On the trivia page, it says that the Academy rejected The Thin Blue Line for the Best Documentary category at the Oscars because it was deemed fictional due to the scripted parts. Is this only referring to the re-enacted bits? Because that seems like a really lame reason to not allow it to be nominated.
sharei believe so, yes.
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wars not make one great.
Man on Wire won the Oscar for Best Documentary this year, and that had tons of scripted re-enactments.
shareTimes have changed. When TTBL came out, guidelines for documentaries were very strict, and the scripted reenactments in TTBL caused an uproar in the documentary world. TTBL was the first documentary to do this. An organization of documentary filmmakers were able to block TTBL's awards eligibility. It's nearly 20 years later now, and since then the requirements of a documentary have relaxed a bit, and scripted reenactments are now widely accepted.
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I haven't seen this film and wondered what people thought of the re-enactments? A&E shows a lot of "true murder mysteries" with them and it drives me nuts they are so cheesy. Are TTBL re-enactments anything like those on A&E?
sharethey are very slightly cheesy, yes, but not nearly as cheesy as the ones shown on A&E. Considering someone said he was the first to do this sort of thing in a documentary, it was done very tastefully.
shareMorris has said the scripted bits or reenactments were based on the witness testimony & cites by the witnesses in the movie: basically confused & contrary. Although somewhere Morris has said a reporter that saw the film thought they were live action & asked Morris just how he happened to be present @the killing of the policeman!
The movie is certainly not documentary in the strict sense, & I think of it as film comparable to the nonfiction novel, developed by Truman Capote for another murder mystery, In Cold Blood: mainly meaning that the events are not depicted chronologically. But it is a riveting bit of movie making: & that music!
Man on Wire had just as many if not more re-enactments. The Oscars are a joke they are where a group of friends vote for their other friends.
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I think the fact that they are used to show the discrepancies in the investigation saves them. For example, showing how different the backs of each type of car looked was very effective in illustrating how the female officer's testimony matched with her story of where she was and what she was doing at the time of the shooting.
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