Capturing the Friedmans (review)

In 1999, Andrew Jarecki meant to make a documentary film about children's birthday entertainers in New York. Some of his first interviews for the project were with Silly Billy, the number-one birthday clown in Manhattan. The cryptic comments that David Friedman, Silly Billy's alter ego, made about his personal history eventually turned Jarecki's documentary project onto a different story line: how Friedman's father and youngest brother, Arnold and Jesse Friedman, were charged in 1987 with sexually abusing dozens of young boys who came to the Friedman home for computer classes. Jarecki spent the next three years riding a seesaw of conflicting narratives and contradictory versions of the truth about the Friedmans, from Silly Billy's veiled hints to the sensationalistic 1988 Newsday cover story on "The Secret Life of Arnold Friedman," from the 8mm home movies that David Friedman showed him of the family together in happier times to new interviews with the judge and prosecutors of the case, and eventually to the Friedman sons' video and audio recordings of their crumbling family's last weeks together. Jarecki's distillation of the Friedmans' story won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2003, and as it continues to receive significant critical attention, Capturing the Friedmans offers a chance to reassess ethical standards for documentary.

In the film, which runs 107 minutes, Jarecki assembles a remarkable range of materials from inside and outside of the family, from both sides of the case, and either end of that seesaw. What distinguishes Capturing the Friedmans from most "torn from the headlines" stories is Jarecki's use of archival materials, specifically the family's own documents of themselves: copious home movies recorded by Arnold Friedman on 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8; the video diary that David Friedman began when his father was first arrested on charges of trafficking in child pornography; and Jesse Friedman's audiotape recordings of the increasingly frequent and bitter family fighting as he and Arnold proceeded to trial. These are intercut with recent interviews, news footage from the time of the arrests, and other materials bearing on the scandal. The family materials also have a starring role in the official Web site for the movie,¹ and Jarecki has indicated that additional images and recordings will feature prominently in a multihour DVD release.

I met Andrew Jarecki in June 2003 at one of the first Los Angeles screenings of his film. He attended early showings in Los Angeles, New York, and Long Island to conduct question-and-answer sessions with audiences; on the East Coast, he was often joined by David, Jesse, and others who appear in the movie. Jarecki and I also spoke later that month by phone about his use of the family footage and other archival materials in Capturing the Friedmans.

SB: You didn't start out to make this particular movie, or even a movie about these events and this family. At what point did you start piecing together the supporting materials for David Friedman's, and the Friedman family's, story?

AJ: I think this is a particularly interesting angle, given the use of these materials in the film. It wasn't until I'd been working on the clown movie for six months and discovered David Friedman had a secret [that I looked for more]. And the first thing I found then was a Newsday cover story from 1988: "The Secret Life of Arnold Friedman." It had no balance. It was very aggressive....They kept using words like "grim" to describe their home, the site of these horrible crimes. Now, David had shown me some 8mm films of their family [during happier times], and there was such a difference between that and the Newsday story.

Jarecki eventually decided to abandon the clown film and follow the Friedman story as far as it would go. He had seen home movies, most shot by Arnold, featuring holiday gatherings, family outings, and lots of...