Feb 2, 2010
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Karen Schmeer, the editor of Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, died last week in a tragic hit-and-run accident in New York. Upon her passing, most obituaries noted her work with the film’s director, Errol Morris, but what they didn’t say is that Morris once considered this film uneditable. Then Schmeer came along and transformed it into one of the most amazing viewing experiences I’ve ever had. A documentary about four people with odd professions (a lion tamer, an MIT robotics professor, an expert on the naked mole rat, and an elderly topiarist), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is ostensibly a series of interviews and clips of the four men doing their jobs and other related videos. But Morris and Schmeer layer and crosscut the interviews and clips in such a way that the men become inextricably linked even as there seem to be no overt connections between them — everything is suggested by the editing. This is a film about pretty much everything, but the most noticeable themes involve the human desire to create life, our need to box in that which we did not create, and the ways in which life — both the natural world and our own — expands beyond anything we can predict. It’s one of the best-edited films of all time and a clear reminder of the talent we lost last week. – Eric Freeman