Nick Broomfield - Documentaries

Documentaries

It was not until Driving Me Crazy (1988) that Broomfield appeared on-screen for the first time. After several arguments regarding the budget and nature of the film, he decided that he would only make the documentary if he was able to conduct a sort of experiment by filming the process of making the film—the arguments, the failed interviews and the dead-ends.

This shift in film-making style was also heavily influenced by Broomfield's experience in attempting to release his earlier film Lily Tomlin, which chronicled Tomlin's one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Tomlin claimed that the film was a spoiler for the actual show and filed suit for $7 million against Broomfield. The documentary was shown on public television but not widely released. Eventually the footage shot by Broomfield was used in the video release of the one-woman show.

It is for this self-reflexive film-making style—a film being about the making of itself as much as about its subject—that Broomfield is best known. His influence on documentary is clear: Michael Moore, Louis Theroux and Morgan Spurlock have all adopted a similar style for their recent box-office hits. Film-makers who use this style have been referred to as Les Nouvelles Egotistes; others have likened his work to the gonzo reporting of Hunter S. Thompson.

Broomfield's best known work is probably Kurt and Courtney about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, one of the few films selected then banned at the Sundance Film Festival. A previous film, Soldier Girls, that he co-directed with Joan Churchill won first prize at Sundance a few years previously.