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AMERICAN CANNIBAL
Directed by: Perry Grebin & Michael Nigro.
Produced by: Grebin, Denis Jensen & Nigro.
Director of Photography: Grebin & Ari Haberberg.
Edited by: Suki Hawley.
Released by: LifeSize Entertainment.
Country of Origin: USA. 91 min. Not Rated.

Filmmakers Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro got lucky in 2003. That’s all there is to it. Grebin and Nigro latched onto Gil Ripley and Dave Roberts, following them as they pitched reality television pilots to investors and producers, during which Ripley and Roberts checked their moral and artistic integrity at the door. Grebin and Nigro’s initial project about the making of a potential reality show turned into over 250 hours of footage, two-and-a-half years of their own lives, one missing person, and this downright riveting documentary.

Describing this film as candid would be an injustice. After two years of pre-production, Ripley and Roberts’ unaired pilot was called The Ultimate Ultimate Challenge. Produced by Kevin Blatt, the upstart who turned Paris Hilton from a tabloid personality to a porn star via her sex tape, the series followed six contestants who signed onto this competitive reality show, where they would be dropped on an island for a week without food, either being forced to forfeit and lose the competition or to eat the flesh of their costars. (Though all parties involved in the production assure the camera this would never have been allowed to happen; the goal was to get the contestants to reach the point where they would consume human flesh, but not actually eat it.)

The reason you never heard of this program is because Ripley and Roberts never managed to complete their series after a hypoglycemic contestant suffered an injury after fainting, forcing the production to shut down without enough footage to complete the pilot. (The lack of a pre-production background check into her medical history is an oversight worthy of a whopping lawsuit.) As the credits for the film roll, Grebin and Nigro interview individuals involved in The Ultimate Ultimate Challenge to find out what happened to the injured woman. Few people remember her and those who do never cared to find out. Even her family appears clueless about her whereabouts.

Obviously, the material is ripe for a documentary. But what makes the film stand out is the stance Grebin and Nigro take with their footage. There isn’t any creative editing to increase the amount of drama. There are no clear judgments being made even on the most blatantly opportunistic individuals, nor is there ironic music to offset moments of ridiculous gravity.

What Grebin and Nigro focus on instead through interviews with media commentators, famous reality contestants, and producers is the idea that humanity’s morality is not deteriorating because of television’s increasingly base programming, but rather the other way around – reality programming is increasingly base because it increasingly caters to the lowest common denominator, which probably could be said for most of television and even film. Zachary Jones
March 16, 2007