By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
'Unknown' Gets Watergate Treatment From Washington Post
Just when you thought that the non-starting amnesia documentary Unknown White Male and its condemned distributor Wellspring were getting to the front of the line on death row, the Washington Post’s David Segal creeped in Wednesday with a new round of suspicion about doc subject Doug Bruce (right) just in time for Unknown‘s D.C. opening.
At the time of its New York release lat month, Bruce’s tale of severe memory loss fueled no shortage of skeptics (including yours truly) who thought the story was too jejune and contradictory to believe. Segal revisits the debate to some degree; the standard movie-profile stuff is all here, with a few delicious bursts of animosity (“I was telling his story,” [director Rupert Murray] says at one point. “Not your story, not the story of a journalist. The story of a friend, and I don’t have to [freaking] prove anything to anyone.”) and a supporting role featuring Reeler pal Chris Doyle. But plow through to the end for a succession of scoops that makes GQ’s recent cross-examination of Bruce look like a date with Liz Smith:
In a coincidence that defies Lotto-size odds, Bruce knew a man in Paris who suffered a weeklong bout of severe amnesia and used the ordeal to rethink his life.
According to a former girlfriend, who remains close to Bruce and is convinced he is telling the truth, a friend had an on-field collision during a pickup soccer game, landing him in the hospital without any identification and no memory of his life. His family thought he was dead, until they scoured area hospitals and found him.
It’s not in the movie, but Bruce mentions this episode during the videotaped interviews shot a few days after the alleged onset of amnesia. In a copy obtained by The Washington Post, Bruce says the friend set aside his hard-charging business career and moved to either Bali or Thailand, where he learned to give massages. “And now he heals people,” Bruce whispers.
And then there is Bruce remembering his first rainfall–twice–and the undefined period of Bruce’s life during which he secured his independent wealth. Segal continues:
Why this is a mystery is itself a mystery, but it is a conspicuous obstacle to sifting through Bruce’s past, and it produced this head-scratcher of an answer from Murray. “Somebody told [Bruce] the name of the film, but he forgot it. When I asked him about it recently, he said he thought it started with an ‘L.’ Lllllllle something.”
Oh, sure–you mean LLLLLLLLiar?
