When comparing Medium Cool to Symbiotaxiplasm, it is hard to deny how much more significant Medium Cool was if you compare the two on the level of success of making a hybrid film. Symbiotaxiplasm is seen more as a hoax with the crew members as well as the actor and actress playing up to the cameras there documenting them while they made the film. Everything that is said and done in the film is not captured in a reality aspect. That meaning that the reality that is supposedly seen in the film is the behind the scenes look into the film crew. Everyone's actions are easily dictated through them knowing that they are there making are documentary about this behind the scene look into the film. Everything is then exaggerated from them on for the purpose of capturing footage that is seen as entertaining as opposed to natural. The scenes where the crew is critisizing the director are especially unnatural, because even though they maybe unscripted, they are still improvised. It is seen as more of a documentary as opposed to being a hybrid film.
Medium Cool, on the other hand, succeeds in its combination of fact and fiction by taking a reality they have no control over and intergrating a plot and characters around it. The director of Medium Cool was not even sure if there would be any riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, but stuck to his prediction that there would be and it payed off in the end. The script was a gamble because if anything the director was hoping to happen did not happen, then there could have been devastating effects. Though the film had flopped at the box office, it still had gotten a mainstream theatre release. Whereas Symbiotaxiplasm was expected to receive a theatre release, but instead made its way straight to video. It goes to show the significance a plot can have on a film and how it is received by the public.
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I'm interested in your decision to compare the two. I find them to be very different kinds of films, even if they are both in a sense "hybrids".
I think the major statements being made are similar, but also very different and are being approached from very different angles. While Symbio attempts a break down of the concept of an individual and the persona as well as the political issues of the times, Medium Cool's primary focus is mostly just the politics of America at the time, in a general social sense.
I believe you are referring to the movie titled "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm."
Symbiotaxiplasm 'is a term conceived by the social science philosopher Arthur Bentley, a contemporary of John Dewey, that describes an action of interconnectedness. By breaking down the word we get something like this: a transparent substance that facilitates interdependent relationships by way of connecting various organisms.' -wikipedia.
So I do not think Mr. Greaves had intended to create a "reality" film, considering there was no such concept during the time the original footage was shot. I feel he was exploring, using a feature film as his medium, the ideas set forth by Mr. Bently.
Medium Cool is more of a "reality" or "documentary", as you have suggested, but from a professional perspective. It focuses on the ethics of the reporters, journalists, and film makers without bringing into question the relationship or process of influence. It simply asks: What level of reality is responsible journalistic reality? I think the people involved with the making of "Medium Cool" were concerned with what message gets broadcast, and not so much on how we come to those interpretations through the people that surround our everyday existence.
Both, I would argue, are great films.
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