Often, you can get so bogged down trying to perfect things. “There’s not an ounce of preciousness in it, you know?” Blanchett told me between takes. Everybody does what they want, and we, the viewers, get to see what oddball, magical art that kind of creative freedom can manifest-such as the sight of Blanchett, mousy and muted, furiously yanking a brush through an elderly woman’s hair. The other is that, thanks to the power and prestige of its creative team (which includes Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, John Mulaney, Buono, and the director Rhys Thomas), it is probably TV’s last truly unbothered show. There are two remarkable things about Documentary Now! One is that it works at all-that a series whose objective blends comedic parody and authentic tribute doesn’t get lost in esotericism. Read: How Documentary Now! spoofs male genius ![]() “I feel like it’s a show that we make for ourselves to amuse each other.” “I’m really glad that everybody else enjoys it,” Alex Buono, one of the show's directors, told me. The series amounts to a long-running in-joke among friends: It’s an earnestly loving tribute to film history and a regular reunion for people whose schedules are filled with obligations such as embarking on global comedy tours, hosting late-night talk shows, and working on Marvel TV spin-offs. She was there because she’s one of the people who has bought into the vision of Documentary Now!, the recondite passion project dreamed up by a squad of Saturday Night Live veterans almost 10 years ago. The double Oscar winner-heavily tipped to win a third Academy Award next spring for her ferocious performance as a conductor in Tár-was taking the day’s work seriously, or as seriously as you can take an absurdist homage to a 1994 BBC documentary about hairdressers called Three Salons at the Seaside. “You certainly look totally unrecognizable,” her co-star, the actor Harriet Walter, told her. Less soigné among them was the movie star Cate Blanchett, who wore prosthetic buckteeth, a permed orange wig, chunky plastic spectacles, and a pink nylon apron. ![]() ![]() The house, whose aesthetic fell somewhere between canary-yellow cheer and acid comedown, was in fact filled with grandmotherly women, immaculately groomed, swaddled in beige knits, drinking tea and waiting for their close-ups. On an atypically sunny morning in April, an octogenarian actor rested her eyes on a black leather couch in an Airbnb in Blackpool, a seaside town on England’s northwestern coast known for its risqué postcards and dilapidated Victorian grandeur.
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