posted on nytimes.com: Questions of truth, verisimilitude and reality are very much part of a running cultural narrative, so it is no surprise that they would show up on the Tribeca [film festival] schedule, most notably in “American Cannibal: The Road to Reality,” ostensibly a documentary about two writers who pitch a reality television show built on a concept of cannibalism.
The pilot was cast and the production set up on Vieques Island, off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. There, things quickly went awry, with a shoot that was troubled by insects, artistic differences, labor strife and, eventually, a serious injury to a cast member that ended production.
The promotional copy for the film, which had its premiere last Wednesday night, calls it a “potent, poignant real-life drama with penetrating insight,” raising questions about how far people will go in pursuit of fame and fortune.
But is it true? An e-mail message that I was sent claims it is not.
“The big secret is that this ‘provocative’ and ‘penetrating’ documentary is not a documentary at all. The whole thing was staged,” said the message, from someone using the name “mistermovieguy,” which circulated last week. The author of the message, who did not respond to e-mailed questions – suggested that he or she had worked on the film and could say with certainty that “it’s all made up.”
The men who made “American Cannibal,” Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro, say that the e-mail message suggesting their movie is a hoax is itself a sham. But they managed to be both earnest and cagey about their documentary when I met them over lunch at a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan on Friday.
“I am not out to prank anyone,” said Mr. Grebin, who used to work in television news. “We hope that people will be engaged by the blurry line of what is real and what may or may not be.
“We created scenarios in which events unfolded, over which we did not have control, which is very consistent with the documentary tradition,” he said.
IN the movie, the two writers, Dave Roberts and Gil S. Ripley – not their real names, by the way – decide to pitch a reality show about young men locked in a house competing to lose their virginity.
Their prospects brighten when they offer the show to Kevin Blatt, who bought and distributed the Paris Hilton sex tapes. Mr. Blatt warmed to the concept of competing male virgins, but he was more excited about a casual suggestion – a “Survivor”-type show in which contestants would be confronted by the prospect of cannibalism.
The question of how far people would go to appear on television is entertained; the candidates are asked if they would be willing to eat someone’s finger in certain situations. One man said he would, but he drew the line at thumbs and big toes. That, he suggests, would be going too far. It is sort of gut-wrenching, but is it true? “Everything that was shown happened,” each man said, not directly answering the question.
“We don’t want to lie, but we want people to peel back the layers of the onion,” said Mr. Grebin. “Nobody really wants to look at truth; they want to see the circus, so we gave them a circus. We used elements of reality TV to make a movie about reality TV.”
Mr. Blatt, who had threatened to sue to prevent the premiere of the documentary at the film festival, eventually dropped his objections and attended the showing. He worried that his depiction as a coarse-talking hustler might “hurt his reputation” – this from someone who once showed an operation on the genitals of a porn star live on the Internet.
“I’m a businessman and I have to worry about how I am depicted,” he said by phone. But while he had his quibbles about his portrayal, Mr. Blatt said that what he saw on the screen comported with his recollection.
“It was a debacle, a comedy of errors,” he said. “Cannibalism became a metaphor for what happened. We all ended up feeding on ourselves.”
So is “American Cannibal” reality, reality television, a comment on reality television or an outright hoax?
If there isn’t a satisfactory answer, perhaps it is because all reality seems to have quotation marks, asterisks, parentheses and a herd of question marks around it. At the beginning of the year, it was revealed that the writer JT Leroy was a literary composite created by three people.
Earlier this year, questions were raised over the veracity of the documentary “Unknown White Male.” And the memoir by James Frey served as a reminder that truth is often in the eye of the recollector.
Taking liberties with real life is a trick as old as “Nanook of the North.” What has changed is the audience. In part because of “Survivor,” “The Real World” and their legion of offspring, reality on film has become a fungible commodity, something that is spliced and edited into pop narratives to suit the marketplace.
And viewers are in on the joke. The question is no longer “is it real?” but whether the confected truth confirms our own biases.
Last year, The New York Times revealed that some TV stations were broadcasting government-issued propaganda disguised as news features. Public response was more shrug than outrage.
The expectation that all reality is now mediated has become embedded in the public consciousness. “United 93” may be grippingly realistic, but it is based on one hard fact – the plane crashed into an empty field far from its target. The rest of the movie is culled from fragmentary phone calls, radio reports and lots of suppositions. The movie carries the ring of truth, but we still don’t know what really happened that day.