{"id":48149,"date":"2025-11-22T01:35:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/48149\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T01:35:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:35:04","slug":"on-police-footage-and-the-perfect-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/48149\/","title":{"rendered":"On Police Footage and \u2018The Perfect Neighbor\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">\u2013 The thing that the movie tells you the minute you sit down to watch it is, like, This film is comprised of two years of police body camera footage. I think that the the movie-ness of this thing is what I found to be the most unsettling. This is a very deeply, profoundly watchable movie. I know how to watch this movie \u2014 \u2013 Yes, yes, yes, yes. \u2013 I have been trained by the movies to watch the film. \u2013 The film \u2014 the film sort of watches you watching it, right? And sort of can anticipate all these things. But why is it distressing, its watchability, to you? \u2013 Because it\u2019s in complete alignment with the police. \u2013 Yeah. Yeah. \u2013 The police \u2014 \u2013 Yeah. I mean, you know, because the question with found footage for me \u2014 my sticking point has always been who is the editor here? Who has brought these images to us? \u2013 You want to know who has assembled it. Who has touched it? Who has cut it? \u2013 There\u2019s an ethics that you have to deploy in the use of these materials. \u2013 Yes. And I think that the queasiness, the discomfort, that attends the watching of this film comes from I think the filmmaker\u2019s really deep conviction that they are doing something subversive with this. And I, and I actually don\u2019t know if I \u2014 I don\u2019t know, because I do think that one of the reasons the film has had this kind of purchase on the imagination and, and seemingly, at least where I\u2019m sitting, galvanized so many people is because what\u2019s actually subversive is not that they\u2019re reclaiming and retaking this footage and putting it to other ends. It\u2019s that it\u2019s humanizing the police. That\u2019s what feels subversive to a lot of these viewers, right? But they\u2019re actually these really nice guys. And I\u2019m watching the police come and, you know, walk up to these group of children and \u2014 oh my gosh, they\u2019re sympathizing with them. You know they seem to be on the side of the children and the side of the community. But it\u2019s, it\u2019s I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s, it\u2019s \u2014 I, the film does not seem to be entirely in control of what it seems to be unleashing. \u2013 No, no, no, no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2013 The thing that the movie tells you the minute you sit down to watch it is, like,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[158,2451,9,11,10,104,27202],"class_list":["post-48149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-police","tag-wesley-morris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}