Beaver Trilogy Part IV

This is mostly a feel-good attempt at illustrating Richard Griffith's life more than what The Beaver Trilogy does, to answer some of the whatever-happened-to questions that viewers might have. Does it succeed? Yes and no.

Well-made, without senitmentality, and mostly manipulation-free, the documentary examines Trent Harris's role in how a random encounter blew up into something quite unexpected. Hader's narration is perfect, and the film is finely edited, moving along at a nice clip.

Where the film doesn't succeed is giving us more of Griffiths' life. Indeed, he is no longer alive, and so we get reminiscences from his relatives, mostly about how the film affected Griffiths and seemingly turned him into a recluse. Or at least that's what I gather. You get nothing about his life after his inward turn: where he worked, if he dated, and so on. Instead, the film shifts to Harris, initially depicting him as an exploiter (of Griffiths) and then somewhat forgiving him for it, as the film builds to a rounded conclusion (which is the instance of manipulation that I mention, above). Griffiths, though present, just disappears.

If TBT was about Griffiths, Penn, and Crispin, then TBTIV is about Harris. Don't go into this thinking that you'll get more Griffiths.

Perhaps the best part of the film is when Griffiths nephew explains what he thinks TBT was all about: an exploration of the idea that we all want to be famous; but that also he mourns that he never got to know his uncle, that he "didn't try to understand or figure out who he was. I miss this big exciting personality." And so in as much as the film doesn't really try to understand Griffiths, we too are left to miss him.

Perhaps a part 5 can return us to Griffiths and the 30 years he lived post-TBT.

Almost 12 years ago, I had the privilege of taking Trent Harris' film class at the University of Utah, and we were assigned to observe the original "Beaver Trilogy" for an assignment. For those who don't know, this collection of three short films begins with the actual 1979 encounter with Dick Griffiths (aka Goovin' Gary) outside the KUTV studios. Griffiths eventually invites Mr. Harris to film a talent show in Beaver, Utah where he performs as "Olivia Newton Dawn." The following two elements are fictionalized recreations Mr. Harris developed starring Sean Penn and Crispin Glover respectively. Director Brad Besser sets two paths into motion in this "Where Are They Now?" endeavor as he seeks to find the whereabouts of Mr. Griffiths nearly 36 years later and showcases Mr. Harris' wild film career. While the latter takes viewers from the L.A. riots to Southeast Asia with Mr. Harris' undertakings, it's the candid interviews and uproarious tales from friends and family in central Utah that provide the most entertainment. Rather than having the story lines veer away from each other, it would have been more appealing to keep the direct line to the source material intact with additional stories from the Griffiths and their friends. -Jimmy Martin

When I first saw the original Beaver Trilogy someone described it to me as being "something like Grey Gardens". I was actually appalled after I watched it. This has nothing to do with carefully rounded portray that Maysels brothers created. The Beaver Triology is just based on some random footage of an awkward, seemingly repressed and maybe disturbed young man, exploiting his obvious naivety to present him as a freakish fool. Trent Harris looks at his subject with a voyeuristic lense, he never tries to get a fuller, more nuanced picture of Groovin' Gary. This new documentary claims to show us the bigger picture by giving us insights into both Harris' and Dick Griffiths' (aka Groovin' Gary) side of the story. And while it does give us some of that it never really asks the right questions. At about 15min into the film, Dianne Orr, a producer for the TV station that Harris worked for, is the one of the few voices of reason here: "When Trent showed me the footage from that talent show, I was really worried. I thought it went too far and exposed too much". Sadly this sentiment is never fully explored in this feature. It does not ask Harris straightforward if he feels reponsible for the suicide attempt of Griffiths. It never asks what it would mean for the subject to be portrayed as a somewhat queer personality in a conservative Utah town. Griffiths, who has passed away since, is represented by his sisters and friends, who can only give us a misty-eyed second hand picture of him, but can't really answer the question how his state of mind was at the time. Harris on the other hand is given plenty of opportunity to glorify himself, promoting his new movie and playing down the moral obligation that a filmmaker has to an unwitting subject.