WHAT  HAPPYNS     By     Ric  Beairsto       A  THESIS  ESSAY  SUBMITTED  IN  PARTIAL  FULFILLMENT  OF  THE     REQUIREMENTS  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF     MASTER  OF  APPLIED  ARTS   in   Media  Arts     EMILY  CARR  UNIVERSITY  OF  ART  +  DESIGN     2012             ©  Ric  Beairsto,  2012           ABSTRACT     My  thesis  project,  titled  What  Happyns,  is  a  video  documentary,  approximately  45  minutes  in   length,  comprised  largely  of  interviews  recorded  with  attendees  at  the  Stanley  Park  Lawn   Bowling  Club  and  the  Plaza  Skateboard  Park,  both  located  in  Vancouver,  B.C.    This  paper   identifies  three  documentary  film  histories—the  ethnographic,  the  quotidian  and  the  essay— that  have  informed  my  project.    A  number  of  definitive  filmic  works  within  these  histories  are   discussed  in  relation  to  the  project,  most  importantly  Chronique  d’un  été  and  Le  joli  mai.    Other   important  context  is  provided  by  the  work  of  Errol  Morris  and  Ross  McElwee,  as  well  as  by   Michael  Apted’s  Up  Series.    The  role  of  the  interview  in  documentary  film  is  examined,  as  are   the  key  concepts  around  which  What  Happyns  was  constructed:  our  collective  conception  of   happiness,  especially  its  recent  manifestation  in  the  field  of  Positive  Psychology,  and  Laura   Rascaroli’s  notion  of  the  “interstitial  space”  as  it  is  created  by  the  deployment  of  voice-­‐over  in   an  essay  film.    Emphasis  is  lent  throughout  to  the  emergent  process  often  involved  in  the   making  of  documentary  films,  and  the  thesis  project  is  viewed,  in  conclusion,  mainly  as  an  essay   film.             ii         TABLE  OF  CONTENTS     ABSTRACT  ....................................................................................................................................      ii     TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  ...................................................................................................................    iii     LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  ...............................................................................................................    iv     ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  ...............................................................................................................      v     DEDICATION  ................................................................................................................................    vi     QUOTATIONS  ..............................................................................................................................  vii     1. THESIS  PROJECT  ...............................................................................................................    1     2. DOCUMENTARY  PRACTICE  ..............................................................................................      4     3. SITUATED  PRACTICE  .........................................................................................................    6       4. METHODOLOGY  ..............................................................................................................  21     5. CONCLUSION  ...................................................................................................................  26     6. A  REFLECTIVE  CHAPTER  ...................................................................................................  30     WORKS  CITED  ..............................................................................................................................  36     WORKS  CONSULTED  ...................................................................................................................  39     APPENDICES         Appendix  A:  The  Interview  Questions  ............................................................................    42   Appendix  B:  What  Happyns  Online  Site  .........................................................................    44       iii       LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS     Figure  1.    Rouch  and  Morin  before  the  camera.    From  http://www.mitpressjournals.org/  ....  10       Figure  2.    McElwee  before  and  behind  the  camera.    From  http://rossmcelwee.com/    ...........  18   Figure  3.    Sunshine  and  shadow  on  'the  greens.'    What  Happyns  video  still  frame.    ...............  23     Figure  4.    The  overhead  bulk  at  the  Plaza.    What  Happyns  video  still  frame.    .........................  24       iv         ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS     My  sincere  thanks  are  due  to  Jennifer  Beairsto,  for  her  editing  and  support,  to  David  Vaisbord   for  his  extensive  help  with  the  video  recording,  and  to  Dr.  Glen  Lowry,  whose  insight  and   unflagging  support  have  been  invaluable.               v         Dedicated  to  Bob  Town     1930  –  2012     A  gentleman.           vi             "If  we  dissect  this  many-­‐faced  crowd,  we  find  that  it  is  the  sum  of  solitudes.    For  two  centuries   happiness  has  been  a  new  idea  in  Europe;  people  have  not  yet  got  used  to  it.”   From  the  narration  for  Le  joli  mai,  Chris  Marker.       “We  wanted  to  make  a  film  about  love  but  it  turned  out  to  be  an  impersonal  kind  of  film...”   Jean  Rouch,  from  the  final  scene  of  Chronique  d’un  été,  Edgar  Morin  and  Jean  Rouch.       “Are  you  after  light,  or  are  you  after  heat?    Heat  is  easy  to  get.”     Mike  Wallace,  in  conversation  with  Charlie  Rose,  discussing  the  art  of  the   interview.       vii     INTRODUCTION   Within  the  urban  core  of  Vancouver,  Canada,  less  than  two  kilometres  apart,  are  two  enclosed   recreational  sites  which  exhibit  a  marked  range  of  similarities,  as  well  as  obvious  differences.     One  is  the  Downtown  Skateboard  Plaza,  ensconced  below  the  hulking  concrete  arcs  of  two   elevated  vehicular  viaducts,  a  grey,  hard-­‐surface  space  literally  surrounded,  above  as  well  as  on   all  sides,  by  the  roar  of  traffic.    The  other  is  the  Stanley  Park  Lawn  Bowling  Club,  a  garden-­‐like   venue  on  the  edge  of  Vancouver’s  largest,  mostly  forested  park,  facing  the  blue,  breezy  waters   of  the  Pacific  Ocean.    The  Plaza  is  frequented  by  a  comparatively  youthful  group  of   skateboarders,  mostly  male,  while  the  Stanley  Park  Lawn  Bowling  Club  is  comprised  of   members  who  skew  heavily  toward  an  older,  female  demographic.    The  practical  component  of   my  thesis  project,  a  45-­‐minute  video  documentary  called  What  Happyns,  is  comprised  largely  of   interviews  recorded  on  these  two  sites  with  these  two  very  different  groups  of  people.         What  Happyns  was  conceived  of  as  in  dialogue  with  two  key  French  documentaries  from  the   1960s:  Chronique  d’un  été  (Dir.  Jean  Rouch  and  Edgar  Morin)  and  Le  joli  mai  (Dir.  Chris  Marker),   where  the  filmmakers  spoke  with  mostly  working-­‐class  Parisians  about  their  daily  lives  and   employment,  and  whether  they  were  happy  in  as  much.    These  films  were  groundbreaking  in   their  intent  to  take  stock  of  contemporary  French  society  by  gauging  the  emotional  well-­‐being   of  everyday  people.    The  time  and  space—Paris  in  the  summer  and  spring  of  1960  and  1962   respectively—serve  as  the  setting  for  a  larger  existential  examination  of  the  post-­‐war  period.     Setting  out  to  document  very  different  social  contexts,  What  Happyns  examines  the  viewpoints   and  values  of  two  current  groups  of  urban  Vancouverites  who  occupy  opposite  ends  of  the   adult  age  spectrum.    Inviting  members  of  each  group  to  reflect  upon  their  goals  and  aspirations,   the  film  asks  whether  there  are  shared  attitudes  and  ideals  across  the  two  groups,  and  how   those  ideals  add  meaning  to  the  overall  shape  or  understanding  of  their  lives.             All  interviews  featured  in  What  Happyns  were  conducted  on-­‐site  at  either  the  Skateboard  Plaza   or  the  Bowling  Club,  between  May  of  2010  and  September  of  2011.    I  worked  with  a  camera   operator  in  recording  all  the  interviews,  and  the  interview  process  itself  was  quite  formalized,   1     with  the  interviewee  seated,  then  asked  to  read  each  written  question  aloud,  and  answer  as   they  wished.    As  the  interview  transpired,  I  attempted,  not  always  successfully,  to  keep  my  own   verbal  interchange  with  the  subject  to  a  minimum.       My  interview  questions  evolved  slightly  over  the  course  of  the  recording  period,  but  essentially   employed  an  identical  set  of  questions  (see  Appendix  A)  relating  only  discursively  to  the   personal  histories  of  the  interview  subjects,  focusing  instead  upon  social  and  ethical   standards.    Example  questions  are:   • What  is  meaningful  work?   • Do  you  think  it’s  true  that  most  people  live  lives  of  quiet  desperation?   • Are  you  happy?   • Do  you  believe  in  an  afterlife?   My  original  intent  was  more  focused  on  exploring  what  draws  these  people  to  attend  the  venue   they  do,  what  identity  they  derive  from  that  attendance,  and  where  that  attendance  and   identity  locates  them  in  relation  to  society  at  large.    It  is  possible  to  see  both  groups  as   subcultures;  both  as,  to  some  degree,  socially  and  economically  marginalized,  if  for  very   different  reasons.1    I  wanted  to  explore  these  dimensions,  and  to  remain  open  to  their  variation   as  and  when  it  became  evident.    More  substantially  though,  I  wanted  to  compare  the  values  of   these  two  groups  of  people,  however  those  values  might  emerge  and  be  described,  and  in  so   doing  cause  a  viewer  to  reflect  upon  the  decisions  made  by  these  subjects,  both  active  and   passive,  in  determining  ‘the  arc’  of  their  lives  to  date.       Although  I  wanted  to  pursue  my  study  along  something  like  traditional  ethnographic  film  lines,  I   was  not  attempting  to  enact  a  genuinely  empirical  enquiry,  despite  the  fact  that  the  work  was   carried  out  in  a  relatively  formal  manner.    Rather  I  was  looking  to  conduct  a  personal                                                                                                                           1  The  role  assigned  to  the  retired  or  elderly  in  mainstream  Canadian  society,  when  compared  with  the  role   assigned  to  elders  in  Native  society,  for  example,  can  be  said  to  generally  entail  reduced  status  and  influence.    So   too  is  it  generally  known  that  skateboarders  exist  within  a  subcultural  society  with  a  history  of  marginalization;  in   fact,  for  a  time—during  the  1980s—of  near  outlaw  status.   2     investigation  into  issues  of  broad  ‘common  concern.’    With  this  goal  in  mind,  and  working  with   some  of  the  recent  research  findings  on  happiness  from  the  field  of  Positive  Psychology,  I   decided,  part  way  through  the  recording  process,  to  add  voice-­‐over  commentary  to  the  project.     My  hope  was  that  my  own  reflections  on  these  issues,  coupled  with  the  comments  of  the  two   subject  sets,  would  ultimately  help  to  shed  some  degree  of  light  on  how  it  is  we  all  go  about   choosing  the  direction  of  our  lives,  and  where  it  is  we  find  happiness  and  significance  within   that  chosen  course.         Each  life  is  a  singularity,  just  as  each  society  and  age  are  unique;  nevertheless  these  two  groups   of  Vancouver  residents  in  2010/11,  much  like  the  inhabitants  of  Paris  in  the  early  ’60s,  offered   the  promise  of  a  worthwhile  exploration  into  how  it  is  we  find  meaning  in  the  course  of  our   daily  lives,  and  how  this  effort  relates  to  notions  of  belonging,  mastery,  family,  work,  love,  self,   and  death.       3     DOCUMENTARY  PRACTICE   For  many  people,  documentary  is  a  surprisingly  contentious  field,  one  which  has  struggled   toward  definition.    John  Grierson,  a  British  film  producer  who  later  became  head  of  Canada’s   National  Film  Board,  first  used  the  term  “documentary”  in  a  review  of  Robert  Flaherty’s  Moana   for  the  New  York  Sun  in  1926.    He  later  described  the  documentary  as  “the  creative  treatment   of  reality,”  leaning  definitively  toward  a  view  of  documentary  as  an  art  form,  indeed  a  poetic  art   form,  as  opposed  to  any  form  of  scientific  inquiry.    Contrast  this  with  Margaret  Mead’s   admonition  in  favour  of  the  observational  camera  as  an  ethnographic  instrument:         ...films  that  are  acclaimed  as  great  artistic  endeavours  get  their  effects  by  rapid  shifts  of   the  cameras  and  kaleidoscopic  types  of  cutting.    When  filming  is  done  only  to  produce  a   currently  fashionable  film,  we  lack  the  long  sequences  from  one  point  of  view  that  alone   can  provide  us  with  unedited  stretches  of  instrumental  observation  on  which  scientific   work  must  be  based.    However  much  we  may  rejoice  that  the  camera  gives  the  verbally   inarticulate  a  medium  of  expression  and  can  dramatize  contemporaneously  an  exotic   culture  for  its  own  members  and  for  the  world,  as  anthropologists  we  must  insist  on   prosaic,  controlled,  systematic  filming  and  videotaping...    (Mead  6)   David  MacDougall,  another  noted  anthropologist,  has  chafed  against  this  type  of  attitudinal   constriction:  “Structural  uses  of  film  become  too  easily  branded  as  scientifically  suspect,  the   implication  being  that  all  but  the  simplest  recording  uses  belong  to  the  province  of  art”   (MacDougall  423).     Skirmishing  on  a  third  front,  Brian  Winston  has  assailed  Grierson’s  “creative  treatment”   definition  by  asserting  that  Grierson  would  have  documentary  avoid  “social  meaning”  under   the  guise  of  art.    Winston  stresses  documentary’s  traditional  emphasis  upon  social  values  and   issues,  and  considers  that,  under  Grierson’s  definition,  documentary  becomes  “obsessed  with   surface”  as  it  flees  from  social  meaning  (Winston  221).                                                I  believe  that  running  away  from  social  meaning  is  what  the  Griersonian                        documentary,  and  therefore  the  entire  tradition,  does  best.    This  one  succinct                        phrase  sums  up  the  real  price  paid  by  the  filmmakers’  political  pusillanimity.                          (Winston  42)   4       For  Winston,  documentary  fails  as  it  tries  to  be  both  art  and  science.       Describing  a  more  nuanced  approach  to  this  polarity,  Bill  Nichols  argues  that  documentary  has,   since  the  1960s  heyday  of  cinema  verité  (the  synonymous  American  term  is  ‘Direct  Cinema’)   evolved  into  six  identifiable  “modes,”—poetic,  expository,  observational,  participatory,   reflexive,  and  performative  (Nichols  138).    He  derives  these  categories  in  large  part  by   examining  the  procedural  elements  at  work  in  documentary  film  production—the  interview,   whether  formal  or  more  dynamic,  narration  and  voice-­‐over,  and  observational  versus  more   contrived  recording  practices.    For  the  purposes  of  What  Happyns,  the  two  most  salient   elements,  the  two  leading  to  the  most  contentious  formal  debates  within  my  own  practice,   have  to  do  with  the  interview,  and  use  of  voice-­‐over  narration.                             With  What  Happyns,  not  without  hesitation,  I  decided  to  employ  the  interview  much  more   consistently  than  I  have  in  any  other  project.    My  initial  approach  was  exploratory,  research-­‐ oriented,  but  I  wanted  to  adopt  an  approach  I  viewed  as  ‘local  ethnography.’2  That  is,  I   borrowed  from  a  formal  approach  that  is  central  to  both  Chronique  d’un  été  and  Le  joli  mai.    By   making  more  extensive  use  of  direct  interviews  with  the  subjects  of  the  film,  I  hoped  to  be  able   to  explore  individual  as  well  as  slightly  broader  cultural  conditions  and  histories.    As  the  project   proceeded,  with  even  greater  hesitation,  I  decided  to  employ  my  own  voice-­‐over  as  narration.     These  choices,  which  constitute  an  inclusion  or  representation  of  my  own  voice  as  an   interlocutor,  would  determine  the  evolution  of  my  project  from  exploration  to  expression,  and   helped  complete  a  shift  in  emphasis  from  the  ethnographic  to  the  essayistic—a  movement   from  something  of  a  scientific  interest  in  social  or  cultural  conditions  to  a  much  more  personal   grappling  with  the  content  and  intent  of  my  filmic  dialogues.                                                                                                                               2  I  discuss  what  I  mean  by  this  term  at  greater  length  on  page  12.   5       SITUATED  PRACTICE   Documentary  can  be  said  to  constitute  precisely  seven-­‐eighths  of  the  original  film  form.    When   the  Lumière  brothers  convened  the  first  public  screening  of  motion  pictures  in  Paris  on   December  28,  1895,  just  one  of  the  eight  titles  they  showed  depicted  an  imagined  scenario:  The   Gardener,  wherein  a  mischievous  boy  steps  on  the  watering  hose  of  an  unsuspecting  gardener,   and  the  world’s  first  chase  scene  ensues.    All  seven  other  short  films  were  what  the  Lumières   termed  actualités—real  life  observed  through  a  static  camera  with  a  fixed,  wide-­‐angle  lens.    The   quotidian  content  was  clearly  suggested  by  such  titles  as  Workers  Leaving  the  Lumière  Factory   and  Jumping  Onto  the  Blanket.    Thus,  and  remarkably,  with  this  screening  the  Lumières   simultaneously  founded  the  dramatic,  comedic,  and  documentary  film  genres,  beginning  a   developmental  history  that  would  soon  splinter  nonfiction  film  into  a  number  of  often   controversial  strands  and  modalities  which  would  eventually  prove  problematic  for   practitioners  and  audience  members  alike.         My  final  thesis  project  developed  within  several  of  the  nonfiction  strands  for  which  the  seeds   were  planted  in  1895,  three  in  particular  which  I  will  label  the  ethnographic,  the  quotidian,3  and   the  essay.    This  development  was  not  linear;  rather  it  involved  a  series  of  elliptical  encounters   with  a  number  of  filmic  works,  moments,  ideas  and  inspirations.    This  thesis  section  will  recount   that  series  of  encounters,  and  in  the  process  provide  both  a  critical/historical  context  for  my   final  project,  and  an  illumination  of  the  emergent  documentary  process  which  led  to  its   creation.         The  Ethnographic  Film   The  earliest  known  instance  of  ethnographic  filmmaking  occurred  in  1898,  when  the  Cambridge   Anthropological  Expedition  set  off  for  the  Torres  Straits,  near  New  Guinea,  carrying  still   photography  equipment,  a  wax-­‐cylinder  sound  recorder,  and  a  Lumière  motion  picture  camera.                                                                                                                             3  I  use  this  term  as  one  synonymous  with  ordinary,  but  I  have  employed  both  terms  in  a  particular  way  here,  with  a   more  precise  definition  presented  on  page  14.     6      Only  a  few  minutes  of  the  film  they  shot  have  survived,  but  the  Expedition  undoubtedly   founded  what  would  come  to  be  known  as  “salvage”  ethnographic  filmmaking  (Gruber  1).    With   this  practice,  ethnographic  filmmakers  had,  in  Margaret  Mead’s  words,  “accepted  the   responsibility  of  making  and  preserving  records  of  the  vanishing  customs  and  human  beings  of   this  earth...”  (Mead  3)    The  tradition,  in  both  still  and  motion  picture  photography,  would   flourish  institutionally  well  into  the  1970s,  under  the  social-­‐scientific  subfield  of  Visual   Anthropology,  although  certainly  by  the  mid  1970s,  visual  anthropologists  were  contending   with  a  notable  degree  of  censure  resulting,  essentially,  from  their  practice  being  viewed  as  a   vestige  of  colonialism.4     The  practice  of  salvage  ethnography  took  an  abrupt  and  remarkably  prescient  turn,  however,  in   the  summer  of  1960,  when  visual  anthropologist  Jean  Rouch  and  sociologist  Edgar  Morin  chose   to  shoot  a  documentary  film  looking  at  their  own  ‘tribe,’  the  people  of  Paris.5    The  film  they   would  produce,  Chronique  d’un  été,  would  prove  to  have  an  “incontestable”  influence  on  the   history  of  documentary  film  (DiIorio  25).    It  would  also  supply  direct  inspiration  for  my  thesis   project.    The  specific  inspiration  can  be  found  in  Rouch  and  Morin’s  decision  to  send  two   women  into  the  streets  of  Paris  with  a  microphone,  there  to  ask  passers-­‐by,  “Are  you  happy?”     Even  more  specifically,  my  inspiration  can  be  found  in  the  moment  when  an  elderly  man  they   approach  replies  in  answer  to  the  question,  “I’m  unhappy  because  I’m  old.”     It  appears  that  most  of  the  people  the  women  attempted  to  accost  avoided  them,  and  Rouch   and  Morin  soon  abandoned  this  informal,  delegated  interview  technique,  instead  conducting  a   series  of  arranged  interviews  with  friends,  acquaintances,  or  people  to  whom  they  had  been   introduced.    Nevertheless,  in  beginning  my  thesis  project,  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  impulse  to   ask  ordinary  people  if  and  why  they  were  happy  was  a  worthy  one.    I  agreed  with  Sam  DiIorio’s   assessment  of  Rouch  and  Morin’s  purpose  in  Chronique:                                                                                                                               4  See  in  particular  Jean  Rouch’s  contribution  to  the  1975  Hockings  text  cited.    Up  until  that  summer,  Rouch’s  work  had  been  solidly  within  both  a  colonial  and  salvage  tradition.  He  had  first   travelled  to  Nigeria  as  a  hydrologist  in  1941,  moving  into  ethnographic  filmmaking  by  1949,  and  by  1960  he  had   shot  at  least  eight  films  in  Africa.   5 7                          Although  Chronique  emphasizes  bodies  and  faces,  its  individuals  are  never  completely                      individualized.    Rather  than  tell  all,  Rouch  and  Morin  populate  the  film  with  semi-­‐                      anonymous  individuals  in  the  hope  of  going  beyond  particularized  truths  and  suggesting                      the  reality  of  Paris  as  a  whole.    (DiIorio  27)     I  felt  that  the  ethnographic  approach,  brought  to  ordinary  people  in  one’s  own  neighbourhood,   could  reveal  a  broader  set  of  experiences,  disclosing  not  so  much  individual  histories,  or  even   social  patterns,  but  inner  lives.    Moreover,  I  felt  that  Rouch  and  Morin’s  question  about   happiness  provided  a  marker,  a  signpost  pointing  in  the  direction  of  interview  questions  of  the   same  ilk  as  those  found  in  the  so-­‐called  ‘Proust  Questionnaire.’6       Subsequent  enquiry  into  the  conception  of  happiness  led  to  the  discovery  of  an  intriguing   contemporary  analogue  to  Rouch  and  Morin’s  query:  the  burgeoning  but  still  nascent  field  of   Positive  Psychology,  which  brings  the  scientific  method  to  the  study  of  psychologically  and   emotionally  healthy  humans,  as  opposed  to  those  afflicted  with  a  mental  illness.    Research  from   this  field  revealed  that  the  elderly  man  interviewed  in  Chronique  was  anomalous;  although   researchers  are  not  sure  why,  by  almost  any  measure  we  are,  on  average,  happier  as  we  grow   older.7    This  research  would  also  provide  me  with  a  means  of  writing  voice-­‐over  designed  to   knit  the  two  subject  groups  together,  and  elevate  the  now  three-­‐way  discussion  to  one  about   more  than  the  mundane.       Chronique  was  also  groundbreaking  in  its  reliance  upon  the  interview,  beginning  a  trend  which   would  continue  until  present  day,  when,  in  Jane  Chapman’s  estimation,  “the  interview   documentary”  has  become  “the  leading  model  for  contemporary  documentary”  (Chapman   105).    This  emergence  of  the  interview  as  an  increasingly  significant  formal  element  in   documentary  is  hardly  surprising,  coming  as  it  did  with  the  advent  of  portable  16  mm   filmmaking  technology.    As  with  narration,  however,  the  American  Direct  Cinema  practitioners                                                                                                                           6  This  is  the  set  of  questions  answered  by  a  young  Proust  in  1890,  questions  such  as,  ‘Your  idea  of  misery?’    ‘Your   idea  of  happiness?’  and  ‘Your  favorite  virtue?’    I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Chris  Jones  for  reminding  me  of  this  historic   link.   7  See  especially  the  study  cited  and  published  online  in  2010  by  Stone  et  al.   8     tended  to  decry  the  interview  as  manipulative.    Frederick  Wiseman,  who  can  be  seen  as  the   lasting  champion  of  the  Direct  Cinema  ethos,  has,  like  Michael  Moore  and  Errol  Morris,  been   entirely  uniform  in  the  documentary  format  he  employs.    He  has  now  created  more  than  40   major  works,  and  each  is  within  a  strictly  observational  mode,  without  interviews  or  any   asynchronous  sound,  in  fact  without  any  interaction  between  crew  and  subjects  ever  visible   onscreen.         More  than  manipulative,  the  interview  format  is  potentially  deceitful.    If  the  filmmaker  so   wishes,  in  all  likelihood  the  interviewee  can  be  presented  putting  forth  the  view  of  the   filmmaker,  without  the  filmmaker  ever  being  seen  or  heard.    Or,  with  the  contextualizing  power   that  comes  with  control  of  the  edit,  the  interviewee  can  be  made  to  simply  sound  more   reasonable,  more  articulate  and  persuasive.    Likewise  an  interviewee  expressing  views  contrary   to  those  of  the  filmmaker  can  be  presented  in  a  less  favourable  light.    And  all  this  with  the   consistent  sheen  of  objectivity,  with  the  authority  of  the  filmmaker  effectively  masked.    A  more   traditional  journalistic  approach  of  course  allows  for  opposing  views  to  be  more  equally   expressed  by  a  set  of  interviewees,  and  thus,  as  Chapman  has  reiterated,  “A  collection  of   interviews  will  serve  to  diffuse  authority,  so  that  the  filmmaker  effectively  enters  into  a   discourse  which  creates  a  gap  between  individual  interviewees  and  the  overall  voice  of  the   documentary”  (Chapman  104).    This,  in  my  view,  is  the  formal  ideal,  and  moreover,  inherent  in   this  “gap,”  I  would  argue,  is  a  valuable  link  to  Rascaroli’s  “interstitial  space,”  as  I  will  discuss  it   here  (Rascaroli  1).         Perhaps  most  innovative  of  Chronique’s  many  new  directions  is  a  sustained  motif  of  self-­‐ reflexivity.    In  the  opening  moments  of  the  film,  Rouch  and  Morin  appear,  and  Morin  questions   whether  it  is  possible  “to  record  a  conversation  naturally  with  a  camera  present.”    Later  in  the   film,  the  filmmakers  screen  footage  they  have  shot  of  their  subjects  for  their  subjects,  while   recording  those  subjects  watching  themselves  on  screen,  and  we  see  those  subjects   questioning  their  own  authenticity  while  on  camera.    Immediately  following  this  sequence,  we   again  see  the  filmmakers,  now  discussing  their  subjects’  reaction  to  seeing  themselves,  and   9     whether  their  own  filmmaking  process  holds  any  validity.    It  is  a  multilayering  that  produces,  for   the  viewer,  a  distancing  between  filmmakers  and  subjects,  locating  the  viewer  in  a  triangulated   space  where  voyeuristic  intimacy  with  the  subject  is  neither  traditionally  nor  easily  achieved.         Like  the  “gap”  just  mentioned,  this  triangulated  space  parallels  the  “interstitial  space”   described  by  Rascaroli  in  reference  to  essayistic  film  and  the  employment  of  voice-­‐over.    For   Rascaroli,  this  space  exists:                        ...between  the  text  on  which  [the  voice-­‐over]  comments  and  the  audience  it  addresses.    In                      first-­‐person  and  essayistic  nonfiction,  this  sonic  space  becomes  the  place  from  which  the                      spectator  may  establish  a  relationship  with  the  speaking  subjects  and  negotiate  between                      the  superimposed  commentary  and  the  images  that  are  commented  upon.    (Rascaroli  2)                         Figure  1.    Rouch  and  Morin  before  the  camera.    From  http://www.mitpressjournals.org/     Eventually,  in  creating  my  thesis  project,  I  would  come  to  accept  the  notion  that  voice-­‐over   could  provide  my  project  with  a  degree  of  “subjective  critical  reflection”  that  would  in  turn   provide  me  with  a  comfortable,  expressive  space  of  my  own  (Rascaroli  2).    But  not  before   consideration  of  another  work  equally  influential  upon  my  own.     10         Le  joli  mai   Two  years  after  Rouch  and  Morin  shot  Chronique,  Chris  Marker  chose  spring  rather  than   summer  to  shoot  a  film  called  Le  joli  mai.    Like  Morin  and  Rouch,  Marker  began  making  his  film   by  asking  questions  of  people  randomly  selected  on  the  streets  of  Paris,  his  own  place  of   residence.    He  persisted  with  this  informal  interview  approach  for  longer  than  did  Morin  and   Rouch,  but  seemed  drawn  to  questions  of  the  same  type,  questions  such  as,  “Would  you  rather   have  power  or  money?”  and,  “Are  you  happy?”    The  following  is  a  transcription  of  an  interview   sequence  from  Le  joli  mai  shot  outside  the  Paris  Stock  Exchange.8         MARKER:    May  I  ask  how  long  you  have  been  working  here?   SUBJECT:    Twenty-­‐five  years.   M:    Do  you  like  it?   S:        It’s  my  job.   M:    But  you  like  it?   S:        Very  much.   M:    You  chose  it  as  a  job?   S:        No,  when  I  left  school  I  had  no  idea  of  coming  here.    I  came  here  with  a  friend.    I  have                never  left  it  since.   M:    What  exactly  do  you  do?   S:        I’m  a  stockbroker.   M:    May  I  put  a  broad  question  to  you?    What  is  money  to  you?   S:        A  means  of  existence.                                                                                                                             8  The  interview  subject,  moments  earlier,  had  objected  to  Marker  interviewing  two  teenagers,  dressed  in  business   attire,  who  also  worked  at  the  Exchange,  referring  to  them  as  “babies.”     11     The  conversation  touches  on  two  themes  which  would  emerge  as  of  abiding  interest  to  me:  the   fact  that  the  man’s  twenty-­‐five-­‐year  career  was  unintentional,  and  that  of  his  fatalistic  attitude   toward  work  as  little  more  than  “a  means  of  existence.”     As  in  the  above  exchange,  Marker  is  regularly  heard  off  screen  in  Le  joli  mai.    Unlike  Rouch  and   Morin  he  never  delegates  the  interview  process,  and  because  of  this  is  more  consistently   successful  with  his  interviews  than  his  compatriot  predecessors.    In  the  finished  film  he  adds   the  element  of  an  anonymous  voice-­‐over,  spoken  by  an  actor,  in  the  English  version  Simone   Signoret.    With  this,  Marker  can  be  said  to  contravene  Rascaroli’s  ‘first  person’  criterion  for  an   essay  film,  but  he  nevertheless  achieves,  I  would  argue,  Rascaroli’s  “interstitial  space,”  similar  in   effect  to  that  achieved  by  Rouch  and  Morin  with  their  more  overtly  reflexive  onscreen   elements.         Local  Ethnography   The  Stanley  Park  Lawn  Bowling  Club  is  a  part  of  my  own  neighbourhood.    A  bicycle  path  that  I   frequently  use  passes  directly  by  the  facility,  and  in  my  regular  passings,  I  couldn’t  help  but   observe  the  pastoral  beauty  of  the  facility:  the  abundant  flower  gardens,  the  verdant  lawns,  the   white  clothing  often  worn  by  the  members.    I  was  also  struck  by  a  demographic  among  the   membership  which  seemed  to  skew  toward  Anglo-­‐European,  elderly,  and  female.    In  much  the   same  way  Jeff  Wall  professes  to  be  always  wondering,  as  he  moves  about  observing  his   environs,  “Is  there  a  picture  there  for  me?”  (Picture  Start),  as  a  documentary  filmmaker,  I  was   soon  given  to  wonder  if  there  was  a  documentary  film  there  for  me.    The  visual  possibilities  and   ethnographic  potential  seemed  too  rich  to  ignore.         When  I  approached  members  of  the  Club,  as  is  my  research  habit  at  that  stage,  I  was  looking  for   characters  and  story.    I  felt  I  might  function  there  in  a  ‘local  ethnography’  vein  similar  to  that  of   Chronique  d’un  été  and  Le  joli  mai.    I  wondered  whether  I  could  explore,  with  camera  and   microphone,  not  a  distant,  exotic  culture,  but  a  local  subculture  with  strong  historical  roots,  one   with  particular  dynamics  turning  upon  gender,  age  and  race.    I  wondered  whether  whatever   12     subculture  I  might  discover  at  the  Bowling  Club  was,  if  not  vanishing,  then  changing  fast,  as  was   its  surrounding  city.         I  was  not  wrong  about  supposing  those  conditions.    In  my  initial  visits  (without  camera  or   microphone),  I  discovered  that  the  Club  had  been  founded  in  1917,  that  until  recent  decades   there  had  been  a  Club  regulation  which  decreed  the  wearing  of  white  while  on  “the  greens,”   that,  unlike  wider  multicultural  Vancouver,  there  were  very  few  nonwhite  members.    The   typical  member  was  indeed  elderly  and  female,  even  though  the  organizational  history  of  the   Club  was  patriarchal.  9     In  conducting  a  set  of  preliminary  interviews  at  the  Bowling  Club  over  the  summer  season  of   2010,  I  asked  a  series  of  questions  relating  to  personal  histories,  as  well  as  to  what  I  referred  to   as  ‘life  issues’:  love,  marriage,  work,  family,  death.    Chief  among  these  questions  was,  “Are  you   happy?”    Although  my  intent  with  these  initial  interviews  was  obviously  to  go  beyond   traditional  oral  history,  I  was  curious  as  to  how  the  Club  members  understood  their  life   histories.    I  wanted  to  explore  the  way  they  had  constructed  their  lives,  and  in  turn  how  they   had  gone  about  constructing  happiness  in  their  lives.    Given  the  fatalistic,  if  not  antagonistic10   attitude  toward  work  that  was  enunciated  by  many  of  the  subjects  in  Chronique  and  Le  joli  mai,   I  also  wanted  to  explore  the  attitudes  toward  work  held  by  people  who  were  no  longer   working.    For  this  reason,  the  only  strict  criterion  applied  in  the  selection  of  my  preliminary   subjects  was  that  they  be  retired.                   This  selective  choice  meant  that  almost  all  my  interview  subjects  were  roughly  one  generation   older  than  myself,  resulting  in  my  seeing  myself  as  ‘nearby’11  in  race  and  age,  if  not  gender,   while  at  the  same  time,  literally  and  figuratively,  ‘outside  the  Club’  looking  in.    In  the  second                                                                                                                           9  Up  until  the  summer  of  1986,  the  Club  was  comprised  of  two  autonomous  clubs,  Men’s  and  Ladies  (not  Men’s   and  Women’s),  with  the  Ladies  Club  paying  lower  fees,  but  paying  part  of  their  fees  directly  to  the  Men’s  Club.       10  Especially  Angelo  in  Chronique  expresses  antagonism  toward  his  employers  at  the  Renault  factory.   11  I  use  this  term  advisedly,  in  very  loose  homage  to  Trinh  T.  Minh-­‐ha’s  Reassemblage.   13     season  of  my  interviews  at  the  Club,  I  joined  (and  bowled  with)  the  membership,  mitigating  but   not  eliminating  some  of  the  distance  intrinsic  in  the  observer-­‐observed  positions.             The  Quotidian   Both  Rouch/Morin  and  Marker,  in  shooting  their  films  in  Paris,  had  done  more  than  just  eschew   the  exotic  locale;  they  had  chosen  to  focus  upon  what  I  will  refer  to  here  as  the  quotidian.    My   employment  of  the  term  is  quite  narrow—I  mean  by  it  that  they  had  deliberately  sought  out   neither  experts  nor  extraordinary  events,  that  is  they  did  not  do  precisely  what  most   documentary  filmmakers  do.    They  did  not  interview  authoritative  or  famous  men  or  women,  or   people  caught  in  the  spotlight  of  historic  or  rare  happenings;  instead  they  chose  to  speak  with   unknown  Parisians,  many  of  them  randomly  selected,  going  about  their  daily  lives.    They  spoke   with  citizens,  that  is  city  dwellers,  and  they  did  so  in  the  immediate  wake  of  the  publication  of   the  second  volume  of  Henri  Lefebvre’s  Critique  de  la  vie  quotidienne,  a  work  that  would  exert   strong  philosophical  influence  on  the  unrest  which  erupted  in  Europe  in  the  month  of  May,   1968.    There  is  an  undercurrent  of  unhappiness  running  beneath  the  lives  of  the  Parisian   citizens  interviewed  in  Chronique  and  Le  joli,  and  it  runs  not  far  beneath  the  visual  surface  of   both  films.       As  suggested  in  my  Introduction,  the  quotidian  filmic  strand  too  can  be  traced  back  to  the   Lumière  brothers,  but  the  impulse  toward  selection  of  ‘the  ordinary’12  has  been  followed  by  a   number  of  other  documentary  filmmakers  since.    Errol  Morris  did  so  in  an  early  work  titled   Vernon,  Florida  (1981),  where  he  interviewed  individuals  who  may  be  considered  eccentric,  but   who  certainly  are  not  extraordinary  in  terms  of  their  abilities  or  their  accomplishments.     Morris’s  approach  in  the  film  can  be  seen  as  ethnographic,  but  it  is  an  especially  loose,  home-­‐ grown  ethnography;  he  is  never  heard,  and  it  appears  that  he  is  content  to  simply  let  his   subjects  talk,  whether  it  be  about  turkey  hunting,  a  resident’s  suicide,  or  a  pet  turtle.    The                                                                                                                           12  Beyond  the  narrow  definition  I  employ,  my  own  subjects  were  of  course  not  ‘ordinary’  at  all.  They  were  select,   both  as  a  result  of  belonging  to  one  of  the  two  groups  I  investigated,  and  of  my  own  careful  selection  process.     What’s  more,  many  of  them  were  dropped  from  the  extended  interview  process,  and  did  not  appear  in  the  final   film,  making  those  who  did  even  more  select.   14     portion  of  local  culture  presented  in  Vernon,  Florida  is  individualistic,  elderly,  and  mostly  male-­‐ derived,  suggesting  more  than  anything  an  economic  and  political  climate  of  disengagement.     Morris  depicts  a  psychological  hinterland  where  “lucidity  intersects  with  delusion”  (Scott  C8).                       Most  noteworthy  of  all,  in  my  view,  when  dealing  with  the  dimension  of  the  quotidian,  is   Michael  Apted’s  Up  Series.    Apted’s  series  is  arguably  unique  in  the  history  of  documentary  film,   tracking  the  lives  of  a  group  of  British  subjects  who,  if  not  for  the  series,  would  be  unknown,   and  doing  so  from  1964  until  the  present  day.    The  seven-­‐year-­‐old  children  selected  as  subjects   in  1964  were  intentionally  chosen  from  across  a  socio-­‐economic,  that  is  a  ‘class’  spectrum,  with   the  intent  of  determining  the  influence  of  social  status  over  time.    Interestingly,  that  original   focus  has  shifted  for  Apted  as  time  has  passed,  and  he  readily  admits  as  much.    Joe  Moran,  in  a   2002  article  in  Screen,  quotes  Apted  as  recognizing,  following  the  1986  release  of  28  Up,  that   he:                          ...hadn’t  made  a  political  film  at  all,  but  a  humanistic  document  about  the  real                        issues  of  life  —  about  growing  up;  about  coming  to  terms  with  failure,  success,                        disappointment;  about  issues  of  family  and  all  the  things  that  everybody  can                        relate  to.    (Moran  390)         I  would  suggest  that,  once  Apted’s  camera  was  turned  toward  ordinary  people,  and  once  the   scope  of  his  examination  was  extended  over  a  multi-­‐decade  time  frame,  the  emergence  of  a   focus  upon  these  broader  ‘life  issues,’  as  opposed  to  more  immediate  political-­‐economic  issues   (for  instance)  was  inevitable.           At  the  conclusion  of  the  lawn  bowling  season  of  2010,  after  reviewing  the  footage  I  had   recorded  there,  I  was  struck  by  the  indiscriminate  mechanisms  at  work  in  the  way  that   individuals  had  determined  the  course  of  their  lives.    Like  the  stockbroker  outside  the  Paris   Exchange,  rarely  it  seemed  had  my  subjects  attempted  to  carefully  plot,  then  execute  the   events  of  their  lives,  or,  in  the  few  instances  where  they  had  attempted  to  do  so,  rarely  were   those  plans  successful.    That  fall  I  was  first  given  to  reflect  upon  the  significance  of  John   Lennon’s  lyric,  “Life  is  what  happens  when  we’re  busy  making  other  plans,”  which  then   15     provided  the  title  (What  Happens)  for  the  interim  work  exhibited  in  the  Upon  Occasion  show  at   ECUAD  in  July  of  2011.         It  has  been  suggested  that  a  cumulative  viewing  of  the  entire  Up  Series  is  a  “metaphysical”   experience  (Ebert).    Viewed  collectively  the  series  has  a  scope  unmatched  by  any  other  time-­‐ based  material  I  have  watched;  viewing  it  caused  me  to  look  for  a  way  to  attempt  something   similar  in  dimension  with  my  documentary.    Because  a  longitudinal  study  of  the  sort  Apted   achieved  in  his  series  was  unavailable  to  me,  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  could  take  the  same  set  of   questions  I  had  been  asking  of  elderly  people  at  the  Lawn  Bowling  Club,  and  ask  them  of  a   much  more  youthful  set  of  skateboarders  at  the  Downtown  Skateboard  Plaza,  a  similarly   sheltered  recreational  venue  equidistant  from  my  home,  in  the  opposite  direction.13    In  doing   so  I  could  hope  to  close  the  demographic  distance  between  the  two  groups,  collapse  the   immense  story  time  of  the  Up  Series  within  the  space  of  one  city.         Over  the  winter  months  of  2010-­‐11,  I  interviewed  a  group  of  skateboarders  with  a  demographic   average  that  skewed  heavily  toward  male,  younger,  and  mixed  race.    Given  my  age,  and  the  fact   that  I  was  not  about  to  take  up  skateboarding,  the  inherent  distancing  between  myself  behind   and  my  subjects  before  the  camera  was  undoubtedly  greater  at  the  Plaza,  but  in  conducting   these  interviews,  I  sensed  that  the  identical  set  of  questions  largely  bridged  the  gap  between   the  two  generations,  with  my  own  positioned  somewhere  in  between.    In  fact,  the   skateboarders  were  typically  less  guarded  in  their  responses  than  were  the  bowlers,  and  it     seemed  to  me,  speculatively,  that  this  was  in  part  because  of  the  greater  distancing  of  our     positions.14       The  Essay  Film   The  essay  film  has  a  developmental  history  even  more  indeterminate  than  what  I  have  called   the  quotidian  film.    It  has  a  distinctly  French  flavour,  with  its  most  recognizable  literary  origin  in                                                                                                                           13  Here  I  am  indebted  to  my  classmate  Bruce  Emmett  for  the  inspirational  link.     14  Unlike  some  of  the  lawn  bowlers,  none  of  the  skateboarders  I  approached  declined  to  be  interviewed.   16     the  writings  of  Michel  de  Montaigne  (1533-­‐92).    In  cinematic  form,  André  Bazin’s  1958   characterization  of  Chris  Marker’s  Letter  From  Siberia  as  an  “essay  film”  is  a  key  historical   moment.    Historically  critical  as  well  is  Alain  Resnais’  Night  and  Fog  (1955),  where  the   interstitial  audience  space  is  created  within  a  triangulation  among  Jean  Cayrol’s  poetic   narration,  the  floating  imagery  of  the  abandoned  Nazi  death  camps,  and  the  archival  footage  of   the  camps’  wartime  horrors.    The  interstitial  space  in  Night  and  Fog  cannot  be  occupied   comfortably,  but  nor  should  it  be.     As  with  its  literary  forebearer,  the  essay  film  has  been  notoriously  resistant  to  clear   categorization.    Aldous  Huxley  described  the  prose  essay  as  “a  literary  device  for  saying  almost   everything  about  almost  anything”  (2).    Timothy  Corrigan  has  described  “the  essayistic”  film  as   “a  kind  of  encounter  between  the  self  and  the  public  domain,  an  encounter  that  measures  the   limits  and  possibilities  of  each  as  a  conceptual  activity”  (6).    Although  Corrigan  admits  that   essay  films  “have  always  been  difficult  to  classify,  sometimes  difficult  to  understand,  and  often   difficult  to  relate  to  each  other”  (5),  he  encompasses  both  Erroll  Morris’s  Fog  of  War  and   Michael  Moore’s  Sicko  within  the  genre.    Rascaroli  resists  this  kind  of  diverse  inclusion,  writing   that  Marker’s  Sans  Soleil  and  Moore’s  Fahrenheit  9/11  “have  very  little  in  common  aside  from   their  extensive  voice-­‐overs,  and  the  fact  that  they  both  present  problems  of  classification”   (Rascaroli  22).    Rascaroli’s  delineation  of  the  essay  form  emphasizes  the  personal  and   subjective,  albeit  a  more  broadly  based  or  social  subjectivity.    She  points  out  that  the  essayistic   tradition  consists  in  large  part  of  the  “skeptical  evaluation”  of  worldly  phenomena,  both  private   and  public,  and  that,  inevitably,  such  skepticism  must  self-­‐reflexively  include  the  author’s  own   conclusions  (23).     Final  context  for  my  work  can  be  found  in  Ross  McElwee’s  voice-­‐over  laden  essay  films,   especially  Sherman’s  March  (1986),  Time  Indefinite  (1993)  and  Bright  Leaves  (2003).    McElwee’s   films  are  personal  explorations  of  ‘life  issues’  within  his  own  family  and  community.    The   commentary  accompanying  his  retrospective  show  at  MoMA  states  that  McElwee  makes  “the   grandest  themes  of  human  comedy  his  artistic  province:  love  and  death,  chance  and  fate,   17     memory  and  denial”  (Siegel).    Michael  Renov  has  situated  McElwee’s  practice  even  closer  to   home  than  one’s  neighbourhood,  calling  his  films  “domestic  ethnography”  (Renov  1).       Figure  2.    McElwee  before  and  behind  the  camera.    From  http://rossmcelwee.com/     My  own  process  in  creating  What  Happyns  had  originally  been  rooted  in  the  cinema  verité   tradition  of  documentary,  arguably  with  its  roots  in  Chronique  d’un  été,  but  more  rigorously   manifest  in  the  American  Direct  Cinema  practices  espoused  by  documentary  pioneers  Robert   Drew,  Richard  Leacock,  Albert  and  David  Mayles,  and  D.  A.  Pennebaker—most  notably  their   admonition  against  the  use  of  voice-­‐over  narration  in  documentary  film.    Here  is  Pennebaker  in   a  1971  interview:                          It’s  possible  to  go  to  a  situation  and  simply  film  what  you  see  there,  what  happens  there,                      what  goes  on,  and  let  everybody  decide  whether  it  tells  them  about  any  of  those  things...                      you  don’t  have  to  label  them,  you  don’t  have  to  have  narration  to  instruct  you  so  you  can                      be  sure  and  understand  that  it’s  good  for  you  to  learn.    You  don’t  need  any  of  that  shit.                        (Levin  116)     Thus,  in  my  initial  ‘local  ethnographic’  approach  to  the  Bowling  Club,  I  had  been  disinclined  to   the  possibility  of  voice-­‐over,  but,  in  reviewing  the  interview  material  garnered  from  the   Skateboard  Plaza,  I  found  myself,  like  McElwee,  looking  for  a  personal  voice  which  would  add  a   18     unifying  layer  to  the  combined  material,  in  a  way  that  would  open  up  the  interstitial  audience   space  described  by  Rascaroli,  a  place  where  an  audience  member  would  ultimately  be  engaged   in  their  own  degree  of  self-­‐reflection.    This  thought  process  had  me  then  conceiving  of   Chronique  as  more  of  an  essay  film,  less  of  as  an  ethnographic  documentary,  a  conceptual   repositioning  that  represented  a  reversal  of  my  earlier  perception  of  that  film.     A  Rhetorical  End   The  three  strands  of  documentary  film  I  have  identified  here  are  clearly  not  most  productively   viewed,  from  a  critical  standpoint,  as  mutually  exclusive.    Even  in  my  own  process,  as  described   here,  I’ve  viewed  Chronique  d’un  été  as  both  an  ethnographic  and  an  essay  film.    From  the   outset  I’ve  maintained  an  interest  in  the  strand  I  have  termed  the  quotidian,  and  that  too  can   be  seen  as  a  central  construct  in  Chronique.    Marker’s  Le  joli  mai,  with  its  increased  deployment   of  voice-­‐over,  can  be  more  readily  labelled  an  essay  film,  but  so  too  in  that  work  has  he   continued  the  focus  on  the  quotidian.       My  interest  in  ‘life  issues’  has  similarly  been  present  from  the  outset,  initially  spurred  by  what  I   felt,  intuitively,  was  a  valuable,  though  procedurally  flawed  impulse  on  the  part  of  Rouch  and   Morin  in  asking  ordinary  people,  “Are  you  happy?”    That  impulse  on  my  part  was  reinforced  by   Marker’s  taking  up  of  the  same  approach  in  Le  joli  mai,  and  by  Michael  Apted’s  recognition  of   what  he  was  more  implicitly  exploring  in  The  Up  Series.           The  choice  to  employ  voice-­‐over  in  my  project  was  influenced  by  Chris  Marker  more  than   anyone  else,  but  also  in  large  part  by  Ross  McElwee’s  ability  to  knit  together  highly  diverse   elements,  spatially  and  temporally,  with  a  highly  personal  and  subjective  style  of  narration  that   nevertheless  seems  to  comfortably,  figuratively  enclose  the  audience  in  a  small  room  with  the   filmmaker.    To  this  end,  my  final  choice  regarding  pronoun  use  in  the  voice-­‐over  for  my  project   was  to  employ  the  more  inclusive  first  person  plural  ‘we,’  as  opposed  to  the  singular  ‘I’  used  in   this  text.       19     Happiness  as  a  ‘social  science’  phenomenon  aided  in  this  pronoun  choice,  allowing  me  to  use   the  collective  term  (we)  implicit  in  the  now  extensive  Positive  Psychology  research.15    It  also   provided  me  with  a  verbal  vehicle  to  frame  many  of  the  ‘life  issues’  I  am  concerned  with,  a  way   to  create  an  integrative  form  of  voice-­‐over  that  would  in  turn  create  Rascaroli’s  interstitial   space.    As  such,  Rascaroli’s  essay  on  Sonic  Interstices  has  provided  me  with  a  final,  much  valued   framework  of  conceptual  support.    In  it  she  states  that  the  essayistic  filmmaker  “does  not  speak   to  an  anonymous  audience.    The  argument  of  the  essay  film  addresses  a  real,  embodied   spectator,  who  is  invited  to  enter  into  a  dialogue  with  the  enunciator  in  the  construction  of   meaning”  (Rascaroli  2).    She  further  asserts  that  “the  essayist  asks  many  questions  and  only   offers  few  or  partial  answers”  (3).     Many  of  the  questions  I  asked  of  my  documentary  subjects  must  indeed  be  considered   rhetorical,  that  is  questions  without  prescriptive  answers.    My  intent  then  is  to  create  content   which  is  self-­‐reflexive  to  the  extent  that  I  do  not  wish  to  offer  directional  answers  to  the  types   of  questions  I  want  to  raise.    My  hope,  rather,  is  to  create  an  invisible  space  where  subject,   author  and  audience  member  can  meet  within  the  context  of  a  valuable,  mutually  self-­‐reflexive   discourse.                                                                                                                           15  The  World  Database  of  Happiness,  under  the  direction  of  Ruut  Veenhoven,  is  remarkably  extensive.     20     METHODOLOGY   William  Guynn  has  argued  that  the  documentary  process,  in  all  phases  of  production  and   exhibition—     —from  the  constitution  of  cinema  as  technique  of  production,  to  the  shooting  of  footage,   to  the  editing  and  mixing,  to  its  ultimate  projection  and  consumption  under  the   conditions  imposed  by  the  cinematic  institution—is  a  distortion  of  the  field  of  reality  that   documentary  film  claims  to  represent  to  the  spectator.    There  is  no  such  thing  as   unmediated  representation...    (Guynn  42)     Rouch,  in  his  writings,  has  made  it  clear  that  he  considers  any  form  of  cinematic  observation,   regardless  of  its  subject  or  approach,  as  inescapably  ethnocentric—  “...  the  very  fruit  of  that   intellectual  imperialism  which  comes  from  the  fact  that  we  can  only  see  others  with  our  own   eyes  and  with  our  own  concepts”  (Rouch  86).     Once  again  I  quote  the  above  by  way  of  reminding  myself  and  the  reader  of  the  contentious   nature  of  the  field  I  operate  in.    Prickly  questions  abound  at  every  turn,  and  it  can  presumably   be  usefully  asked  whether  it  is  possible  to  arrive  at  a  definition  of  what  constitutes  a   documentary  film  that  would  allay,  if  not  put  an  end  to  some  of  these;  questions  such  as   whether  it  is  ethical  to  pay  documentary  subjects,  or  whether  re-­‐enactment  is  a  legitimate   element  within  the  documentary  form.    More  generically,  the  question  can  be  articulated  by   asking,  for  instance,  whether  Errol  Morris,  with  his  diverse  array  of  documentary  tools,  is  as   effective  at  conveying  the  truth  as  is  Frederick  Wiseman,  with  his  rigorously  observational   methods?    Or  by  asking  whether  the  dramatic  filmmaker  is  more  free  to  tell  the  truth,  any   truth,  with  his  narrative  feet  set  in  an  imaginary  world,  than  is  the  documentary  filmmaker,   standing  with  her  feet  set  in  the  terra  firma  of  reality?     In  my  practice  I’ve  seen  the  documentary  format  variations  as  means  rather  than  ends,  as  tools   for  the  expression  of  an  observed  but  still  subjective  truth.    The  formal  questions  remain   however.    The  issue  of  voice-­‐over  can  be  framed  within  questions  as  to  the  validity  of  an   authorial  voice  which  might  nonetheless  provide  a  nonauthoritarian  interstitial  space,  as   Rascaroli  describes  it.    The  essay  film  can  be  queried  as  to  its  elasticity,  whether  the   21     pronounced  expansiveness  of  the  form  in  fact  results  in  reduced  substance,  akin  to  the   proverbial  tennis  game  with  no  lines  drawn  on  the  court,  but  more  germane  questions  for  my   purposes  relate  to  subjectivity.    Does  the  personal  subjective  voice,  issued  via  voice-­‐over,  allow   for  a  nonpedantic,  nonpedagogical  expression  of  a  meaningful  truth  beyond  the  assailed   reality-­‐based  truths  of  the  documentary  form?    A  self-­‐reflexive  quality  necessarily  emerges  in   simply  questioning  the  form,  but  it  must  also  be  asked  why  ask  these  questions?    If  many  of  the   questions  I  am  working  with  might  be  thought  of  as  rhetorical,  then  we  might  wonder  how  the   act  of  local  ethnography  can  escape  being  little  more  than  the  ethnographic  eye  turned  inward.     Does  it  become  what  Carolyn  Ellis  calls,  “the  ethnographic  I”?    (Ellis)16         A  Study  in  Contrasts   When  I  first  determined  to  interview  patrons  of  the  Skateboard  Park  as  well  as  lawn  bowlers,   the  stark  visual  contrast  between  the  two  locales  was  instantly  appealing.    They  could  hardly  be   more  visually  dissimilar,  one  favouring  the  verdant,  the  garden;  the  other  utterly  devoid  of   anything  living  and  green;  one  pastoral,  the  other  urban.    The  overhead  bulk  of  concrete   viaducts  at  the  Plaza  is  equally  contradictory  to  the  towering  trees  and  open  sky  which  abut  and   rise  above  the  Lawn  Bowling  Park.    The  near  monochromatic  colour  palette  at  the  Plaza  stands   opposed  to  the  vibrant  array  of  colours  present  in  the  many  flower  gardens  maintained  by   Bowling  Club  members.    But  there  are  striking  physical  similarities  as  well;  both  places  are   noisy;  in  fact  we  had  more  audio  recording  problems  in  Stanley  Park  than  we  had  at  the  Plaza.     Both  places  are  also  isolated  just  beyond  the  established  bounds  of  commercial  and  residential   neighbourhoods,  and  the  backdrops  of  both  speak  to  this  isolation,  a  kind  of  literal   marginalization.17    In  my  interviews,  I  hoped  to  be  able  to  query  whether  the  marked  visual   discrepancy  between  the  two  sites  pointed  to  a  noticeable  ‘values  gap’  between  the  two                                                                                                                           16  This  is  the  title  of  Ellis’s  2004  book,  cited  below.    When  it  was  constructed  in  2004,  the  Skateboard  Park  was  deliberately  located  away  from  existing  commercial   and  residential  neighbourhoods,  and  it’s  interesting  to  note  that,  as  central  Vancouver  development  has   continued,  those  neighbourhoods  are  again  closing  in  around  the  Park,  raising  the  possibility  of  further   displacement.             17 22     groups,  or  whether  less  visible  recreational,  psychological  and  social  parallels  led  back  to  some   degree  of  shared  standards.         Figure  3.    Sunshine  and  shadow  on  'the  greens.'    What  Happyns  video  still  frame.     Given  documentary’s  long  history  of  privileging  the  extraordinary,  it  must  also  be  asked  why  a   focus  on  the  quotidian,  as  I’ve  described  it?    What  is  it  in  the  experiences  of  the  ordinary  that   cannot  necessarily  be  found  in  the  exceptional,  whether  that  be  people  or  events?  Is  it  possible   to  gain  as  much  from  querying  the  unknown  representative,  as  from  the  famous,  or  famously   successful  individual?                   Happiness   Happiness  appeared  for  most  of  my  subjects,  to  be  a  means  toward  contextualizing  either  ‘the   story  of  their  lives,’  or  their  current  position  within  a  broader  society  perceived  as  existing  along   a  spectrum  from  at  best  arbitrary,  to  uncaring,  to  at  worst  corrupt.    In  referencing  the   etymological  root  of  happens  I  was  struck  to  see  that  it  shares  a  linguistic  origin  with  ‘happy’— having  to  do  with  luck,  or  lucky.18    (So  evolved  the  final  hybrid  spelling  of  the  title  of  my  project:                                                                                                                           18  I  also  immediately  thought  of  Beckett,  in  my  mind  master  of  the  quotidian  writ  large,  and  the  pivotal   character  in  Waiting  for  Godot  named  Lucky.     23     What  Happyns.)    You  are  much  more  likely  to  be  happy  if  you  are  lucky  enough  to  happen  to  be   born  in  Denmark,  or  Costa  Rica,  than  if  you  are  unlucky  enough  to  happen  to  be  born  in   Zimbabwe.    You  are  much  more  likely  to  be  happy  if  you  are  lucky  enough  to  happen  to  be  born   into  a  loving,  supportive  family,  than  if  you  are  unlucky  enough  to  happen  to  be  born  into  a   dysfunctional  or  abusive  family.    And  then,  as  Bruce,  one  of  my  documentary  subjects,  points   out,  there  is  the  critical  role  of  “events.”    If  you  are  lucky,  events  beyond  your  control  will  not   negatively  or  catastrophically  affect  your  life,  and  you  are  liable  to  be  happy.    But  if  life  can   change  in  an  instant,  what  are  we  to  make  of  it,  here  and  now?       Figure  4.    The  overhead  bulk  at  the  Plaza.    What  Happyns  video  still  frame.     Given  the  reactive  way  my  interview  subjects  assembled  or  were  assembling  their  life  stories,   and  given  the  profound  ‘luck  factor’  that  seemed  to  play  into  the  likelihood  of  their  happiness   (as  they  understood  it),  What  Happyns  asks  viewers  to  consider  how  is  it  that  we  formulate   meaning  in  our  lives?    In  studying  the  many  correlates  of  happiness—age,  gender,  geography,   wealth,  social  relationships,  etc.—I  wanted  the  film  to  explore  some  of  the  issues  which   provided  ordinary  people,  in  ordinary  circumstances  with  the  values  and  knowledge  they   needed  in  order  to  be  comfortable  sharing  their  histories,  thoughts  and  opinions.    In  selecting   my  interview  subjects,  I  spoke  with  a  number  of  people  associated  with  the  venues  where  I   24     would  do  my  interviews,  about  other  possible  subjects.    A  number  of  the  people  I  was  referred   to  declined  to  be  interviewed.    As  well,  I  abandoned  certain  subjects  after  a  first,  preliminary   interview,  going  on  to  interview  most  of  my  final  participants  three  times.    Thus  part  of  my   rationale  for  pursuing  the  investigative  goal  I’ve  just  described  was  to  believe  that  those  of   whom  I  would  be  asking  the  most  pertinent  questions  would  in  fact  be  more  secure  in  who  they   are,  and  in  discussing  the  choices  they  made  in  shaping  their  lives.                               Finally,  to  illuminate  the  issues  at  the  heart  of  my  enquiry,  I  return  to  the  variable  of  age,  in  part   because,  of  all  the  correlates  of  happiness,  age  is  the  one  which  varies  most  between  my  two   groups  of  subjects.    The  research  done  by  positive  psychologists  has  demonstrated  conclusively   that,  on  average,  we  grow  happier  as  we  grow  older,  and  I  wonder  why.    I  have  said  in  the   voice-­‐over  for  my  project  that,  “We  are  relieved  of  the  burden  of  the  future”  as  we  age,  but   what,  more  precisely,  is  that  burden,  and  how  is  brought  to  bear?   25     CONCLUSION   Every  documentary  filmmaker  functions  under  an  obligation  to  ‘tell  the  truth,’  that  is  to   represent  reality  accurately,  but  then  so  does  every  dramatic  filmmaker.    Both  must  draw   directly  from  life  as  they  have  experienced  it,  and  both  are  obliged  to  depict  that  experience   fairly.    Dramatic  filmmakers  may  treasure  the  freedom  that  the  imagination  provides  them,   referencing  a  greater  ‘emotional  truth’  for  each  bit  of  fakery  they  put  on  a  screen,  but  dramatic   storytellers  have  always  lied  at  a  regular  rate,  and  honourably  so.    Dragging  forth  just  one   phrase  from  the  hallowed  halls  of  storytelling  should  make  that  much  wholly  evident:  “They   lived  happily  ever  after.”    Would  that  it  were  ever  so.     The  blending  of  fictional  and  factual  forms  has  to  do  with  more  than  the  impingement  of   narrative  structure,  or  any  particular  relationship  with  the  real.    In  the  case  of  the  essay  film,  I   would  argue  that  the  meaning  flows  precisely  because  of  the  blending  of  the  categories.    A   personal,  subjective  narration  immediately  renders  the  film  a  hybrid  form,  but  both  root  forms   are  expanded  in  the  process,  with  a  discursive  triangulation  of  creator,  content  and  viewer   produced,  as  opposed  to  the  more  linear  configuration  of  creator  to  content  to  viewer  extant  in   ‘pure’  fiction  or  documentary.    It  is  worth  noting  that  conventional  documentary  film,  perhaps   more  so  than  any  other  medium,  attempts  to  draw  the  viewer’s  attention  exclusively  to  the   content,  away  from  what  Pennebaker  would  likely  consider  “the  artfulness”  of  the  form  itself.19           Money  and  Happiness   Despite  the  sharp  visual  contrast  between  the  two  sites,  it  was  soon  apparent,  in  my  interviews,   that  both  groups  expressed  a  similarity  of  views  around  particular  values,  the  correlation  of   money  and  happiness  for  instance.    Almost  of  necessity,  the  thinner  experiential  base  below   the  skateboarders  caused  their  views  to  occasionally  sound  superficial,  but  nevertheless,  it  was   interesting  to  hear  the  shared  values  expressed  across  the  divide  between  two  groups  at  either   end  of  the  adult  age  spectrum.    Social  and  recreational  factors  seemed  important  to  both                                                                                                                           19  Pennebaker  says  in  the  same  1971  interview  quoted  earlier:    “The  trouble  with  documentary  is  it  really  requires   a  lot  of  artfulness,  and  most  people  making  documentaries,  for  one  reason  or  another,  feel  embarrassed  at  being   artful.”   26     groups,  congruent  with  the  findings  of  Positive  Psychology  that  happy  people  are  more  likely  to   be  members  of  a  club,  and  that  recreation  is  often  a  greater  source  of  happiness  for  people   than  is  vocation.    Identity  appeared  to  be  a  more  important  attractive  factor  for  skateboarders,   as  might  be  expected  with  a  younger,  often  adolescent,  perhaps  more  idealistic  demographic,   but  it  is  noteworthy  that  this  stronger  group  identity  crosses  greater  ethnic  diversity  in  the   skateboarding  cohort  than  it  does  with  the  lawn  bowlers.       In  integrating  the  interview  material  from  the  two  groups,  setting  them  one  frame  apart  for  the   first  time,  as  I  did  in  my  rough  cut,  I  again  felt  that  what  I  have  termed  ‘the  quotidian’  factor   belied  whatever  cultural  and  visual  differences  were  present.    In  creating  What  Happyns,  I   wanted  to  move  beyond  image,  pop  culture,  politics,  social  issues,  activism,  even  religion,  to   investigate  issues  more  broadly  relevant  to  the  lives  of  ordinary  people.    The  extraordinary   among  us—the  highly  talented,  the  greatly  successful,  the  true  overachievers—typically   acknowledge  the  luck  factor  in  their  accomplishment;  they  were,  with  their  enhanced  abilities,   in  the  right  place  at  a  critical  time.20    Also  notable  is  how  often  these  people,  whether  they  be   Vincent  van  Gogh  or  Oprah  Winfrey,  seem  driven  by  past  trauma,  and  how  often  they  are   willing  to  work  to  an  extent  which  brings  obvious  negative  social  consequences.    They   frequently  possess  a  heightened  competitive  drive.    My  rationale  for  an  interest  in  the   quotidian  questions  these  exceptional  people  as  models  for  success.    Emulating  or  aspiring  to   the  paradigm  of  the  extraordinary  is  undoubtedly  a  source  of  unhappiness  for  many  people,   especially  for  younger  people.    Looking  to  the  happiness  found  in  the  average  elder  seems  to   me  a  far  more  promising  vein.    Elderly  people  are  happier  despite  the  arbitrary  role  played  by   good  fortune,  and  the  predictably  indiscriminate  manner  in  which  they  have  assembled  their   lives.    Their  lives  are  happy  accidents,  with  far  greater  commonality.       The  validity  of  the  interview  is  founded  upon  the  relationship  built  via  that  interview,  and  like   happiness,  it  is  augmented  by  time.    As  Errol  Morris  has  pointed  out  in  an  interview  with  Charlie   Rose,  “Interviewing  is  a  human  relationship,”  (emphasis  added),  and,  “The  most  powerful                                                                                                                           20  Dustin  Hoffman’s  Oscar  acceptance  speech  in  1980  is  a  noteworthy  illustration  of  this  acknowledgement.     27     interviews  are  not  adversarial.”    Rose,  who  has,  quite  incredibly,  conducted  in  excess  of  50,000   interviews  in  his  career,  agrees  with  Morris  in  the  same  interview  just  quoted,  stating  that  the   critical  purpose  of  the  interview  is  “to  not  look  to  confirm  a  thesis,  but  to  discover;”  at  Mike   Wallace’s  suggestion,  to  illuminate.           The  local  ethnographic  film  form  can  be  justified  in  similar  manner,  via  its  approach.     Reflexivity,  however  it  is  manifest,  can  mean  the  creation  of  a  triangulated  discourse,  where   useful  questions  are  asked,  and  a  diversity  of  answers  is  encouraged.    The  essay  film,  in  turn,   functions  as  an  art  form  like  any  other;  the  advantage  of  the  motion  picture  medium  is  that   time  makes  possible  a  conversation,  a  conversation  where  the  audience  member  need  not  be   thought  of  only  as  a  passive,  unknown  viewer.    Rather  the  audience  member  can  be   metaphorically  conceived  of  by  the  documentary  filmmaker  as  a  guest  at  the  same  dinner  table   where  filmmaker  and  subject  are  conversing.                 Undoubtedly,  the  documentary  process,  as  I’ve  envisioned  it,  involves  the  evaluation  of  people,   events  and  circumstances,  then  a  judgement  as  to  the  inherent  ‘truth’  of  that  situation,  and   then  a  consistent  effort  to  accurately  portray  that  particular  but  individual  judgement.    At  the   same  time  I’ve  seen  the  perceived  confines,  the  defining  elements  of  dramatic  versus   documentary  film  as  so  complex,  so  shifting  and  illusory  as  to  make  any  categorical   distinguishing  relationship  with  the  real  or  truthful  essentially  meaningless.    Simply  put,  I  would   argue  that  dramatic  and  documentary  film  exist  along  a  single  spectrum,  with  hybrid  forms   occupying  a  middle  ground,  but  that  it  quickly  becomes  frivolous  to  attempt  to  determine   precisely  where  that  hybrid  ground  begins  and  ends.     I  recall  hearing  someone  interviewed  on  the  radio  whose  professional  business  it  was  to  be   present  for  the  death  of  others.    She  commented  on  how  there  were  few  consistencies  in  these   final  circumstances;  very  often  the  dying  have  slipped  into  an  altered  consciousness  where  the   grieving  aren’t  sure  whether  to  advise  their  loved  one  to  hang  on  or  let  go.    She  did  however   observe  one  pattern:  women,  in  their  last  moments,  often  ‘see’  their  mother.    Men,  at  least  for   28     the  generation  she  was  working  with,  often  ‘see’  their  home  as  they  return  to  it  at  night,  a   lighted  space  where  their  family  awaits.    While  we  might  question  the  universality  of  this   gender  difference,  it  seems  that  in  the  end  what  invariably  matters  to  us  are  others,  those   whom  we  have  loved,  those  who  have  cared  about  our  own  happiness.         The  burden  of  the  future  has  to  do  with  attainment.    As  younger  people  we  ask  whether  it  is   better  to  excel  at  a  practice,  be  it  art  or  medicine  or  mechanics,  than  it  is  to  be  a  good  mother,   or  a  good  husband.    As  younger  people  we  struggle  to  achieve,  but  what  is  the  nature  of  that   achievement?    No  one  dies  wishing  they  had  achieved  more,  except  in  so  far  as  that   achievement  has  brought  them  greater  love.    We  die  asking  simply,  ‘Was  I  loved?’    Narrative   form,  whether  documentary  or  dramatic,  should  tell  us  that  the  assembling  of  our  lives  is  a  love   story,  the  greatest  story  we  will  ever  tell,  and  in  telling  the  story,  we  are  all  obliged  to  tell  the   truth.           29     A  REFLECTIVE  CHAPTER     In  rereading  my  thesis,  and  with  the  benefit  of  my  completed  film  behind  me,  it  seems  to  me   that  the  contention  with  the  documentary  sub-­‐genres  I  discuss  (the  ethnographic,  the  quotidian   and  the  essay)  can  be  profitably  viewed  as  an  ongoing  contention  with  the  audience.    In   retrospectively  tracking  my  progress  from  ethnographic  to  essay  filmmaking,  a  number  of   insights  can  be  identified  which  offer  comment  on  both  the  process  of  documentary   filmmaking,  and  my  own  efforts  at  organizing  content  in  alternate  forms.    Certain  of  these   insights  may  now  be  viewed  as  foreseeable;  others  as  intrinsically  valuable  to  the  creative   process  as  pursued  by  myself,  or  indeed  as  pursued  by  others  working  in  a  variety  of  media.       I  came  to  the  ECUAD  MAA  program  after  many  years  spent  in  a  client-­‐based  process,  where,   inevitably,  at  least  one  client  was  financing  the  project  in  a  way  that  allowed  them  creative   input,  sometimes  decisive  creative  input.    I  also  came  from  years  working  with  dramatic  film,   narrative  structure,  and  the  ‘tyrannical’  audience  expectations  that  come  with  conventional   storytelling.21    This  all  meant  that  when  I  enrolled  in  the  MAA  program  I  was  free  for  the  first   time  in  many  years  to  create  with  myself  in  mind  as  primary  audience,  and  to  escape  what  I   have  referred  to  as  ‘the  tyranny  of  story.’    Accordingly,  as  I  began  the  project,  I  wanted  to   pursue  an  ethnographic  form  of  documentary  that  eschewed  story,  that  is  plot  in  particular,  in   favour  of  character  and  place,  specifically  the  Stanley  Park  Lawn  Bowling  Club.     I  first  visited  the  Club  in  the  spring  of  2010  to  do  a  set  of  preliminary  interviews,  asking  a  fairly   standard  set  of  questions  about  personal  histories.    I  never  intended  to  use  this  material;  it  was   recorded  in  order  to  determine  a  subset  of  interviewees  that  I  would  return  to  with  a  very   different  set  of  questions.    As  described  earlier,  these  different  questions  were  inspired   expressly  by  Rouch  and  Morin’s  original  impulse  to  ask  in  Chronique  d’un  été,  ‘Are  you  happy?’     These  broader  questions  were  of  greater  interest  to  me,  if  only  because  they  offered  a  more   novel,  promising  path  of  enquiry.                                                                                                                                   21  I  first  published  a  book  in  1998  entitled,  The  Tyranny  of  Story:  Audience  Expectations  and  the  Short  Screenplay.   30       My  early  research  saw  me  comparing  Chronique  and  Le  jolie  mai  with  classic  ‘exotic’   ethnographic  films  like  Dead  Birds  and  To  Live  With  Herds.    Phillip  Lopate,  in  a  foreword  to   Robert  Gardner’s  2007  book  about  the  making  of  Dead  Birds,  has  written  a  remarkably  concise   summation  of  the  many  problems  associated  with  traditional  anthropologic  filmmaking:         Filmmakers  risk  being  unable  to  satisfy  the  often  contradictory  demands  of  anthropology   as  science  and  cinema.    They  face  the  danger  of  sentimentalizing  or  patronizing  the  group   being  studied  by  overemphasizing  the  exotic  or  folkloric  elements  of  a  culture.    They  may   insufficiently  register  cultural  change  in  order  to  present  a  romantic  picture  of  the   “primitive.”    They  may  be  tempted  to  distort  reality—or  accused  of  having  done  so—by   staging  re-­‐enactments  or  instigating  events,  or  by  scrambling  chronologies  and  spatial   contexts  through  editing.    They  may  alter  a  group’s  behavior  by  the  camera’s  presence,  or   introduce  objects  and  technologies  from  the  developed  world  that  destabilize  traditional   cultures  and  economies.    They  may  intervene  inappropriately  in  rituals,  or  not  intervene   when  to  do  nothing  borders  on  the  immoral.    Guilt  comes  with  the  territory  of   documentary  and  ethnographic  cinema.    (Gardner  xiv)   By  focusing  on  the  local  as  opposed  to  the  exotic,  both  Chronique  and  Le  jolie  mai  arguably   escaped  such  guilt,  but,  as  noted,  their  subsequent  sub-­‐genre  lineage  is  scant,  and  not  without   reason.    A  filmmaker  shunning  the  audience  appeal  of  both  the  exotic  and  the  extraordinary   cannot  rightly  expect  to  reach  an  audience  as  broad  as  might  be  expected  for  a  work  which,   despite  the  many  problems  described  above,  embraces  the  unusual  or  alien.               This  was  a  narrowing  of  the  audience  I  was  prepared  for,  indeed  prepared  to  welcome,  in   beginning  work  on  my  film.    Nevertheless,  during  the  2010  summer  residency  of  the  MAA   program,  even  I  as  primary  audience  was  feeling  unsatisfied  with  the  material  I  was  recording  at   the  Bowling  Club.    It  seemed  to  somehow  lack  the  scope  I  was  seeking,  both  intellectually  and   aesthetically.    During  this  same  summer  session,  my  classmate  Bruce  Emmett  spoke  about  the   Plaza  Skateboard  Park,  its  history  and  culture,  and  it  occurred  to  me  that  here  was  a  similarly   enclosed  recreational  space,  still  local,  which  was  in  effect  another  ‘club.’    But  a  club  with  a   much  different  demographic  and  look.  Taking  my  set  of  interview  questions  to  the  Skateboard   31     Park  would  allow  me  to  explore  whatever  wider  dimensions  might  be  offered  by  this  very   dissimilar  population  and  setting.         Thus,  as  I  have  described,  over  the  winter  of  2010-­‐2011  I  conducted  a  set  of  interviews  at  the   Skateboard  Park,  employing  an  identical  set  of  questions  to  that  which  I  had  asked  at  the  Lawn   Bowling  Club.    In  doing  so,  for  the  first  time,  I  felt  confident  that  the  project  was  gaining   momentum,  proceeding  in  a  richer,  more  rewarding  direction.         It  soon  seemed,  however,  that  I  was  not  out  of  the  creative  woods  just  yet.    In  cutting  together   the  material  from  both  venues  over  the  spring  of  2011,  I  was  soon  feeling  dissatisfied  again.     The  material  from  the  two  venues  appeared  to  ‘speak’  one  to  the  other  in  an  interesting   dialogue  of  sorts,  but  without  the  additional  ‘lift’  I  was  aspiring  toward,  falling  too  frequently   into  homily,  or  idiosyncrasy,  even  banality.    I  began,  for  the  first  time,  to  consider  the  prospect   of  my  own  voice-­‐over  as  an  integrative  element.         I  have  described  above  my  reluctance  to  take  this  step,  for  reasons  which  anyone  familiar  with   the  history  of  documentary  will  know  of.    Dead  Birds  is  again  a  useful  example  here,  as  Robert   Gardner  himself  has  written  that  he  now  considers  his  voice-­‐over  for  that  film  often  “too  heavy   and  occasionally  arch.”  (Gardner  126)         For  the  summer  exhibition  of  2011,  still  in  a  thoroughly  experimental  mode,  I  cut  together  a   long,  completely  random  sequence  of  clips  from  both  sources,  eschewing  not  only  story,  but  in   this  instance  character  as  well.    I  chose  to  not  concern  myself  with  introducing  or  developing   any  of  the  various  characters  I  had  recorded  at  either  venue.    If  a  subject  had  something  to  say   which  I  considered  worth  including,  and  she  popped  up  just  one  time  to  say  it,  never  appearing   again,  so  be  it;  I  would  include  that  single  clip.    Consistent  with  my  original  intent,  I  used  very   little  if  any  of  the  personal  history  material  from  the  first  set  of  interviews.    Damn  the  audience;   full  speed  ahead.    As  just  stated,  I  considered  this  effort  an  open  experiment,  and  before  long  I   32     considered  it  a  failed  experiment.    As  primary  audience,  I  again  felt  insufficiently  engaged  by   this  manifestation  of  my  recorded  material.     In  the  wake  of  the  summer  exhibition,  I  made  the  decision  to  move  ahead  with  my  own  voice-­‐ over  as  narration  for  the  final  piece.    I  looked  upon  this  decision  as  one  wherein  I  was   choosing—to  a  degree  at  least—to  ‘come  out  from  behind  the  camera,’  that  is  from  the   comparatively  safe  obscurity  of  a  position  behind  the  camera.    Uncomfortable  as  I  was  in  doing   so,  it  felt  like  a  courageous  choice,  and  therefore  likely  a  worthy  one,  encompassing  a  greater   degree  of  self-­‐reflexivity.    In  concurrent  discussions  with  Dr.  Glen  Lowry,  my  Supervisor,  it  arose   that  perhaps  what  I  was  attempting  to  create  was  an  essay  film,  voice-­‐over  being  one  of  the   defining  features  of  an  essay  film.    As  mentioned  in  the  body  of  my  thesis,  this  reconceiving  of   my  final  work  as  an  essay  film  also  felt  right,  and  led  to  my  reading  several  books  on  essay  films,   specifically  books  by  Timothy  Corrigan  and  Laura  Rascaroli.    The  Rascaroli  text  led  me  to  a  paper   by  her  on  the  interstitial  sonic  space  created  by  voice-­‐over,  a  conception  which,  although   idealized,  allowed  me,  for  the  first  time,  to  think  of  voice-­‐over  in  a  way  that  I  was  comfortable   with.     In  my  ‘post-­‐random’  editing,  I  was  working  with  the  notion  of  structuring  the  film  thematically,   that  is  according  to  the  topics  focused  upon  in  my  later  interview  questions.    Voice-­‐over  would   aid  in  creating  this  kind  of  structure,  but  it  would  also  allow  me  to  still  avoid  any  reliance  upon   story  structure.    A  rough  cut  I  completed  in  the  spring  of  2012  employed  voice-­‐over  (drawing   largely  upon  the  findings  of  Positive  Psychology)  and  such  a  thematic  structure.    In  screening   that  cut  for  several  people,  I  felt  it  was  considerably  closer  to  a  successful  form,  but  still  short  of   the  fully  integrated  piece  I  was  striving  for.         While  continuing  to  edit  the  material,  it  occurred  to  me  that  none  of  the  strategies  I  had  been   pursuing—thematic,  anti-­‐story,  random—needed  to  be  mutually  exclusive.    I  recalled  a  time   during  the  first  year  of  the  program,  when  Dr.  Chris  Jones  had  suggested  that  my  virtual  studio   might  benefit  from  some  video.    In  response  I  assembled  three  brief  video  sequences  featuring   33     lawn  bowlers  who  had  related  interesting  personal  histories  during  my  first  set  of  interviews— the  interviews  I  did  not  intend  to  use  in  a  final  version.    I  further  recalled  that  the  broader   audience  (excluding  me,  with  my  preconceived  choices)  had  offered  marked  positive  response   to  those  sequences,  certainly  more  so  than  they  had  to  the  random  assemblage  I  completed  for   the  summer  of  2011.     A  final  ‘light’  switched  on  for  me.    Within  the  usual  documentary  post  production  process,  there   is  a  hallowed  time  when  the  filmmaker  is  simply  looking  at  the  recorded  material  without  any   preconceptions,  looking  to  see  which  moments  are  most  revealing,  which  have  the  most  to  say,   regardless  of  whether  it  seems  they  may  or  may  not  integrate  well  with  any  other  chosen   moment.    It  struck  me  that  I  could  return  to  this  process  without  fear.    If  those  historical   sequences  from  my  first  set  of  interviews  were  the  most  compelling  for  an  audience  which   included  myself  and  others,  then  that  was  material  I  should  be  using.    And  using  this  material   did  not  mean  that  I  couldn’t  still  work  thematically  later  within  the  work,  in  fact  building  upon   character  and  story  in  order  to  do  so.     The  result  was  a  creative  breakthrough  and  the  final  structure  extant  in  What  Happyns,  where   an  extended  early  sequence  presents  selected  characters  and  personal  histories,  and  where  the   latter  portions  of  the  work  focus  on  thematic  concerns,  building  upon  the  characters  already   presented.    It  is  a  structure  I  am  finally  creatively  satisfied  with,  and  one  that,  although  possibly   unnecessarily  arduous  in  its  arrival,  for  myself  at  least,  manages  to  effectively  integrate   character,  story  and  theme.     Having  achieved  that  much,  I  chose  to  screen  this  version  for  an  amalgamated  group  of  my   interview  subjects,  and  to  shoot  this  event  as  ‘bookend’  sequences  to  the  main  body  of  my  film.     This  was  a  choice  I  viewed  as  an  extension  of  my  earlier  one  to  employ  voice-­‐over,  and  a  choice   which  also  extended  my  dialogue  with  Chronique  d’un  été.    More  than  coming  out  from  behind   the  camera,  these  bookends  set  me  in  front  of  the  camera,  then,  as  a  very  last  element,  had  me   34     being  asked  a  question—being  interviewed—by  one  of  my  subjects.    For  me,  it  amounted  to  a   concluding  tip  of  the  creative  hat  to  the  remarkable  reflexive  elements  first  seen  in  Chronique.       Since  that  initial,  ‘amalgamated’  screening  of  What  Happyns,  the  completed  film  has  also  been   presented,  mostly  for  seniors,  in  a  number  of  community  settings—at  a  Community  Centre,  and   within  several  post-­‐secondary  classrooms.    This  type  of  community-­‐based  screening  is  perhaps   the  optimal  form  of  its  presentation,  allowing  the  work  to  function  as  a  discussion  piece,  where   values,  choices  and  insights  can  be  debated  within  a  non-­‐judgmental,  non-­‐competitive  context   removed  for  the  time  from  the  pressures  of  work,  family,  longer-­‐term  aspirations  or  immediate   goals.    Ideally,  What  Happyns  prompts  an  enjoyable,  confident  discussion  from  which  viewers   go  home  feeling  encouraged,  if  not  altogether  content.       Ultimately,  it  is  possible  to  question  whether  the  completed  version  of  What  Happyns  is  indeed   an  essay  film.    My  own  contention  would  be  that,  in  so  far  as  the  film  focuses  on  neither   portrait  (of  a  people,  place  or  culture)  nor  story  (as  in  a  series  of  events),  it  occupies  a  place   within  the  hybrid  formal  ground  of  the  essay  film  as  described  above.    The  voice-­‐over  in  the  film   is  individualized,  if  not  always  fully  personal,  and  its  subjectivity  can  be  seen—overall—to  have   drawn  myself  as  filmmaker  to  a  point  at  least  ‘beside’  if  not  in  front  of  the  camera.       The  final  insight  for  me  in  this  entire  process  was  then  one  I  had  gained  long  ago,  a  lesson  I   knew  from  the  start.    A  rich  creative  vein  can  be  mined  in  the  fertile  ground  which  runs   between  story  and  anti-­‐story;  worthy  invention  can  be  found  in  the  tension  felt  between   content  and  form.    At  no  time,  however,  is  it  necessary  to  oppose  the  material,  to  preconceive   form  and  attempt  to  impose  it.    Rather  the  artist  can  simply  relax,  listen  to  the  material,   embrace  the  tension  and  allow  it  to  give  birth  to  a  new  child.    Be  still,  and  allow  the  material  to   say—usually  quietly—where  it  needs  to  go.                 35     Works  Cited     Bazin,  André.    Qu'est-­‐ce  que  le  cinéma?    Paris:  Éditions  du  Serf,  1958.    Print.     Bright  Leaves.    Dir.  Ross  McElwee.    Homemade  Movies  Inc.,  2003.     Chapman,  Jane.    Issues  in  Contemporary  Documentary.    Cambridge:  Polity  Press,  2009.    Print.     Chronique  d’un  été.    Dir.  Edgar  Morin  and  Jean  Rouch.    Argos  Films,  1961.       Corrigan,  Timothy.    The  Essay  Film:  From  Montaigne,  After  Marker.    London:  Oxford  University   Press,  2011.    Print.     Dead  Birds.    Dir.  Robert  Gardner.    Peabody  Museum,  1963.   DiIorio,  Sam.    “Total  cinema:  Chronique  d'un  été  and  the  end  of  Bazinian  film  theory.”    Screen,   48  (1)  (2007):  25-­‐43.    Print.   Ebert,  Roger.    Interview  with  Michael  Apted,  Oct.  12,  2006.   http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article   Ellis,  Carolyn.    The  Ethnographic  I:  A  Methodological  Novel  about  Autoethnography.    Walnut   Creek:  Alta  Mira  Press,  2004.    Print.       Fahrenheit  9/11.    Dir.  Michael  Moore.    Dog  Eat  Dog  Films,  2004.     The  Fog  of  War.    Dir.  Errol  Morris.    Sony  Pictures  Classics,  2004.     Gardner,  Robert.    Making  Dead  Birds:  Chronicle  of  a  Film.    Peabody  Museum  Press,  Cambridge,   MA,  2007.    Print.         The  Gardener.    Dir.  Auguste  and  Louis  Lumière.    Lumière,  1895.     Gruber,  Jacob.  "Ethnographic  Salvage  and  the  Shaping  of  Anthropology."  American   Anthropologist,  New  Series.    (Dec  1970)  72  (6):  1289–1299.  Print.     Guynn,  William.    A  Cinema  of 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Montaigne,  Michel  de.    The  Complete  Essays  of  Montaigne.    Stanford:  Stanford  University  Press,   1943.         Moran,  Joe,  “Childhood,  class  and  memory  in  the  Seven  Up  films.”    Screen,  43.4  Winter  (2002):   387-­‐402.    Print.     Morris,  Errol.    Interview  with  Charlie  Rose,  July  26,  2011.     http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/1390     Nichols,  Bill.    Introduction  to  Documentary.    Bloomington  and  Indianapolis:  Indiana  University   Press,  2001.    Print.     Night  and  Fog.    Dir.  Alain  Resnais.    Argos  Films,  1955.     Picture  Start.    Dir.  Harry  Killas.    Laughing  Mountain  Communications,  2011.     Pennebaker,  D.  A.    “Interview  with  Donn  Alan  Pennebaker  by  G.  Roy  Levin.”    Documentary   Explorations:  15  Interviews  with  Film-­‐Makers.    New  York:  Doubleday,  1971.    Print.     Rascaroli,  Laura.    “Sonic  Interstices:  Essayistic  Voiceover  and  Spectatorial  Space  in  Robert   Cambrinus’s 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      Siegel,  Joshua.    Ross  McElwee  Film  Exhibition.    MoMA,  New  York,  Sept.  21-­‐28,  2005.    Print.     Sans  Soleil.    Dir.  Chris  Marker.    Argos  Films,  1983.         Stone,  Arthur  A.,  Joseph  E.  Schwartz,  Joan  E.  Broderick,  Angus  Deacon.    “A  snapshot  of  the  age   distribution  on  psychological  well-­‐being  in  the  United  States.”    Ed.  Kahneman,  Daniel.     Princeton:  Princeton  University,  2010.     Time  Indefinite.    Dir.  Ross  McElwee.    Homemade  Movies  Inc.,  1993.     The  Up  Series.    Dir.  Michael  Apted.    BBC,  1964-­‐2005.     To  Live  With  Herds.    Dir.  David  MacDougall.    University  of  California  at  Los  Angeles,  1972.           Vernon,  Florida.    Dir.  Errol  Morris.    Errol  Morris  Films,  1981.     Wallace,  Mike.    Interview  with  Charlie  Rose,  June  17,  2002.   http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/2500.   Winston,  Brian.    Claiming  the  Real  II:  Documentary:  Grierson  and  Beyond.  New  York:  Palgrave   Macmillan,  2008.  Print.   Workers  Leaving  the  Lumière  Factory.    Dir.  Auguste  and  Louis  Lumière.    Lumière,  1895.           38       Works  Consulted   Aufderheide,  Patricia  ,  Peter  Jaszi  and  Mridu  Chandra.    “HONEST  TRUTHS:  Documentary   Filmmakers  on  Ethical  Challenges  in  Their  Work.”    AUSOC  Center  for  Social  Media,  School  of   Communication,  American  University,  2009.    Print.   Banks,  Marcus  and  Howard  Morphy,  eds.    Rethinking  Visual  Anthropology.    New  York:  Yale   University  Press,  1997.    Print.   Barry,  Iris.    “The  Documentary  Film:  Prospect  and  Retrospect.”  The  Bulletin  of  the  Museum  of   Modern  Art,  13  (2)  (1945):  2-­‐27.    Print.   Bruner,  Jerome.    Actual  Minds,  Possible  Worlds.    Cambridge,  Mass:  Harvard  University  Press,   1986.    Print.   Bruner,  Jerome.    Acts  of  Meaning.    Cambridge,  Mass:  Harvard  University  Press,  1990.    Print.   Buettner,  Dan.    Thrive:  Finding  Happiness  the  Blue  Zones  Way.    New  York:  National  Geographic   Society,  2010.    Print.   CRTC  Announces  Revised  Definitions  for  Television  Program  Categories.    2010.   http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/8045/rpb2010.htm   Bordwell,  David  and  Kristin  Thompson.    Film  Art:  An  Introduction.    New  York:  McGraw-­‐Hill,   2010.    Print.     Eitzen,  Dick.    “When  Is  a  Documentary?:  Documentary  as  a  Mode  of  Reception.”  Cinema   Journal,  35  (1)  (1995):  81-­‐102.    Print.   First  Person.    Dir.  Errol  Morris.    Fourth  Floor  Productions,  2000.   Foster,  Hal.    The  Return  of  the  Real:  The  Avant-­‐Garde  at  the  Turn  of  the  Century.    Cambridge,   Mass:  MIT  Press,  1996.    Print.   The  Gleaners  and  I.    Dir.  Agnes  Varda.    Ciné  Tamaris,  2000.   Grant,  Barry  Keith  and  Jeannette  Sloniowski,  eds.    Documenting  the  Documentary:  Close   Readings  of  Documentary  Film  and  Video.    Detroit:  Wayne  State  University  Press,  1998.    Print.   Hebdige,  Dick.    Subculture:  The  Meaning  of  Style.    London:  Routledge,  2005.    Print.   Heider,  Karl.    Ethnographic  Film.    Austin:  University  of  Texas  Press,  2006.    Print.     39     Hight,  Craig  and  Jane  Roscoe.    Faking  It:  Mock-­‐Documentary  and  the  Subversion  of  Factuality.   Manchester;  New  York:  Manchester  University  Press,  2001.    Print.   Hockings,  Paul,  ed.    Principles  of  Visual  Anthropology.    Chicago:  Mouton,  1975.    Print.   Kahana,  Jonathan.    Intelligence  Work:  The  Politics  of  American  Documentary.    New  York:   Columbia  University  Press,  2008.    Print.   Kracauer,  Siegfried.    Theory  of  Film.    London:  Oxford  University  Press,  1960.    Print.   The  Legacy  Project.  2004  -­‐  present.    http://legacyproject.human.cornell.edu/   Lightman,  Alan.    A  Sense  of  the  Mysterious.    New  York:  Pantheon  Books,  2005.    Print.   Lipkin,  Steven  N.  “Real  Emotional  Logic:  Persuasive  Strategies  in  Docudrama.”  Cinema  Journal,   38  (4)  (1999):  68-­‐85.    Print.   MacDougall,  David.    “Prospects  of  the  Ethnographic  Film.”    Film  Quarterly,  23  (2)  (1969-­‐1970):   16-­‐30.    Print.   MacDougall,  David.    “Beyond  Observational  Cinema.”    Principles  of  Visual  Anthropology.  ed.  P   Hockings.    The  Hague:  Mouton  (1975):  109-­‐125.    Print.   Marcorelles,  Louis.    Living  Cinema:  New  Directions  in  Contemporary  Film  Making.    UNESCO,   1973.    Print.   Minh-­‐ha,  Trinh  T.    The  Digital  Film  Event.    New  York:  Routledge,  2005.    Print.   Nichols,  Bill.    Blurred  Boundaries:  Questions  of  Meaning  in  Contemporary  Culture.  Bloomington:   Indiana  University  Press,  1994.    Print.   Nichols,  Bill.    Representing  Reality:  Issues  and  Concepts  in  Documentary.  Bloomington:  Indiana   University  Press,  1991.    Print.   Otterman,  Sharon.    “In  ‘Waiting  for  Superman,’  a  Scene  Isn’t  What  It  Seems.”    New  York  Times,   November  2,  2010.    Print.   Peterson,  Jordan  B.    Maps  of  Meaning.    New  York:  Routledge,  1999.    Print.   Prince,  Stephen.    “True  Lies:  Perceptual  Realism,  Digital  Images  and  Film  Theory.”  Film   Quarterly,  49  (3)  (1996):  27-­‐37.    Print.   Renov,  Michael,  ed.    Theorizing  Documentary.    New  York:  Routledge,  1993.    Print.   40     Rhodes,  Gary  D.  and  John  Parris  Springer.    Docufictions:  Essays  on  the  Intersection  of   Documentary  and  Fictional  Filmmaking.    London:  McFarland  &  Company  Inc.,  2006.    Print.   Richardson,  Laurel.    “Evaluating  Ethnography.”    Qualitative  Inquiry,  6  (2)  (2000):  253-­‐255.    Print.   Ruby,  Jay.  1975.    “Is  an  Ethnographic  Film  a  Filmic  Ethnography?”  Studies  in  the  Anthropology  of   Visual  Communication,  2  (2):  104-­‐111.    Print.   Sandelowski,  Margarete.    “Telling  Stories:  Narrative  Approaches  in  Qualitative  Research.”     Image:  Journal  of  Nursing  Scholarship,  23  (3)  (1991):  161-­‐166.    Print.   Sheldon,  Kennon  M.,  Todd  B.  Kashdan  and  Michael  F.  Steger,  eds.    Designing  Positive   Psychology.  London:  Oxford  University  Press,  2011.    Print.   Standard  Operating  Procedure.    Dir.  Errol  Morris.    Sony  Pictures  Classics,  2008.     This  Emotional  Life,  Episode  Three.    Dir.  Jack  Youngelson.  Vulcan  Productions  Inc.  and   NOVA/WGBH  Science  Unit,  2009.   Turner,  Victor  W.,  Edward  M.  Bruner,  eds.    The  Anthropology  of  Experience.  Chicago:  University   of  Illinois  Press,  1986.    Print.   Watkinson,  Rayma.  “Reading  the  Image:  Visual  Literacy  and  the  Films  of  Jean  Rouch.”     Conference  paper  presented  at  Visual  Literacies:  Exploring  Critical  Issues.  July  10,  2011,   Mansfield  College,  Oxford,  U.K.    Print.   Wenders,  Wim.    The  Logic  of  Images.  London:  Faber  and  Faber  Ltd.,  1991.    Print.   Winston,  Brian.    Lies,  Damn  Lies  and  Documentaries.  London:  BFI  Publishing,  2000.    Print.   Zyrd,  Michael.    Rev.  of  Claiming  the  Real  by  Brian  Winston.    Film  Quarterly,  50  (2)  (1996-­‐1997):   49-­‐51.    Print.       41     Appendix  A   The  Interview  Questions     Origins   Where  and  when  were  you  born?   What  are  your  strongest  memories  of  your  years  growing  up?     How  would  you  describe  yourself?     Work   How  important  is  work?   What  is  meaningful  work?   When  should  a  person  retire?     Love/Marriage/Family   Tell  me  about  your  experiences  in  falling  in  love.   What’s  more  important,  friends  or  family?    Why?   What’s  the  key  to  a  happy  childhood?   What’s  the  key  to  being  a  good  parent?     Age   What  do  you  think  about  the  role  our  society  typically  assigns  people  who  are  retired?   What  do  you  think  about  the  role  our  society  typically  assigns  young  people?   What  do  you  think  young  people  have  to  offer  the  rest  of  us?   What  do  you  think  the  elderly  have  to  offer  the  rest  of  us?     Death   Do  you  read  the  obituaries?   Is  it  possible  to  live  too  long?   Are  you  afraid  of  death?   Do  you  believe  in  an  afterlife?   How  would  you  like  your  epitaph  to  read?     Wisdom   What’s  the  best  decision  you  ever  made?   What’s  your  biggest  regret?   What’s  your  opinion  on  young  people  today/the  old  people  of  today?   What  do  you  enjoy  most  in  your  life?   What’s  the  biggest  lesson  life  has  taught  you?   What’s  the  most  important  thing  in  life?   How  do  you  feel  about  the  future  of  the  planet?       42     Sayings   Please  give  me  your  reaction  to:   The  end  justifies  the  means.   He  who  has  the  most  toys,  wins.   No  one  ever  died  regretting  they  didn’t  spend  more  time  in  the  office.   Life  with  another  person  is  always  difficult.   Youth  is  wasted  on  the  young.   Old  age  is  no  place  for  sissies.   Money  can’t  buy  happiness.   Most  people  live  lives  of  quiet  desperation.   Be  here  now.   Do  what  you’re  afraid  to  do.   Life  is  not  fair.   Life  is  not  a  dress  rehearsal.     General   Do  you  set  goals?   Do  you  see  yourself  as  a  part  of  society?   Are  you  happy?   Do  you  feel  that  you’re  free?   What  does  success  mean  to  you?   Who  is  a  hero  to  you?   What  quality  do  you  most  admire  in  a  person?     What  would  be  the  worst  thing  that  could  happen  to  you?             43     Appendix  B     What  Happyns  is  available  for  online  viewing  at  the  below  website  address.    Please  contact  the   ECUAD  Graduate  Studies  office  or  Ric  Beairsto  for  the  necessary  password.         http:  //vimeo.com/48257117                                                 44