Beautiful Losers begins with archival footage shot as early as the 1980’s. It tells the story of outsiders who came together and found common ground in a small New York City storefront gallery. These individuals, with diverse backgrounds, including sub cultures like skateboarding, hip hop, surf, graffiti and punk began to invent their art. With no real training they established trends in pop culture based on their Do It Yourself (DIY) backgrounds. Today many of these non-traditional artists have become mainstream in the Pop Culture area and are sought after for various types of projects including art exhibits and by advertising agencies. Shepard Fairey, Ed Templeton, Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Chris Johansoon, Geoff McFetridge, Jo Jackson, Magaret Kilgallen, Stephe Powers and Thomas Campbell are names you may or may not recognize. However, their work is unmistakable in style and content.
This documentary is unique in that the artists seen in Beautiful Losers, turned filmmakers and documented themselves along the way. Aaron Rose uses that footage along with interviews to create a history of the artists, their progress and ultimate notoriety and success. This is mainly a linear journey which at times seems to slow the very interesting and informative film down. Beautiful Losers is not very cinematic in it’s storytelling approach. There is no real sense of beginning and middle, although it does build up in the last minutes to an inspirational end. This is not to say what is presented isn’t interesting and valuable. There is a pattern of talking heads illustrated with archival “B” roll that feels redundant in what it has to say about the process these artists went through. What the documentary lacks is very much action. In some respects it feels like it was edited to fit a 90 minute time frame.
The editing in Beautiful Losers is a mundane mix of interviews, archival footage taken over the years, of varying quality, and “B” roll. Beautiful Losers is essentially a compilation documentary building on archival footage taken by the artists of themselves over the years. The footage does give you a feel for what it was like for these since they came together in the eighties but it does slow down the film. Ken Burns as said that sometimes it’s good to slow things down, so that the intent of the shot becomes apparent, “that meaning accrues in duration.” Unfortunately that idea only works when the footage speaks for itself. In some cases the archival footage does speak for itself but there is so much of it that the pace stops being engaging. However, the interviews themselves are good and the artists involved project their personalities, views and ideas. The interviews combined with seeing the work is the best quality of this documentary.
Despite these storytelling difficulties Beautiful Losers is worth seeing because it ultimately has a message that creative people in the arts will be able to relate. The work of Fairey, Tempelton, Margaret Kilgallen and others is seen over time becoming more sophisticated. Their thoughts about their work and how they relate to main stream art is also important. In the end their work is setting trends in the advertising of many products that you may be surprised to see. They face becoming mainstream and part of the establishment. and not rebels in their Pop Culture world. Some seem to enjoy the new fame and fortune others eschew it but can’t turn down the money.
If you are involved in any area of the arts this is a documentary well worth seeing. Beautiful Losers is both entertaining and informing.
REVIEW WRITTEN BY J R MARTIN,. AUTHOR CREATE DOCUMENTARY FILMS, VIDEOS AND MULTIMEDIA Also Director of the Documentary Course at Full Sail University. See other documentary reviews by James R Martin at http://www.jrmartinmedia.com/reviews
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS -2008 – 90 MINUTES – DIRECTED BY AARON ROSE
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Beautiful Losers
Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.