HANDS ON A HARDBODY: THE DOCUMENTARY (1997)

 

"All I have to do is realize if I don't get it, I'll have to get another job and I dont want another job, I don't want to have to go back to waiting tables..."

"Theres nobody that should be in that contest, if you want to know the truth!"

We laugh now, but the show-runner/creator of Squid Game season 2 is taking notes...

You know, there's a moment about 43 minutes in when everyone starts laughing... and it's more like cackling... like this is where, at about the 40th or so hour of this competition, where the Hysteria kicks into overdrive. And I realize I am not the first one to point this out, but according to trivia Robert fucking Altman planned to make this into a fictionalized film but died before he could - and my goodness we missed out arguably on the only possible human who could top what happened in the documentary.

Hands on a Hardbody is one of those times in modern movies where you see something that's too true to be anything else than what it is: all-American, celebratory and unadalterated madness, a window into the kind of thing that George Carlin meant when he said when you're born you're given a ticket to the Freakshow, but. when in America youre given a front-row seat. That's the first impression, like who else would do this? But what if in that Freakshow there's more to it than just gawking at the local yokals with limited teeth and bad knees?

Only here, in Longview, a seemingly-small-but-not town in Texas (pop is 100k, the people maybe make it feel more in spirit), would someone have the mind to come up with this contest *over a single pick-up truck* for one thing, and then for another how popular it would become. And only here would they have rules over drug testing. Oye. I was laughing through several parts of this (Highlander, sure, but just how un-self aware everyone is to this competition insanity), and while the jerkoff cynical part of me wants to say it's like a Christopher Guest film come to life, I think I get more in the latter half why Altman was into making it into his own vision: it's like when you see Ronne Blakely sing in Nashville (the number midway through that movie), where you cringe but then your heart kind of breaks seeing her in this vulnerable moment.

I wonder if I would've been laughing more had I seen this when I was younger and a bit more ignorant. Now, having lived a while note in this world and seen how life has frankly got a lot shittier for a lot of people (whether they deserved it or not), I can't not see the absurdity of these folks while at the same time the competition, where it's consecutive hours with very limited breaks and no real chance to sleep or rest (I have to imagine microsleep was working like a motherfucker on the lot of them), brings out the humanity in these men and women. And the storytelling is clear and concise, and you get some really inspiring bits (notice when Angie is talking and then the text tells us she wins the next year).

"You experience a great camaraderie with these people. They know what it's like."

I almost love it more because of how it's presented. The documentarians - making what is a "work by" as opposed to a film even, that unpretentious - shoot on what they have available and it feels like a pure artifact. They can get so close because they don't mark a distance, like they're there to understand what's going on for these guys. You understand through what they say about their lives before this goes on, and how screwed they've been in lower working class systems that draw these people to this competition, not to mention how those in the game become closer and become energized seeing who is left and who could be next to drop off.

By a certain point, the oddball comedy floats away and you're left with raw, Texas-fried and sleep-deprived obsession, ennui and, from my perspective, the toll on these people physically and psychically and mentally (mostly physically) to go through this. And throughout, Binder and his team ask simple questions to help us understand what's going on, and the footage they culled is enough for dramatic effect. They build a suspense naturally if nothing else because as more people shed away and you're left with the final few in those last hours, you feel like you've seen these people go through a helluva thing. And when people should have a little space during the precious break times, they back off. And... and, again, over a truck.

This is pretty engrossing stuff and I'm glad I finally got to see it on DVD. PS: they apparently stopped doing this when one of the contestants went and committed suicide during a 15 minute break at K Mart.