Catfish Filmmakers Get The Third Degree
LatestCatfish—a documentary, spun as a mystery/thriller, about a cross-country romantic relationship built on Facebook—generated lots of buzz, but also criticism over its honesty, exploitative nature, and general, well, fishiness. 20/20 investigated, interviewing the stars and filmmakers. (Spoilers ahead.)
Catfish is the story of 24-year-old New York photographer Nev Schulman, who begins an online friendship with an 8-year-old Michigan artist named Abby after she painted one of his published photographs. He sends her more photos which she turns into more paintings. Over the next few months, Nev eventually befriends her entire family and some of her friends—her mother Angela, her brother Alex, her babysitter Joelle, etc.—on Facebook, including Abby’s attractive 19-year-old half-sister Megan, with whom he embarks on a long-distance romantic relationship. Nev’s brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost—both filmmakers—decide to document this love affair. But once they realize that something is amiss with this family, the men all travel out to Michigan to confront Megan. What they discover is that while Abby is really Angela’s daughter, she is not the painter—Angela is. Also, there is no Megan. She, along with the other cast of over 20 characters have been meticulously created by Angela, stealing photos and profiles of other Facebook members. In the film, Angela says that these personalities are all fragments of her own personality, utilized as a way to escape from her own disappointing and stressful life, most of which involves being caretaker to her severely disabled twin stepsons.
That part is all real. But what critics have questioned is the authenticity of Nev’s feelings for the fictional Megan, suggesting that he—along with Ariel and Henry—knew all along that the profile was fake, and that he was never really in love with Megan, but rather, led her on in order to make a better film. As Kyle Buchanan points out in an article for Movieline (and again on 20/20), the “shit-eating grins” on the filmmakers’ faces when confronting Angela just didn’t seem right, especially when Nev should’ve been hurt or angry after discovering such a deception. For their part, the men are very defensive about their film, to the point of suspicion.