One of the year’s most acclaimed documentaries, Capturing the Friedmans tells the story of a seemingly typical Long Island family whose lives were shattered when two of its members were accused of shocking crimes. Among the film’s subjects are the inner-workings of a family, the machinations of the legal system, and the slippery nature of truth.

And to think it all began as a light-hearted documentary about clowns.



“After working on that film for a couple of months,” says director Andrew Jarecki, “it became clear that David Friedman — who happens to be the top birthday party clown in New York City — was going to become one of the main characters. After getting to know David, I discovered that he had this secret story, and then I refocused the film.”


Although Capturing the Friedmans (which opens today) is Jarecki’s first feature, movies have been good to him: He’s the co-founder and former CEO of Moviefone, the schedule-announcing telephone service that’s become a staple of urban moviegoing.


“I was trying to go to the movies in 1988, and I couldn’t get through to my local theater,” Jarecki said. “It was busy — like it always was — and by the time I got through, it was 8:30, and the machine told me the movie had started at 8:15. If I had gotten through the first time, it would not have screwed up my night.”



There’s a happy ending to the story: When Moviefone sold to AOL in 1999, the company was valued at $388 million.



Though he produced the short film Swimming, about a group of kids growing up together at a swimming pool in Harlem, Capturing the Friedmans is his first attempt at actual filmmaking.



As a director, Jarecki has not started safe. The story begins in 1987 with the Thanksgiving-night arrests of patriarch Arnold Friedman, an award-winning high school science teacher, and his youngest son, Jesse, for what eventually becomes an enormous number of acts of child molestation. After a convoluted investigation, both men are sent to prison.

But are they guilty?

“The way the film is made, the audience members are left to come to their own conclusions — which seems to be something that people are responding well to,” says Jarecki. “At the same time, I think it’s fair to say that whatever you believe about the Friedmans’ guilt or innocence, (the police investigation) was extremely flawed.”

Some members of the family were reluctant to revisit the events that undid their lives, and Seth, one of the three Friedman sons, refused to participate at all. Jesse, who was released from prison in December 2001 after serving 13 years, felt a special need to take part.



“When I visited Jesse (in prison), he said, ‘I don’t know if I can trust you or not, but it doesn’t matter because things can’t get any worse for me,’” says Jarecki.

David Friedman — who was afraid that the extra publicity might affect his clowning career — was moved to participate in the documentary by the desire to help his incarcerated brother. It was David who contributed the extensive family videotapes that are the film’s most remarkable element: 25 hours of footage, taken after the arrests, that chronicle a family falling apart.



David told Jarecki that he bought the camera to create a record of his father’s personality for future generations to see. When “things started going crazy in the house,” he filmed everything as a means of trying to understand exactly what was happening.

“It turned out to be a very good thing, because the videotape in the film is what lets the audience bear witness to their story,” Jarecki says. “… Can we criticize them for videotaping it when (the tape) turns out to be the only source of true information?”


Because of the use of the Friedmans’ unusually candid home movies, Capturing the Friedmans has been called voyeuristic, even exploitative. Is Jarecki invading the tattered family’s privacy all over again?


“Talk to the Friedmans,” the director says. “The thing that took away the Friedmans’ privacy was the police calling the television cameras the day (Arnold and Jesse) were arrested; it was the judge’s allowing television cameras into the courtoom when they were arraigned.”

Jarecki remains close with the Friedmans, and says that with the exception of Seth — who hasn’t seen the film — they like it very much. “They think that it’s fair. I think they feel that everyone got a chance to speak, and that it was time to take another look at this situation.”



For his part, Jarecki is pleased that the film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has found an audience despite competition from some of the season’s biggest blockbusters.



“I’m happy that it’s gotten more than a normal level of attention, and I think that a film like this needs that in order to have an impact,” says Jarecki. “It has to do much more work than a regular film because it has to overcome some hurdles. In general, people don’t see documentaries — although if you ask people at a cocktail party, they’ll say ‘I love documentaries! I wish they were playing in theaters!’”



Jarecki attributes the film’s success to its theatrical style, and to the Friedmans’ compelling story.

“I think film people like to go see stories, and this one is a page turner,” he says. “It doesn’t play like a dry documentary, it plays sort of like a mystery. It’s also an emotional story… These are real people with tremendously high stakes, so you sort of feel like you have to watch.”



Jarecki believes that his film’s success, along with the respectable audiences earned by other recent documentaries (including Spellbound and Winged Migration) is further evidence that nonfiction film is becoming more appealing.



“Right now, we seem to be in a period where well-told stories are winning out, even if they have the downside of being true,” says Jarecki. “You would imagine that being true would be considered a plus.”