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Idle's hilarious repetition apes the cult of in situ that is at the center of any documentary. And not only that, it has echoes of the lingo radio and television reporters use to describe tape from live events, called "actualities." A word, by the way, those in the business have shortened to "acts," as in "of the Apostles." Actualities are the gospel of truth. And in the 20th century, every time someone comes out with a new gospel it only takes the smart alecks of the world about five minutes to start parodying it, which is to say ripping it down.

Now that "Dateline NBC" is on TV eight-and-a-half days a week, as the Rutles might say, and Ken Burns is a household name and A&E's "Biography" was last year's new crack, the documentary form has finally taken off -- and the mockumentary is nipping at its heels. Two fake documentary films have opened in July, "The Blair Witch Project" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous," the former as intriguing as the latter is insidious. The two films follow different strains of the mockumentary form. "Drop Dead Gorgeous," which ridicules a local Minnesota beauty pageant, is the illegitimate child of "This Is Spinal Tap" -- a weak link in the people-are-stupid tradition. In that it portrays a group of film students making a documentary about a local witch legend, "The Blair Witch Project" is not unlike those "the making of" movie documentaries with which subscribers to HBO and Showtime are all too familiar. It's more about the filmmakers than the film. And since the making of their film gets them lost in the woods and stalked by a mysterious something, it requires them to endure hunger, apathy, exhaustion, despair and, most of all, fear.

Sarah Vowell Sarah Vowell's column appears on the Arts & Entertainment site every other Wednesday. + Biography + Archives

"Blair Witch" reminded me more than anything of Eleanor Coppola's brilliant documentary, "Hearts of Darkness," which chronicles the making of her husband Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." In "The Blair Witch Project," Heather, the director of the student film, would be Francis Ford Coppola Jr. Her two cohorts are sick of their trek through the woods, sick of being lost and scared and tired, sick especially of making a film. They want to go home, just as Eleanor Coppola's documentary makes clear that everyone involved with "Apocalypse Now" wanted to evacuate that filmic Vietnam. Everyone but director Francis Coppola. While Heather's collaborators Josh and Mike care more about their lives than about Heather's film, Heather herself cannot stop filming, even in the darkest, scariest moments -- especially in the darkest, scariest moments. Her cohorts point out that she's literally hiding behind her camera, that the freaky shit they're all going through feels less freaky if she can put the camera between herself and whoever or whatever is terrorizing her.

Heather's addiction to her camera lays bare the nonfictioner's secret. Namely, that journalists, historians, filmmakers and producers involved with writing, editing, recording or presenting true stories are attracted to the power and control that is the byproduct of shaping something as out-of-control as life. Creators of fiction are pegged with God complexes because they create new worlds. But there's something so clean and pure about looking down from the sky and commanding, "Let there be light." Nonfiction is down and dirty, of this world. Nonfiction requires the kind of egomaniac who will stand in the mud for the sole purpose of describing its squishyness.

Next page | Art requires ego -- just ask Mick Jagger