MoviesMoviesWe’ve recognized the great actors who brought our favorite movie characters to life, but what about the people who simply lived their truth on-screen?
The Ringer’s ranking of the 101 best movie performances of the 21st century is a celebration of actors playing someone else, imagined or real. But what about all the people out there just being themselves? In this space, we’ll dole out awards to some of the more memorable individual performances to be found in documentaries released in the last 25 years. From extreme athletes to misled spouses, from musicians to geopolitical fugitives, here are some people who excelled, in one way or another, at telling the truth … or at speaking their truth, anyway.
The Bucket List Award, for Lasting Impact on the Way We Talk Now
The 2010 documentary and/or “reality thriller” Catfish, about being duped online, spawned a TV show that has lasted 13 years, made a minor celeb out of its protagonist (Nev Schulman, the filmmaker’s brother), and featured the unforgettable chaos agent Angela—the mousey, wily liar behind the keyboard and at the center of it all. But it was Angela’s husband, that sweet summer child Vince, who unwittingly tied the whole project together. Sitting on a porch, spinning a proverbial yarn about mushy cod and bottom-feeding solutions, Vince gave Catfish its soul and its title—and handed our culture a whole new verb.
The Best Movie Performances of the Century
The Best Movie Performances of the Century
The “Eyes Up Here, Pal,” Award, for Best Interrotron Interviewee
The documentary maestro Errol Morris first created what his wife named “the Interrotron”—a sort of proto-FaceTime teleprompter screen that enables his subjects to speak to Morris while making eye contact directly into the camera at the same time—in the 1990s, but it was right around the turn of the 21st century that he really started using the thing in earnest. For one gig, a short film commissioned for the 2002 Oscars that involved interviewing famous people about their movie memories, guys ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Iggy Pop to Eddie Murphy (to a pre-Apprentice Donald Trump, natch) got Interrotron’d.
But it was in Morris’s 2003 film The Fog of War that the Interrotron was used to its best, most chilling effect. It’s one thing to see a subject like former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara talk about his life and times to someone just out of frame. It’s another to feel like he’s cornering you at a party directly, telling tales of firebombing cities and parsing drunk cables from Moscow, bringing a whole new meaning to the male gaze.
The Boas ’n’ Beans ’n’ Barley Grow Award, for Most Fabulous Farmer on Film
Give it up for Farmer John Peterson, the free-spirited man of the land portrayed in 2005’s The Real Dirt on Farmer John, who eats dirt and harvests community in equal measure.
Runner-up: While there are no feather boas involved in Food, Inc., one farmer interviewee named Joel Salatin apparently ruffled industry feathers enough that he drew personalized public rebuke from the National Chicken Council. Cluck ’em!
The Divorce Story Award, for Special Achievement in Marital Cringe
“It’s like living a nightmare,” says Huma Abedin in Weiner, the 2016 film that chronicled her now-ex husband Anthony Weiner’s failed attempt to run for New York City mayor in the wake (and midst) of sext-scandal disgrace. I’ll say! In Weiner, we see Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime right-hand woman, endure many of the same humiliations her boss once did—with the added indignity of film crews set up in her kitchen all the while. (And the other added indignity of Weiner’s nomme de sext: “Carlos Danger.”) (And the other, other added indignity of this film coming out during the thick of the Clinton-Trump presidential race.)
Once chic, now seething, Abedin is a study in almost unbearable restraint. She folds her arms and purses her lips and gets berated and bickers right back. Her and Weiner’s dynamic is excruciating in its “power brokers: they’re just like us!” mundanity and fascinating in the nature of its stakes. Anyway, all these years later, it’s nice to know she’s moved on to a less controversial name in politics.
The Most Exhausting Alter-Ego Award, for Being the Most Exhausting Alter-Ego
So is the guy called Mr. Brainwash a) the French artíste Thierry Guetta, b) the surreptitiously/suspiciously omnipresent bro Banksy, c) a hoax, or d) all of the above? Watching Exit From the Gift Shop probably won’t get you any closer to an answer. Which I guess means that e) Mr. Brainwash is Art, man.
Runner-up: The eccentric arcade gamer “Mr. Awesome” makes a splash in 2007’s The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters AND 2007’s Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, which is basically like if Armageddon’s Steve Buscemi had stolen scenes in Deep Impact, too.
The Archivist’s Dream Award, for Excellence in Self-Documentation
Grizzly Man is unmistakably a Werner Herzog vehicle, but it’s the film’s subject, doomed ursine enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, who shot a great deal of the most gripping footage. Treadwell captured his up-close and personal—and ultimately fatal—encounters with grizzlies in Alaska in bombastic and telling detail. (If you want a little reminder of the old, good internet, check out this old forum discussion of what kind of cameras Treadwell used.)
Runner-up: Throughout his life, the extreme athlete Shane McConkey was always looking for cool new ways to capture his rad new (and, sometimes, nude) tricks. The documentary McConkey is as much a tribute to and a showcase of evolving consumer tech as it is to McConkey’s raw talent.
The Mike Hammersmith Memorial Achievement Award, for Most Intense Parent
Named after the aggro father of a wannabe youth football phenom named Spike in the classic film Little Giants, this award goes to a severe stage parent with ESPN on his mind IRL. That would be Rajesh Kadakia, father of National Spelling Bee hopeful Neil in the 2002 ensemble doc Spellbound, who coaches up his son with the intensity and itinerary of a drill sergeant.
The Best Musical Performance Award, Summer of Soul-Specific
I’ve yet to have a gathering that wasn’t immediately improved by throwing on Questlove’s groovy, righteous Summer of Soul in the background. And while it’s nearly impossible to choose a favorite performer in a film that also features Mahalia Jackson and Sly and the Family Stone, I think I have to go with Little Stevie Wonder here:
The “wow!” factor of seeing him as a teenager in sunglasses, banging away at his drumset, is really the ideal hook with which to open this film.
Runners-up: The interview with 5th Dimension’s Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. in which they tear up at footage of their younger selves is making me tear up right now.
The Best Musical Performance Award, Period
OK, you want the real tears? The full-body chills? Here, from the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, is the late, great singer as an unknown teenager, warbling “Happy Birthday” to her newly 14-year-old best mate. Nothing more to say.
The Stretch Scheme Award, for the Longest Run
The late multi-hyphenate athlete-actor-criminal O.J. Simpson wasn’t interviewed directly for O.J. Simpson: Made in America. Even still, his presence in the project looms so large that the film spends five installments and a combined seven hours and 47 minutes circling his life and times. After it became the longest documentary to win an Oscar (thanks to a few theatrical screenings of the full picture, with two intermissions), the Academy decided to change the rules going forward. Now, if the length doesn’t fit, you can’t submit: Multi-part or limited series are no longer eligible for the industry’s biggest prize.
(Related: I guess this is as good a place as any to list some folks who didn’t or couldn’t quite make the cut for this exercise but deserve acclaim anyway: Carole Baskin in Tiger King, for her wardrobe alone; John “Cougar” Mellencamp in the Billy Joel doc And So It Goes, for the smoke plume punctuating his interview; and Jimmy Tatro’s Dylan Maxwell in Season 1 of American Vandal, who may be a fictional character in a satirical work but whose alleged dick artistry will always be real to me, dammit.)
The … Grandma?! Award, for Most Unexpected Overshare
Ah, why that would be the scene in Martha where Martha Stewart talked about smooching a stranger at a cathedral in Florence while on her honeymoon and calling it “neither naughty nor unfaithful!” Whatever you say, number one stunner! And speaking of unexpected overshares …
The It’s Not You, It’s Meme Award, for Most Viral Interviewee
Just—an instant classic. We stan a networking king.
Runners-up: Both Michael Jordan (“And it became personal with me”) and Dennis Rodman (describing the fundamentals of rebounding) have a decent case for this prize—but alas, no mouthwash, no hardware. (And, thanks to O.J., no Oscars eligibility for The Last Dance, robbing us all of the potential for Jordan-in-a-Kangol red carpet interviews.)
The Bzzzzzt! Award, for Most Mischievous Disembodied Hand
I’m not entirely sure if 2002’s Jackass: The Movie and its various sequels are documentaries, but I’m also not entirely sure that they aren’t! While there are many great performances in the film—a personal favorite comes from the unsuspecting doctor who presides over Ryan Dunn’s ass X-ray—the recurring roving hand sneaking up on people with a set of hair clippers is a menace and a delight in a sort of “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog goes rogue” way.
The “Get Off the Shed!” Award, for the Most Inspiring and Courageous Daredevil That You Just REALLY WISH Would Freakin’ CLIMB DOWN FROM THERE ALREADY Before He Falls and BREAKS HIS DAMN NECK in Front of Everyone!!!
The 2008 film Man on Wire, which is about Philippe Petit’s literal high-wire act between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, features interviews with the man himself that were conducted 30-plus years after his feat. Sure didn’t prevent me from freaking out the whole time that dude was totally gonna eat it!
Runner-up: OMG, Free Solo’s Alex Honnold, could you PLEASE JUST NOT???
The Amazing Race Championship, for Most Harrowing International Escape
This was a close and controversial photo finish, but the gold medal here, so to speak, goes to Grigory Rodchenkov in Icarus. Bryan Fogel’s film was originally intended to be a gonzo “absurdist” look at how things would go if a total amateur cyclist got into some bleeding-edge performance-enhancing designer drugs, and it initially features Rodchenkov in a sort of mad-scientist expert advisor capacity. (His bona fides: He was the head of Russia’s anti-doping unit, responsible for overseeing athlete drug tests during competitions that included the Olympics.) But halfway through Icarus, Rodchenkov upends and uplevels the whole film with a whistleblowing confession implicating the Russian government in some high-stakes, ah, urine laundering. Rodchenkov was already quite a character, but as he flees to the U.S. in search of asylum and witness protection from the Russian state, Icarus cameras rolling all the while, he becomes a legit Person of Interest, too.
The silver medal is awarded to a guy whose big journey went the opposite direction. The film Citizenfour is named after the code name that Edward Snowden used to reach out to journalists with evidence that the U.S. illegally spied on citizens. And it features Snowden at a pretty bananas time in his life: hiding out in hotel rooms in the earliest minutes of what’s about to become a permanent layover in Russia during his planned escape from Hong Kong to Ecuador. Whatever your thoughts on the fellow a decade-plus later, in Citizenfour he’s at his most idealistic, his most paranoid, and his most cinematic.
Finally, Q: Into the Storm was a multi-part series, but whatever, I’m not the Academy. I hereby award the bronze medal in this mini-competition to Fredrick Brennan’s successful 11th-hour attempt to get the hell out of the Philippines and back to the States before his former 8chan business partner Jim Watkins could convince authorities in Manila to apprehend Brennan for “cyberlibel” after calling Watkins “senile.” Mods!!!
The Glimmer of Panic Award, for Briefest Flash of Sudden Self-Recognition
Very few of the people whose names come up in Inside Job, the 2010 documentary about the late-aughts global financial crisis, wind up looking good. But while most of them declined to be interviewed for the movie, a guy named Glenn Hubbard, then the dean of Columbia Business School, probably wishes he did. As his interview turns combative, Hubbard snarls: “Give it your best shot!” before it seems to dawn on him that he just provided quite the shot, indeed.
The Somehow Not Spinal Tap Award, for the Most Earnest Aging Headbanger
“Lips” in Anvil!? “Lips” in Anvil!. You’re welcome.
Katie Baker
Katie Baker is a senior features writer at The Ringer who has reported live from NFL training camps, a federal fraud trial, and Mike Francesa’s basement. Her children remain unimpressed.