Famous Documentaries!

Also appearing: B.B. King, Spike Lee, Mobutu Sese Seko (President of Zaire), Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Malick Bowens, Drew Bundini Brown, Odessa Clay,Howard Cosell, Dick Sadler, Archie Moore (uncredited) and The Spinners, The Crusaders

Almost all of the footage was shot in 1974. The film took 23 years to complete because the negatives and rights were caught up in civil suits involving the Liberians who financed it.

When the film won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali came to the stage with the filmmakers to show they had made peace. Foreman helped Ali, stricken with Parkinson's Disease, climb the steps to the stage.

Feature on the legendary football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.. His humble beginnings as a player to coach and his infamous first preseason training camp in Junction, Texas.

According to Dicky Eklund, he believed that this documentary was going to be about his comeback into boxing.

Boxer Dick Eklund is also the subject of the film The Fighter (2010) starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.

Also appearing as themselves in bits & cameos: Casey Affleck, Jack Nicholson, Billy Crystal, Danny Glover, Bruce Willis, Robin Wright, Danny DeVito, Mos Def, Sean Combs, Jamie Foxx, Ben Stiller, Edward James Olmos, David Letterman, Natalie Portman, Hugh Grant, Nathan Lane, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Barack Obama, Ashley Olsen, Regis Philbin, Kelly Ripa, Sean Penn, Tim Affleck

In September 2010 director Casey Affleck confirmed that this movie is not a real documentary, but fake. The public had been wondering ever since Joaquin Phoenix announced in October 2008 his retirement from acting in order to become a rapper, whether it was all just an act or if it was for real.

Joaquin Phoenix possesses the unique ability to make himself throw up without even having to stick his fingers down his throat. This gift came in handy for the scene after his disastrous rap performance where he is seen barfing into a toilet.

The idea for the film came from Joaquin Phoenix's amazement at the way people believed that reality TV shows were unscripted. By claiming to retire from acting, he and his brother-in-law Casey Affleck planned to make a film that "explored celebrity, and explored the relationship between the media and the consumers and the celebrities themselves".

Magnolia Pictures were rather annoyed with the whole set-up as they were trying to publicize Two Lovers (2008) with a star that refused to be interviewed and who yet was being followed by a documentary crew at all times. They believed that Phoenix's "stunt" took a lot of attention away from James Gray's well-received film which was a box-office flop.

The movie that Ben Stiller pitches to Joaquin Phoenix is _Greenberg_, with Stiller angling for Phoenix to play the part of Ivan. That part was actually played by Rhys Ifans. This is all part of the joke, however, as _Greenberg_ was already being filmed when Stiller showed up in this scene. Indeed, this scene was filmed after the David Letterman interview and Stiller's appearance at the Oscars, dressed as Joaquin.

Effectively Joaquin Phoenix played this variation of himself for two whole years. Some critics have argued that it is one of his greatest, most sustained performances.

The sixth film featuring both Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito.

The first hint that Joaquin Phoenix was going to pull a stunt like this came in October 2008 when he announced his retirement on the red carpet of his film Two Lovers (2008) which he then proclaimed to be his final performance. (Ironically, Phoenix got some of the best reviews of his career for his performance in the film.)

In the scene where Anton is playing the piano and singing a song (the scene between calling the prostitutes and them actually coming), the shot in the film was actually the third take. Also, the song being sung was written by Anton's brother, and he (Anton) is singing it in a different pitch in the film.

The final sequence in the film, where Joaquin Phoenix is trekking through the river, was actually longer in the original cut. It was almost another three minutes longer, but Casey Affleck thought that it was "beating a dead horse" at that point and decided to cut it shorter, and that is what we see in the final film.

In the defecation scene, where Joaquin Phoenix gets pooped on in bed, the "feces" was actually a combination of humus and coffee grounds. The mixture was inserted into a tube that was taped onto Antony Langdon's (Anton) back that went down to his butt.

Towards the end of the movie, there is a scene where Joaquin Phoenix is sitting with his father, at a table, drinking beers. In reality, this man is not Joaquin Phoenix's father, but actually Casey Affleck and Ben Affleck's own real-life father.

Directorial debut of actor Casey Affleck.

This program recycled the CG animation models from Clash of the Dinosaurs, but to cut corners, used the Parasaurolophus model for Charonosaurus and the Deinonychus model for Saurornithoides. This inevitably lead to errors in the depiction of these animals.

On the afternoon of June 13, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the outskirts of Paris, carrying two suitcases. The contents of those suitcases, to the lament of a nearby jogger, was the dismembered body of a fellow student -- a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt, whom Sagawa had shot three days prior and had spent the days since eating various parts of her body.

He was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered, "I killed her to eat her flesh," when they raided his home, whereupon they found bits of Renne still in his fridge.

Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial and was institutionalized in Paris. His incarceration was to be short, however, as the French public soon grew weary of their hard-earned francs going to support this evil woman-eater, and Issei was promptly deported. Herein followed a bizarre and seemingly too convenient set of legal loopholes and psychiatric reports that led doctors in Japan declaring him "sane, but evil."

On August 12, 1986, Sagawa checked himself out of Tokyo's Matsuzawa Psychiatric hospital, and has been a free man ever since.

"The Real Junction Boys": an investigative featurette on where they are now.

This short film was made in conjunction with the release of The Delta Force.

Included on the 2-Disc Special Edition DVD of The Dirty Dozen.

In an attempt to provide as much realism as possible, the actors spoke no modern (or ancient) languages in this movie. Instead, the director created a proto-language for this movie based on assumptions and some of the more universal ways of speaking. Despite the lack of "real" dialog, or even subtitles, an excellent understanding is achieved.

I completely recommend the episodes "The Vice Guide to North Korea" and "The Vice Guide to Liberia." Really jaw-dropping expose on what it is really like in these places. Unbelievable stuff and information.

This TV Special is featured in the Two-Disc Special Edition DVD for 'Wyatt Earp' (1994) and is hosted by the great Tom Skerritt.