I think this is one of the most extraordinary films I've ever seen: like something you'd expect David Lynch to make perhaps if he made a documentary! But having read the writer credit at the end I wondered if the film was in fact just largely staged and not actually very 'real' at all. Any ideas why this film has a writer credit?
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Thanks for your answer but I totally disagree with you I'm afraid. I have made and worked on dozens of documentaries, none of which had what you would call a 'writer' as such (the producer/director should have an outline or treatment of the story though of course). Also, many documentaries - and I'm talking about real documentaries here, not reality TV programmes or talking head interspersed with a bit of archive footage programmes - are not really formed until well into filming or indeed into the edit.
I was particularly wondering why this documentary had a writer credit because I was worried that the whole thing may have been staged.
The film was a collaboration between writer and director, who honed out the content and structure together before filming.
The 'professional' contributors - musicians and writers - had all been researched and interviewed previously, and the interviews you see were based upon the previous meetings. The music performances were obviously staged, in a way that carried the content of the songs into the overall narrative.
The 'civilians' were mostly spontaneous, although some had been identified in the research trips. For example, the preacher in the first church was quite happy to tailor his sermon to the needs of the film - he had already stated the prime 'enemy' of his church was substance abuse, because it subverted the desire for the transcendental into a cul-de-sac. This suited the film-makers.
So everybody in the film was speaking their own words. The task of the writer was to provide a more-or-less coherent structure, and the director to express that cinematically.