Startup.com (2001) + Down from the Mountain (2001) – DVDs

STARTUP.COM
***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN
***/**** Image A Sound A
directed by Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker

by Bill Chambers With the advent (moreover, the industry-wide acceptance) of digital video, married partners in documentary-making Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker are more prolific than ever before. Artisan just released their two latest projects, Down from the Mountain and Startup.com, on DVD, and though the former is a concert film and the latter takes an inside look at the Internet boom, they sit together comfortably in the directors’ joint oeuvre. Consider that, between filming such music legends as Jerry Lee Lewis and Jerry Garcia, the pair has all but specialized in youthfully arrogant subjects–star Clinton campaigner George Stephanopoulos in The War Room, for example. There’s even been some crossover: Without Hegedus, Pennebaker captured both Bob Dylan (Don’t Look Back) and David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) on the cusp of fame, the former abandoning artificiality, the latter embracing it to essentially the same end.

If there’s a new rock ‘n’ roll, in the late-Nineties e-commerce was mistaken for it. Garage jams moved into second place as a pastime, dethroned by the quieter gamble of day-trading; these days, a computer is cheaper than a guitar, anyway. Allowing day-trading to flourish was an influx of web-based business ventures onto the stock market–low-priced IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) made a lot of CEOs and web surfers alike unspeakably rich, but day-to-day operations proved many a startup superfluous, as more people were buying shares in these companies than were actually putting them to use. Hegedus, eager to examine cyberspace’s impact on the American economy’s upswing from the mover-and-shaker’s perspective (she was especially intrigued by a section of New York nicknamed “Silicon Alley“), lucked out when she heard from Jehane Noujaim, a Harvard grad who had just begun shooting footage of her roommate, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, as he embarked on an entrepreneurial bid for Internet gold.

Having brainstormed business concepts for years, Tuzman and Tom Herman, friends since teenhood, are founding govWorks.com together at the tee-off of Startup.com. The idea behind govWorks was the first to spur them to action: a one-stop online resource to settle parking tickets, virtually “attend” town meetings–municipal stuff. And it’s the “stuff” that balloons govWorks’ potential while simultaneously clouding its purpose; by the time launch date is imminent, a staff of 200 (198 or so of them extraneous) is seeking management advice from ASK.COM. Neither Herman (the programmer) nor Tuzman (the luv-ya-baby salesman)–who become millionaires on paper–can cope with a tangent. This shared flaw drives them apart. The details of their eventual rift are inscrutable, but the principle is thus.

Although Startup.com has a rather foreseeable, inevitable trajectory, the film is not shallow. Au contraire, it has a homoerotic charge that turns Tuzman and Herman’s alliance into an absorbing, quasi-Victorian romance. These men would find a reason to hug in a fresh box of staples. An early debate over whether to name the company govWorks drives Tuzman out of the room, his return met with tears and an embrace and Tuzman whispering tenderly in Herman and another partner’s ear that “govWorks” is okay by him. (That third wheel departs from the picture soon after, for reasons muddily explained.) The denouement of Startup.com is a protracted, after-hours reconciliation between the estranged Tuzman and Herman: the two escort Herman’s daughter to the circus, sandwiching her between them in the stands like divorced parents putting on a brave face, while in the final scene, Herman watches Tuzman work out at the gym. Kaleil, staring up at Tom from a bench press, says that losing him was the most painful aspect of govWorks’ failure–worse than the departure of his devoted girlfriend, worse than the broken promise of big bucks.

Tuzman’s trust in co-director Noujaim led to a rather uncompromising portrait of megalomania in bloom, but he does owe it to the intimacy of her camera that his actions don’t seem as repugnant within the film as they do when you read about them second-hand. Tuzman’s a one-note, Iron John kind of guy, and yet that note starts to sound more sincere as the picture wears on. The nature of Noujaim’s access is probably also responsible for Startup.com‘s significant failing: everybody besides Tuzman and, to a lesser extent, Herman, is relegated to day-player status. The Tuzman/Herman break-up is lacking in tragic impact because a bunch of anonymous stuffed shirts serve as its context. If Kaleil weren’t such a vibrant character and Herman his complement, Startup.com would taste like meat and potatoes.

Sans Noujaim, Hegedus is joined by Pennebaker and Monterey Pop cinematographer Nick Doob on Down from the Mountain, which captures a very different phenomenon: the resurgence of bluegrass/”mountain music,” as ignited by the unanticipated success of the soundtrack to Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Over one historic evening last year, the album’s eclectic line-up of participants assembled in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to perform its most cherished selections, along with a few non-traditional tunes (e.g., “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll”). Although Down from the Mountain starts out a little on the cliquish side (the casually-interviewed performers go without introductory credits–it’s assumed that we know Alison Krauss from Gillian Welch), the talent have ingratiated themselves by the beginning of the concert, roughly half-an-hour into the proceedings. When Emmylou Harris takes the stage, you wonder how her electronic baseball game turned out.

Down from the Mountain comes to feel homey like a reunion, almost as if it were bound to happen with or without O Brother, Where Art Thou?‘s existence. From its key art on down the film doesn’t have any pretenses other than to be a scrapbook of the event, although it looks and especially sounds better than a bootleg. While Dr. Ralph Stanley cements his career resurrection, the no less legendary John Hartford makes an excellent host and occasionally plays back-up; his impromptu fiddle-and-jig number (“Indian War Whoop”) with Welch is a major highlight. Not every song is guaranteed to please–I found that The Cox Family wore out their welcome–but the sum of Down from the Mountain‘s parts lifts the spirits, no strings attached. Unless you count the instruments.

THE DVDs
Artisan caught some flack for presenting tape-to-film-to-tape transfers of the digital productions The Blair Witch Project and Chuck & Buck on DVD but Startup.com and Down from the Mountain each bypassed celluloid on their way to disc. Down from the Mountain was shot in a higher-resolution format (HD, as opposed to Startup.com‘s mini-DV) and simply shines on DVD. The 1.77:1 anamorphic widescreen image is only guilty of infrequent oversaturation–bright colours tend to burn hot. Startup.com‘s 1.33:1 presentation is more empowering than attractive: soft-focused and inclined to shimmer, it betrays indie pragmatism.

Down from the Mountain sounds incredible, with the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix transforming your home theatre into the Ryman. The acoustics are crystalline, fresh, and resonant. My sole complaint is that the applause can become white noise in the louder-than-average surround channels. Startup.com is in 5.1, too, but you’ll barely notice. The Down from the Mountain DVD is far lighter on supplements, however: its text synopsis, filmmaker biographies, transcription of the closing titles, and detailed musician and song lists aren’t nearly as nourishing as Startup.com‘s full-length commentary (with Hegedus and Noujaim, recorded separately), nor its–for all intents and purposes–abridged version, Susan Ricketts’s 10-minute featurette “Documentarians on Documentary”. There, Hegedus distinguishes herself from a journalist (“I’m not trying to advocate any point of view”) and Noujaim says that because she never liked to stop shooting Pennebaker called her “Proust.” In a timely-feeling final statement, Noujaim points out the unlikelihood of something so innocuous as Startup.com ever getting made in her homeland of Egypt. A teaser, a trailer, cast and crew bios, and production notes round out the Startup.com DVD.

• Startup.com
  103 minutes; R; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-9; Region One; Artisan
• Down from the Mountain
  98 minutes; G; 1.77:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-9; Region One; Artisan