 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 439: 04.06.22 This is a joint review for Christine (2016) & Kate Plays Christine (2016). Does a movie work when you know the ending? What if that ending was: newscaster blows her brains out on a live telecast? That this actually happened (A), and that TWO films — a doc and a narrative feature — were made about it (and released at the same time) over thirty years later (B), combine to form so many questions. The most prominent one, in my eyes, being how in the hell is this story not embedded in the social fabric? As the documentary entry of this pair indicates, even natives of Christine Chubbuck's adopted town of Sarasota, Florida, where she worked as a special interests feature reporter for local TV, have long forgotten about the incident. Christine is thought to be the first human being to ever do this. She is the Neil Armstrong of killing yourself on live television. |
I don't have all the answers. Maybe — as put so bluntly by a current member of the on-air Sarasota local news — there's not a whole to it...
Well, my reaction to that flippant response is, at my core: "fuck you." That's not a guy who seems like he has whole lot of experience or empathy with depression. Suicide is sad and tragic and mysterious. But committing suicide in this manner is something else entirely. You can check out "Category:Filmed suicides" on your own time, but just know: most of those are not really of this ilk; the fact that the act was captured on camera seems secondary (a defendant takes a cyanide pill at court after hearing a guilty verdict, news captures an individual leaping to their death from a high structure, etc). There are a very few examples of a similar nature. The cases of R. Budd Dwyer and Daniel V. Jones, and more recently Ronnie McNutt are perhaps the other most notorious instances, but they don't really hit the same nerve as this, do they? The McNutt case is fascinating, because some sick pessimistic part of me wonders me how we haven't entered into a horrifying era where live-streamed suicides have become a trend. But that's probably the most 'spiritually' similar instance in many ways.
Christine wanted to be seen. Even though she literally worked as on-air TV talent, she felt painfully and endlessly UNSEEN. Both films make it a point of emphasis that she insisted on tapes rolling to capture that particular and ultimately fateful live newscast.
The history of what happened to the tape is briefly explored in Kate Plays Christine, the documentary, and it is fascinating and muddled in its own right, as it has never been leaked, though it's rumored to still exist. However, what is believed to be the authentic audio extracted from said tape HAS surfaced online. Just last year, in fact. Content Warning: you can listen to it here if you are so inclined. I can only go by what the consensus says, and accept that it's real. And it is a haunting document. There's other surviving audio/video of Christine at work, so Rebecca Hall, who plays her in the narrative biopic Christine, had something to work with. But, still, it's chilling to hear how closely she sounds like the real person...
Maybe this is how the world works. Weird and tragic things happen. Then they are mostly forgotten. And occasionally they get dueling cinematic representations competing at Sundance in the same year. And then, perhaps just as quickly, they're forgotten again. I think this is why the lack of video evidence is so interesting. I feel like this would be a commonplace story and the name Christine Chubbuck would be a household one if the recording had become public record. This fascinating concept of THE RECORDING being the unbreakable thread within our collective consciousness. I am reminded of the great 2019 doc Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project in this regard. The power which that VHS tape (or maybe flash drive) wields is unimaginable. If it is indeed locked away in a safe somewhere, it feels like the owner of said safe is playing God. They no doubt feel like withholding it from the public is some moral obligation, but I struggle to see how it's their burden to hold. It was Christine's wish — her final wish — to have that public moment saved and copied. And so in this way the withholding is every bit of an extension of her sad story. I don't have any personal desire to see this video, but it seems obvious that her desire was that people did, or could if they wanted.
There's some excellent filmmaking on display here, especially in the dramatized version featuring very strong performances by Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and others, but the most striking element in both was just how plain and unremarkable the life of Christine Chubbuck actually was. If she did not choose to end her life in this manner, essentially no one would remember her name. So in this way, her final act wasn't just the ending. It was also the beginning and the middle. Some of us will keep beating the drum in the manner of folklore, but the vast VAST majority will go on forgetting, or never knowing in the first place. But ALL OF US — regardless — will keep on staring into a screen (or into a camera) looking for something to remember, searching for some meaning, wanting to be seen.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 438 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 439B ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 438 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 439B ⫸
Christine is a 2016 British-American biographical drama film directed by Antonio Campos and written by Craig Shilowich. It stars actress Rebecca Hall as news reporter Christine Chubbuck, who struggles with depression, along with professional and personal frustrations as she tries to advance her career. It was released on January 23, 2016.
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