Buzz (2019)
(On Cable TV, October 2019) I watched HBO’s Buzz because it presented itself as being about Buzz Bissinger, author of the really good book Friday Night Lights and I wanted to check what he was up to. Well, it turns out that I had missed quite a bit in the past few years. As the film shows, long-form journalist Bissinger spent much of 2015–2017 with Caitlyn Jenner, accompanying her through a much-publicized gender transition, writing the Vanity Fair cover story that marked her coming out and the book that followed. But that’s only half of it—as we gradually piece together, Bissinger’s time with Jenner led him to feel freer to reveal more of his own true nature. Cross-dressing and enthusiasm for BDSM are big parts of it, but the freedom comes with a price as his gender-bending photoshoot raises questions from his very understanding wife, a strain that is further tested when he admits having had a session with a professional dominatrix. Much of the last fifteen minutes of the film are about whether the marriage will survive (it’s touch and go and while the film remains noncommittal about the issue, recent beauty product articles from Bissinger suggest that they’re still together). There’s a heartfelt message here about staying true to oneself, but tempered with how that balances with the demands made by others in our lives. I’m not entirely happy with the documentary itself, but it has far more to do about the way it’s executed (no voiceovers, very few title cards, mostly captured footage during the Jenner/Bissinger collaboration period and a few interviews), leaving a lot to piece together in between fragments of evidence, and missing many opportunities to dig into related themes. The result is cinematographic, though, and the subtlety does speak volumes at times. The other thing that leaves me less than comfortable isn’t as much Bissinger’s gender-fluid leather-heavy wardrobe (surprisingly expensive, as we learn—he does look cool in it) or BDSM preferences, but the exhibitionism on display in the film, which feels far more like a bit TMI videoblog than an actual documentary presenting its subject dispassionately. There’s enough evidence here to understand that this isn’t Bissinger’s first foray into transforming personal events into journalism (hence the detour in discussing his book Father’s Day) but the result does feel like a self-promotional piece more than an attempt at understanding what’s going on. What I really, really liked about Buzz, though, is indissociable from that naked display of personal issues—what readers may portray in their minds from reading a book (such as Friday Night Lights) is a very incomplete portrait, and if Buzz does something for casual Bissinger fans such as myself, it’s to add a few layers of dimensions to him. You do what you do, Buzz—and keep writing.