Even his delight in Dickens, whose novels were the 19th-century equivalent of documentaries lifting the lid on social scandals, is suggestive of a taste for the suffering end of human drama.
"Death by China" did show in theatres and received dismissive reviews, including one that called it "the documentary equivalent of a raving street-corner derelict".
In staging the Pope's flight, Mr. Fo's words and gestures coalesced into the theatrical equivalent of a documentary, except the montage of images was zany, with its juxtaposed fact and fantasy leading to a seamless flow of close-ups, long shots and dissolves.
It's the documentary equivalent of a late-night substance altered YouTube crawl through Russian propo clips where you say "wow, isn't this crazy" before passing out with a Doritos bag on your chest.
Weigel also points out that the film hangs more or less on interviews with Jerome Corsi, Alan Keyes, and Janet Porter -- a clear indication that this is the political documentary equivalent of Harry Potter slashfic.
But its truer equivalent is the recent documentary "Buck," about a horse whisperer, which zeroes in on one extraordinarily gifted individual who does something that the rest of us can only dream of or (the filmmakers hope) marvel at, slack-jawed.
Quinceañera, which examines Hispanic family culture through the eyes of teenagers living in Los Angeles, won the jury and audience prizes in the drama section, while God Grew Tired of Us took the equivalent awards in the documentary category at Utah's annual celebration of independent film-making.
"A wine reveals the person who makes it and the place it comes from when it's true," says Jonathan Nossiter, the director of "Mondovino," the documentary-film equivalent of "Fast Food Nation," which opens this week in New York.Nossiter argues for preservingthe soul of wine against the growing trend of massproduction.
In the documentary competition, the equivalent top prize went to Keith Maitland's Tower.
And to rally and educate the public, maybe the economic policy equivalent of the climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth"?
