greater understanding.

The movie alternates between medium shot confessionals (not unlike those now often employed by reality television programs) and hand-held street scenes that reveal the characters of Holzman’s New York neighborhood.  In a way these short guided tours of the upper west side are McBride’s love note to the city; part Scorsese and part Woody Allan in nature.  Shot in cool B&W and set to era rock tunes, these scenes are some of the film’s finest as hoods, tramps, and shopping bag ladies are given equal credence by the lens. 

It’s easy to look at this film and label the Holzman character a loser.  He alienates his girlfriend with the camera, seeming to find more pleasure in filming her than being with her.  He complains in his confessions that he is misunderstood, by her and by others.  Subjects he interviews admit that they don’t understand his vision for the piece.  Indeed he becomes so transfixed on his goal that the world beyond the film the audience witnesses him making seems to fade away (or at least we assume it does as all we have to go on is the film itself).  Still, I’m sure that more audience members than just myself have empathized with Holzman.  His attempts in some way (good or bad) resemble my own efforts with this blog – not that I’m searching for truth with this project more so than your average person.  I can’t help but to find a note of sympathy for his cause and for his belief in Truffaut’s philosophy.  Maybe this means I’m a loser as well, but I can’t imagine a much more valid medium for truth than film.

It was difficult to watch this movie and not think of another; one of my favorites, High Fidelity (2000).  That film is more about an obsession with pop music than film, but it follows a character as he searches for the truth about his own romantic shortcomings while hoping to find meaning in music.  The confessional scenes in that picture have a similar feel to those presented here, as the John Cusack character addresses the audience directly throughout.  Likewise, he feels that somehow his fascinations with rock music have prevented him from living life to the fullest.  There’s an eerie similarity between his character’s philosophical question, “did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” and the contention of an interviewee here that “some lives are good movies and some lives are bad movies.”  In both cases the characters are not able to separate their obsessions from their own experiences, indicating that they prefer a life lived via the lens and the record needle.

    The story arc of Holzman’s Diary is fairly predictable.  The girlfriend leaves and causes the protagonist to fall deeper in love with his fascinations, resentments, and fixations.  However it’s ending, the saddest possible that I could imagine, comes out of nowhere.  It’s creative and fully possible and wholly believable and devastating all at once.  This is a film about obsession.  It’s not unreasonable to think that in some way David Holzman foreshadows Travis Bickle.  It’s fitting that until the forthcoming home video release it’s been a difficult movie to find.  I think to see it you have to be a bit of an obsessive yourself.  As I said, I can’t help but see Holzman as a small reflection of myself.  If you love movies, I mean really love them, this is one you should see.   

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

Language: English

Runtime: 74 Minutes

Note: The girlfriend is played by the beautiful Eileen Dietz, who went on to a career in soap operas after playing the possessed Regan in The Exorcist (1973; Uncredited).  I don't know why, but that fascinates me.