Was this part mockumentary?

I agree that some of Joe's scenes felt quite contrived. The phonecall from his son - "Are you going to get an earlier flight so you can make it to my concert?" - felt expecially forced. Nobody outside of movies (where you need the exposition) talks like that!

I haven't istened to the commentary - in all honesty, any more of those Jackass wannabe jocks and I may just end myself - but it was a decent enough movie, despite having some dubious claims to reality.


'You know, it ain't altogether wise, sneaking up on a man when he's handling his weapon'

First off, by definition the genre of documentary is going to bend reality somehow in order to make it fit into a movie format. All documentaries do that to some extent.

Secondly, MTV has something to do with this film right? From observing documentary shows on MTV like Made or Sweet 16 or whatever, I found that MTV pretty much has it down to an art, the art of making reality fit into a predecided format. That's why every episode has the same structure and contains the same elements. I don't know if it's true about MTV more than it is about anyone else, but I think it's pretty fun to observe how they do it. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that large portions of the movie are staged. The question is how much "conspiracy theory" you want to go with it.

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The Zupan temporary tattoo thing isn't true in as far as he still has it today.
No idea whether he had it before though.
Some of the scenes seem a bit convenient but to be fair that doesn't mean they are false. Even if the subjects were asked to act out the scenes doesn't mean they were made up. Documentary directors influence their subjects to do things all the time
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What you just read was probably a bit of a rant. Sorry

@herzogsteve Just to clarify (warning: nitpicking ahead), a mockumentary is a fictional comedy that's made to look like a documentary, like Spinal Tap or The Office.

I think what you're referring to is a docudrama, where the events are real, but there's an element of the producers manipulating things for dramatic effect. Pumping Iron is an example of this, where participants were encouraged to exaggerate certain character traits (they discuss this in the follow-up documentary Raw Iron).

And to answer your question, yes, I think there was an element of docudrama to Murderball - "too extreme/convenient to be real" sums up some of those scenes just right.