SIFF News, Picks, and Pans

WE ALL KNEW somebody like Rick Kirkham, or maybe we still do, or maybe it just seems that way because he's got such a TV-familiar demeanor. Good hair, square jaw, and a broadcaster's deep voice—these are just some of the attributes that make him such a natural in the compelling, can't-look-away documentary TV Junkie. During his self-filmed video diaries, edited here to cover about seven years of his life, Kirkham is utterly at ease on camera; in fact, his day job was as a TV reporter, eventually rising up to Inside Edition during the '90s. Yet this is a profoundly disturbing doc, as Kirkham frankly and unwaveringly chronicles his double life as a crack addict—a habit that he keeps secret from his employers, at first, and family back in Texas.

Eventually Kirkham amassed some 3,000 hours of brutally candid footage that, years later, came into the hands of TV Junkie producer/co-director Michael Cain, who will appear with his film at SIFF. Speaking by phone, Cain explains how he sees Kirkham's addictions, and desire to come clean, in the context of the baby boom. "The baby boom represents coming out of a certain time period where the barriers were taken away, and the rules were kind of fuzzy," he says. Kirkham was an attention junkie who started breaking big TV news stories in his early 20s, for whom fame, fortune, and drugs all went together. By the time he starts his video diary at age 33, Cain adds, he's struggling with "the complexities of getting what you want."

Possessed of what Cain calls a "triple-A personality," Kirkham is clearly a bit of an obsessive in his constant auto-documentation. He has a classic cocaine personality, too, but there's nothing self-aggrandizing about his tapes. "His relationship with the camera is probably the most honest relationship that he has," says Cain. In a sense, it's consistent with his job—"the act of doing the reporting." Kirkham specifically documents himself at his worst, and his only advice to Cain and co-director/editor Matt Radecki was, "You have to tell the truth, no matter how bad it makes me look," as Cain recalls. (Fascinatingly, Kirkham never went back and watched his own videos until the final cut of the movie.)

Expected in theaters this fall (and later on HBO), TV Junkie also benefits from a certain cultural time lag. The story basically ends, but for a postscript, in 1997—before reality TV, blogging, etc. Kirkham's compulsive diary habit now seems almost normal. Says Cain of the long-gestating project, which he began in 2000, "There was no Capturing the Friedmans, the current documentary craze, the current reality [TV] craze. There was no Survivor."

Yet in another sense, Kirkham's video confessions are part of an older tradition. "Yes, he is a Catholic," Cain laughs. BRIAN MILLER

The Big Bad Swim

Here's a feel-good eccentric ensemble comedy you won't feel guilty for loving. This delightful debut from Ishai Setton follows the members of an adult swim class. There's Amy (Paget Brewster), a high-school teacher going through a divorce. One of her students (Avi Setton) is filming a documentary about his croupier by day/stripper by night sister Jordan (Jess Weixler), who's also in the class. Jordan is hot for swim instructor Noah (Jeff Branson), who's haunted and depressed by failure. Their relationships overlap both out of the pool and in, where the students are united by their fear of the water. Swim has good writing and better performances. The student-movie-within-a-movie conceit even feels organic. Everything is simple and believable, without cloying sentimentality or overly scripted coincidences, and the characters become more intriguing and likable as the film continues. Grab your suit and dive in. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Broadway Performance Hall: 4:15 p.m. Fri., June 16; 11 a.m. Sat., June 17.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

This bildungsroman follows Zac Beaulieu (Émile Vallée and later Marc-André Grondin), the fourth child in a family of five boys, from birth in 1960 to adulthood in 1980. Although the details of Zac's life are typical of the "my life as a gay teen sucks" genre, the supporting cast elevates C.R.A.Z.Y. above standard family melodrama. The film has a bunch of genuine little touches we might recognize from our own families. The most successful is papa Beaulieu (Michel Côté) performing a sweet old French love song at Christmas dinner every year. (Christmas also happens to be Zac's birthday.) Cutting 10 or 15 minutes would help the movie, but it's always engaging and never boring thanks to sharp dialogue and amusing fantasy sequences. C.R.A.Z.Y. recently swept the Genies (Canada's Oscars) with 11 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Egyptian: 9 p.m. Fri., June 16; 1:15 p.m. Sun., June 18.

The First People on the Moon

This ingenious, straight-faced Russian fake-umentary maintains that a Soviet spacecraft was launched in 1938 after years of secret development—all of it filmed. Accordingly, the movie is mostly composed of black-and-white newsreel footage, some genuine, some expertly distressed as if on old film stock. (No computer effects were employed.) There are interviews with a few ancient surviving cosmonauts about their training—The Right Stuff with laughable methods but boundless patriotism, as we witness. Applicants run a foot race wearing gas masks and are sprayed with ice-cold water. One's even a dwarf—to save weight and use less rocket fuel! Drawing on insect anatomy and coal-fired power, this covert space program has its heroes, like Yuri Gagarin a quarter-century too soon, but the war and politics suppress its triumphant story. "Mankind doesn't learn," warns an aged crewman. "There is no such thing as progress—technical or moral." Moon's charmingly comic premise thus turns into a more typically Russian and pessimistic fable, where the stars beckon and the system crushes. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit: 9 p.m. Thurs., June 15; 7:30 p.m. Sun., June 18.