I was struck the other day by how much I enjoy watching the various features and documentaries that tell the tale of how the film was made. In this era of DVD it has become much easier for film fanatics to see the inner workings of the movies we love.
But which one's the best eh? My choice is the still-unavailable-on-DVD Hearts of Darkness. They quite literally don't make films like that anymore.

Pity.

Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS is a feature about the making of Werner Herzog's FITZCARRALDO. It's pretty amazing. Herzog's rant about the jungle is one of a kind. To be honest, I would say that it's better than FITZCARRALDO except that I'm not sure I ever saw FITZCARRALDO.

The say what now?


Anyway, a few DVD docs that blow my mind:

"Under Pressure: Making THE ABYSS" - If you don't know how this flick went down, you need to.
"That Moment: MAGNOLIA Diary" - If for nothing else, for the sight of Fiona Apple as poor little 'Magnolia' dancing at the pleasure of P.T. Anderson as um, the entire critical community - who berates her mercilessly for her efforts. Really pretty wiggy.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS - The docs on the 'extended' sets (haven't seen the Costa Botes docs on the 'limited' releases, but they'd be hard-pressed to improve on the previous featurettes). Whatever you think of the films, they really were remarkable productions, and the docs give a vivid sense of how impactful the experience was for its participants.

The one Richard Rush did for THE STUNT MAN is terrific.

They got 'em at dem der Brick & Morter stores too! I seen one at Best Buy the other day!

Dunno if it qualifies as a "making of" since the film ultimately wasn't made, but LOST IN LA MANCHA is really great.

I really liked the "making of " doc on the SPIDERMAN 2 2-disc DVD, also, and more recently, DANGEROUS DAYS on the BLADE RUNNER final cut edition.

Vincent

Yeah, "Dangerous Days" is mind-boggling, not least of which for the cutaway 'clips' - which are almost exclusively composed of alternate takes and between-takes footage!

I liked and had on VHS recorded off TV the 16mm shot The Making of 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' (1984) (TV), stuff like Harrison Ford saying Good Morning to the crew on location and in the Elstree Studios deciding with Speilberg how to do shots on the Mine Car chase was great behind the scenes fun. Also recorded off UK ITV to VHS From 'Star Wars' to 'Jedi': The Making of a Saga (1985) had some fun stuff.
There was a good BBC docco from 1985 about SFX, HORIZON:HOW TO FILM THE IMPOSSIBLE that I have somewhere on VHS featuring more Lucas footage and ILM stuff (not the recent Lucas 'special') like holes in the matte painting for the Ewok dancers from Jedi, blue screen miniature alligators in milk puddle for Temple Of Doom and lots of manual drawing on rotoscope lightbox painting, loading optical printers - great for me to see back in the day.

I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember liking Chris Marker's A.K. a lot. It's included with the Criterion Ran set. I can't remember another documentary that shows just how tedious it can be to make a movie sometimes; the shots of cast and crew members just sitting around waiting for the weather to change really stuck with me.

The feature-length Making Of John Carpenter's THE THING (Terror Takes Shape?) is a long-standing favourite of mine; special mention should also be given to the behind-the-scenes docu on Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE (included on the 2-disc DVD from Artificial Eye, as well as the horrendously-compressed and awful-looking Kino disc in NTSC-land). The awful gaffe in the latter's shoot - wherein a house is set alight for a key sequence but the camera jams right at the start and the entire crew watches helplessly as it burns to the ground, necessitating the structure to be rebuilt from scratch (a la GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY's bridge sequence) to be torched all over again - is captured in its excruciating entirity.

The Making Of ALIEN on the recent 2-disc set is likewise excellent.

Man, I should do my research before I post on here.

Recently I was impressed by the volume of documentary content for Cronenberg's THE FLY...I don't think there was any scene which didn't get covered in it.

The BBC documentary THE MAKING OF 'HUSBANDS' is outstanding for all kinds of reasons: the frank look at the filmmaking process (no attempt to conceal John Cassavetes' occasional irritability), the revealing inisghts it offers into Cassavetes working methods, and the plentiful clips from scenes that ultimately never made it into the release version of HUSBANDS.

I got the TWIN PEAKS Special Super-Duper Deluxe All-Inclusive Collector's Edition Gold Box Megacollection for Christmas, and the feature-length doc on that is terrific, even without Lynch's participation. But I'm not sure I'd call it a denizen of the "best ever" category except for the very impressive fact that it's totally frank about the second season downward spiral. "Basically, I thought the second season sucked," opines Kimmy ("Lucy Moran") Robertson, and other cast and crew members are only somewhat more tactful.

I haven't looked at the second season since it aired, and the clips from the latter half of it reminded me of just how bad it got at one point, and I'm hesitating on my previous determination to rewatch the whole run again now that I have this set. One of the great disappointments in TV history.

Uh, but getting back on topic... great behind-the-scenes look. Oh, and the complete Bouzereau doc on JAWS, too, which I also got for Christmas.

It's been awhile since I viewed it, but Lynch's B&W 90 minute apparently off-the-cuff chat about the making of ERASERHEAD is good stuff. Love the huge old fashioned microphone.

I agree with Brian regarding "Burden of Dreams" . I recently saw this as part of a Herzog Kinski Repertory series at filmstreams in Omaha, and came away wondering who the bigger egomaniac was.

I've also heard that Cuadecuc, Vampir was quite a documentary, regarding Franco's "El Conde Dracula." I've never seen it and it is seemingly impossible to locate but would anyone care to comment on it?

PANIC ROOM, disc two.

Fear of God: The Making of the Exorcist. And I really enjoyed the JAWS one on the 25th anniversary dvd.