There is an experience that you can’t go a day without if you live your life on the internet. In the internet’s magical algorithm, there is a way to make us see a picture and have a visceral reaction. The click-bait will read “You’ll never guess what Ben Vereen is up to!” with a picture of him in Roots. You will sit there, realizing that you haven’t thought about him since you rented those discs from Netflix a decade ago and eagerly click on only to realize that you have a Wikipedia summary, only dumbed down to make you feel foolish.
The internet is a death trap of pointless content, and it’s become increasingly difficult to know what’s true and false. The rise of “Fake News” as a meme speaks for itself. However, in 2010, the world was a more innocent place. Sure, James Cameron personally backed technophobic blockbusters in the 1990s, but he couldn’t have predicted a world where the very idea of talking to someone on the internet would have so many obstacles. We think that we’re talking to someone who is genuine, but are we? Anyone who has had to deal with the exhaustive nagging of a Twitterbot knows this very well. Our quest to have authentic exchanges online can sometimes be difficult, especially as it has reinvented cyber-bullying and made the very concept of love something you can “swipe right” on.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the documentary Catfish (2010), whose whole marketing campaign feels like a very successful form of clickbait. Filmmakers Nev and Ariel Schulman released the controversial film, considered by Morgan Spurlock as “the best fake documentary,” and helped to define a phenomenon that is so ingrained in the modern culture that we, unfortunately, need to remember them as a footnote of digital history. That, and their MTV spin-off series of the same name won’t let us forget how much catfishing is informative to our dating lives.
I want to fully admit that this marketing campaign was kind of brilliant when you’re 20 and in college, going to the cinemas every week to watch the latest hit. We talked about film so excessively that of course Catfish crossed our desk at some point. The major difference between this and just about everything else was that you sensed an urgency with Catfish. I remember my friend admitting that he wanted to see the film as soon as it opened in theaters because he knew that it was going to be spoiled. The world was going to talk about it and the impact would be lost.
Well, he wasn’t wrong. While I doubt that anyone can properly recall the specific plot of Catfish these days, they know the experience personally.
For most people, the story started at the place where all indie darlings come to proudly introduce themselves to the world. The film premiered at Sundance with a rather impressive mix of opinions. This may be because the film is sold on a twist, and not having any expectation makes it far more compelling than what would be promised by the marketing campaign. Sure you needed to sell it on surrealism, but anyone who loved it out of Sundance did because it wasn’t like anything that had been done before. A story about a man who becomes suspicious of his date’s Facebook account and leads to a personal investigation is one that draws in our curiosity as humans.
It’s also easy to see why this was considered to be potentially fake. We’re talking about a time where found footage films like The Last Exorcism (2010) pushed horror into realism with a contortionist playing a possessed girl, or Joaquin Phoenix quitting acting and having a mental breakdown with I’m Still Here (2010). The very fabric of society was starting to question if this was the real life or just some fantasy. So to have a story where the Schulmans track down someone online feels more like revealing your Google Doc script than something that happened organically, especially since it didn’t feel convincing to anyone but those immediately involved. If Ariel told you this story at a bar you’d be surprised, but you too would question his authenticity.
This lead to an infamous interview following the screening where Ariel had this to say when questioning its authenticity;
"Oh, so you're saying that my brother is the best actor in the world? Let's hear it for my brother! The next Marlon Brando, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you very much! Oh, and we're the best writers in Hollywood? Thank you everyone!"
Nev Schulman, to date, hasn’t proven himself to be an actor so Ariel may be onto something. Still, the buzz coming out of the festival was one that greatly benefitted the marketing. For two no-names, having a film with exciting pull quotes touting the film’s devious twists was enough to get the marketing rolling.
Of course, this whole story only matters to those who followed the news out of Sundance in 2010. Even then, it was already the perfect way to look at the gem in the crown of Catfish’s marketing. Without it, nobody would ever care that this documentary existed. Somebody else would come along and take credit for the current trend of fake online identities. Who knows, maybe we’d be calling it Phoenixing after I’m Still Here proved to be a genuine screw you to authenticity.
I personally believe that nothing feels more crucial to understanding how filmmaking works in the 2010s than the Catfish trailer. We’ve seen thousands of blockbusters since that have held viral campaigns, created new subsets of communities. They’re all great in their own way, but if you’re wanting to understand how to sell a film you look at Catfish. At the start of 2010, nobody cared about Schulman's’ problems. By the end of summer, they were their own cult that was about to launch an empire built on exploring the way that we relate to each other on the internet.
It was The Blair Witch Project (1999) of its day, existing as this vague curiosity that required you to go to a theater and find answers. Both shared this ambiguity that made some wonder what was true. It helped that it was on a shoestring budget, never able to get enough publicity to spoil any on-set conflicts. All it took was cameras, laptops, and gas money to go on a journey to get to the bottom of this.
To the average viewer, seeing Nev and Ariel becoming paranoid by this one Facebook account is both old-hat and something that ties into our human nature. Why is she Photoshopping herself into all of these different scenarios? The closer that you look, the weirder that things become. Details contradict each other and soon one has to wonder if they’re even talking to a human. Maybe it’s a serial killer on the other end, luring them into a trap. We don’t know because they know that you can’t just give away answers. You need to get them on the ride to see any profit.
Most of the trailer up to this point works as establishing the plot. However, it’s in the final half where those pull quotes return, where suddenly it performs its own catfish on the audience. It’s theatrical clickbait on par with “You’ll never guess what happens next!” as we find Nev driving up to his destination in the middle of the night. Things are ominous, and suddenly those quotes appear, ready to play their implicit tricks on us:
“The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won’t be able to shake for days.” (Chris Bumbray, JoBlo.com)
“A bizarre and completely unpredictable mystery.” (Indiewire)
“A shattering conclusion.” (New York Magazine)
“The best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed.” (Financial Times)
Those would work for any horror movie. I guarantee you that if you attached those to Paranormal Activity (2007) or The Conjuring (2013), you could capture the same emotional response. That’s how this game is played. The only difference is that you’d expect a great horror movie to have these elements down to Hitchcock comparisons. You almost want to see it just to prove them wrong because let’s face it, cinema is too subjective to ever be all of those things.
But in the world of documentary, there’s always this uncertainty. Realism is a different beast that forces us to question our own existence. If the last 40 minutes prove to be something disturbing, then there’s a good chance that these problems exist in our backyard. Catfish could’ve been about any shady type and we’d think that we’re likely to fall prey to them. Better yet, the fact that its authenticity was constantly in question only made the question of HOW real it was even more compelling.
This, my friends, is the result of good timing. While I don’t think its message has become outdated, I think that its release came at a time when the trend was still new. We were used to spammers, but who would dare confront the spam in person? In 2020, we live our lives on the internet and have formed better instincts as to how to navigate these impersonal mazes of getting into our souls. It was so new that it didn’t have a name yet. At most it was just another form of click-bait, luring in innocent bystanders who didn’t know better.
Catfish isn’t revolutionary in any way. In some ways, the marketing was its own form of catfishing the audience, though even that is a barker’s roles if there ever was one. Still, I can’t think of a single film that benefitted as much from directorial comparisons as this. Sure, comparing Under the Skin (2013) to Stanley Kubrick makes it seem more artful, but calling Catfish “Hitchcockian” is such a subversive take that you have to see it to believe. Even the fact that some called it fake forces you to observe through a lens of whether this man’s plight was all for comedy or tragedy.
Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t exactly know what the plot of Catfish is other than that it was about somebody lying about their identity. We all know the film more as a title, and one that informs so much of our lives now. Still, the central conceit has so little to do with cats, fishes, or catfishes that the ambiguity works in its favor.
The title comes near the end of the documentary where the subject’s husband talks about fish imports. People would buy cod, but the meat would be too logy because of their inactivity during transit. That is why they would put catfish into the tanks if just to keep the cod from slowing down. The wife was a catfish, keeping everyone else’s lives interesting.
What’s more impressive is that because of that trailer, you didn’t even need to see the film to get the reference. ABC’s 20/20 ran a special on the documentary that essentially gave away the entire story. If that wasn’t enough, Community had an episode that perfectly summarized how fragile Catfish’s appeal was when Troy says he’s about to watch it only to have Britta give away the entire plot. Troy becomes disheartened, realizing that it’s ruined for him.
When we think of amazing trailers, there is often a tease of spectacle or great jokes waiting on the horizon. As far as internet-based movies go, The Social Network (2010) made it into an art form later that year. Even then, I will always love the unexpectedness of the Catfish trailer, and how it briefly convinced us that it was going to be the biggest breakthrough since Polio. Its impact may have disappeared since, but that’s exactly what the phenomenon is. Once you know the answer as to what’s real and fake, is there any reason to keep going? Like that Ben Vereen clickbait, you’re just too smart to keep falling for that trick.
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