50 Fun Facts About Documentaries

Super Size Me follows Morgan Spurlock through 30 days of eating only food from which fast-food chain?

McDonald's dropped its Super Size portions six weeks after the film's debut, while insisting the decision had nothing to do with it.

Morgan Freeman narrated the English release of which French nature documentary that won a 2006 Oscar?

March of the Penguins had a very different French original, told in the first person as if the birds themselves were speaking. The English release swapped that for a single narrator.

Which Netflix documentary series follows Joe Exotic, an Oklahoma man jailed over a plot to kill a rival?

Tiger King was watched by 34.3 million people in its first ten days, helped by a release in the early weeks of the pandemic.

Which former US vice president's climate slide show became the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth?

Al Gore reckoned he had presented the slide show more than 1,000 times around the world. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize the year after the film came out.

The Last Dance follows Michael Jordan through 1997–98, his final championship season with which NBA team?

Chicago Bulls players had a film crew with an all-access pass beside them that season, which produced more than 500 hours of footage for the ten-part series.

Which British broadcaster narrated the original BBC version of the nature series Planet Earth, first shown in 2006?

David Attenborough was replaced by Sigourney Weaver for viewers in the United States, where her voice was thought to be more familiar.

Which sea creature does diver Craig Foster befriend in a kelp forest in an Oscar-winning 2020 Netflix documentary?

An octopus let Foster follow her for nearly a year. After a shark attack cost her an arm, she hid in her den and regrew it over three months.

In the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, Alex Honnold climbs which Yosemite rock face without ropes?

El Capitan had never been climbed free solo before Honnold's ascent in June 2017. He took a route called Freerider that he had already completed several times with safety gear.

The 2013 documentary Blackfish centres on Tilikum, a captive orca held by which theme park company?

SeaWorld announced in March 2016 that it would end its orca breeding programme and begin phasing out live shows with the animals.

Which children's television host is the subject of the 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister as well as a broadcaster. His programme Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ran from 1968 to 2001.

Which 2010 documentary about a fake online romance gave its name to luring people with false profiles?

Catfish takes its title from a story told on camera about fishermen who shipped catfish in the same tanks as live cod to keep the cod active.

Despite its title, the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning records the ballroom scene of which city?

New York's ball culture also gave the world voguing, a dance of frozen poses struck as if for a fashion-magazine cover.

Man on Wire recounts Philippe Petit's unauthorised 1974 high-wire walk between the towers of which landmark?

World Trade Center crowds watched Petit make eight passes along the wire in 45 minutes, walking, dancing and even lying down on it.

Which filmmaker, born in Flint, Michigan, made the documentaries Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine?

Michael Moore paid for his first film partly with bingo games and a $58,000 settlement from a magazine that had dismissed him.

Laura Poitras filmed which NSA whistleblower in a Hong Kong hotel for the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour?

Edward Snowden first reached Poitras in January 2013 through encrypted emails signed with the alias that gave the film its title.

Which Netflix series follows Steven Avery, cleared after 18 years in prison and then charged with a killing?

Making a Murderer took its two directors 10 years to film, as they travelled back and forth to Wisconsin while the case unfolded.

Which street artist directed Exit Through the Gift Shop, a 2010 documentary that some viewers suspected was a hoax?

Banksy built the film around Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles who spent years filming street artists at work but did nothing with the footage.

Which astronomer presented the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, later seen in more than 60 countries?

Carl Sagan's series was the most widely watched in the history of American public television until The Civil War overtook it in 1990.

Which American filmmaker's PBS series The Civil War lent his name to a slow pan-and-zoom across still photographs?

Ken Burns built the nine-part series from some 16,000 period photographs and paintings. Editing software such as Apple's iMovie now labels the technique with his name.

Which 1969 music festival is the subject of an Oscar-winning 1970 documentary that Martin Scorsese helped to edit?

Woodstock also earned editor Thelma Schoonmaker an Oscar nomination for film editing, a rare distinction for a documentary.

Which HBO series caught real-estate heir Robert Durst talking to himself on a microphone he thought was off?

The Jinx made headlines when Durst was arrested on a murder charge the day before its finale aired in 2015.

Netflix and Hulu released rival 2019 documentaries about the disastrous Fyre Festival, staged in which country?

The Bahamas site was a remote car park on an abandoned resort development, where guests promised villas and gourmet meals got tents and packaged sandwiches.

The Netflix series Wild Wild Country recounts the 1980s rise of guru Rajneesh's commune in which US state?

Oregon diners were the victims in 1984, when commune members poisoned the salad bars of ten restaurants with salmonella, the largest bioterror attack in US history.

Which 1988 Errol Morris documentary helped free Randall Dale Adams, wrongly convicted of killing a Dallas policeman?

The Thin Blue Line drew an admission of Adams's innocence from the original suspect, and Adams walked free in 1989 after a Texas court overturned his conviction.

The Oscar-winning documentary The Fog of War is built around interviews with which former US defense secretary?

Robert McNamara was 85 when he sat for the interviews, which the film arranges into eleven lessons drawn from his life and from the Vietnam War.

Icarus began as an amateur cyclist's doping experiment and ended up exposing a state-run programme in which country?

Russia's anti-doping laboratory chief, Grigory Rodchenkov, had been advising the director on his experiment before he fled the country and became a whistleblower.

D. A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Dont Look Back follows which singer-songwriter on a 1965 tour of England?

Bob Dylan opens the film dropping cue cards printed with words from one of his songs, a scene that was actually shot at the very end of filming.

Jonathan Demme's concert film Stop Making Sense features which group, whose singer wears an oversized suit?

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne took part of the idea for the big suit from Japanese Noh theatre, and it became an emblem of the film.

Which New Zealand director cut 60 hours of 1969 film into the documentary series The Beatles: Get Back?

Peter Jackson also had more than 150 hours of audio to work through, and his finished series runs for nearly eight hours.

Asif Kapadia's Oscar-winning 2015 documentary uses unseen footage to tell the story of which British singer?

Amy Winehouse's friends and family gave Kapadia more than 100 interviews for the film, which is titled simply Amy.

Which Roots drummer made his directing debut with Summer of Soul, a film of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival?

Questlove had never heard of the festival before producers brought him the project. Its tapes had sat in a basement for 50 years.

The Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom tells the stories of which often-overlooked music professionals?

Backup singers such as Darlene Love and Merry Clayton tell their own stories in the film, which grew out of a music executive's curiosity about their lives.

Searching for Sugar Man follows two fans tracing the musician Rodriguez, unknowingly a star in which country?

South Africa loved Rodriguez's records while he stayed unknown at home, and two Cape Town fans set out in the 1990s to learn whether rumours of his death were true.

Wim Wenders's 1999 documentary Buena Vista Social Club follows a group of veteran musicians from which country?

Cuba and the United States were so cut off from each other that many of the musicians were visiting America for the first time when they played Carnegie Hall in 1998.

Which 1994 documentary follows teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee as they chase pro basketball careers?

Hoop Dreams was planned as a 30-minute short for PBS, but the shoot stretched to five years and 250 hours of footage.

Which former NFL star is the subject of the five-part ESPN film that won the 2017 Oscar for best documentary?

O.J. Simpson's life story overtook a Soviet version of War and Peace as the longest film to win an Oscar.

When We Were Kings records the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire between George Foreman and which boxer?

Muhammad Ali's fight took a long time to reach cinemas: director Leon Gast needed 22 years to edit and finance the film, which then won an Oscar.

Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell duel for the record score on which classic arcade game in a 2007 documentary?

Donkey Kong challenger Steve Wiebe, an out-of-work engineer, bought his own cabinet and used his maths skills to spot patterns in the game.

Wordplay, a 2006 documentary featuring editor Will Shortz, follows fans of which pastime to a national tournament?

Crosswords have famous fans, and the film shows Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart among them before heading to a tournament with a $4,000 top prize.

Which 1984 Rob Reiner comedy about a touring English heavy metal band is a spoof documentary, not a real one?

This Is Spinal Tap is credited with launching the mockumentary genre, and almost all of its dialogue was improvised by the cast.

Which 1922 silent film by Robert Flaherty was the first feature-length documentary to succeed commercially?

Nanook of the North took liberties with the truth: its Inuit hero was really named Allakariallak, and the women shown as his wives were not married to him.

Which critic's 1926 newspaper review of the film Moana is traditionally credited with coining the term documentary?

John Grierson wrote that the film had documentary value. The Scottish critic turned filmmaker and is often called the father of British and Canadian documentary film.

Which German director filmed the 1934 Nuremberg rally as Triumph of the Will and the Berlin Games as Olympia?

Leni Riefenstahl won worldwide attention for the two propaganda films, but her work for the Nazi regime wrecked her career and reputation after the Second World War.

Which 1985 Claude Lanzmann film on the Nazi death camps runs over nine hours and uses no archive footage?

Shoah took eleven years to make. Editing its 350 hours of interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators filled five of them.

Which British director returned to the same fourteen people every seven years for the Up documentary series?

Michael Apted started as a researcher on the first film in 1964, helping to find the seven-year-olds, and directed every later instalment up to 63 Up.

Grey Gardens (1975) follows a reclusive mother and daughter who were close relatives of which former US first lady?

Jackie Kennedy was the niece and cousin of the two Edith Beales. In 1972 she helped pay to repair their mansion, which inspectors had found overrun by cats and raccoons.

Hearts of Darkness, begun with footage by Eleanor Coppola, documents the making of which Vietnam War film?

Apocalypse Now was directed by her husband, Francis Ford Coppola. She narrated her own behind-the-scenes footage, which two younger filmmakers shaped into the 1991 documentary.

Which German director cooked and ate his shoe on camera, keeping what he said was a vow to Errol Morris?

Werner Herzog boiled the shoe for five hours with garlic, herbs and stock at a Berkeley restaurant, then ate it before an audience at the premiere of Gates of Heaven.

The Oscar-winning documentary The Cove used cameras disguised as rocks to film the hunting of which animals?

Dolphins are driven into a hidden inlet at Taiji, where the crew planted its disguised cameras at night with help from Industrial Light & Magic artists.

Which ocean explorer co-directed The Silent World, a 1956 underwater film that won the Palme d'Or and an Oscar?

Jacques Cousteau could film beneath the waves because he had co-invented the Aqua-Lung, the first successful open-circuit scuba set. He shot the film aboard his ship Calypso.