The Journey

In a newspaper column, I was running down a pretty fair list of recommended recent documentaries, when this title I’d never heard of was cited as the writer’s favorite, so it went straight to the top of my Netflix queue. Well, you know, I wound up liking it a lot, though I found myself wondering whether it was all a crock. Eric Saperston was just out of college when he came up with this scheme to go cross-country in a VW bus, along the way beating down doors to get interviews with successful older people, to ask their advice for younger people just starting out. He roped some friends into taking the journey with him and acting as crew. It might be taken as a huge vanity project, and yet there is an appealing nebbishy quality to our Eric’s efforts and travails. And even where the material is thin (the biggest “get” is Ann Richards, governor of Texas before she lost re-election to a certain unmentionable person), the various strands are layered together in a way that gives it substance as well as humor. (2001, dvd, n.) *7*