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The passion of R.J. Cutler

It started with an innocent enough question. All I wanted was a little compare-contrast from documentary maker R.J. Cutler about his remarkable new non-fiction series for Fox, "American High," which follows the lives of 14 high schoolers in Highland Park, Ill. (Hour two of the series, which premiered last week, airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Fox.)

I knew CBS News had recently finished a four-year project called "The Class of 2000." I figured Cutler had seen parts of it and that it might help explain "American High" by contrasting it to what CBS News had done.

"Isn't CBS News the organization that has essentially been neutered by the fact that a CBS News personality is hosting 'Big Brother'?" Cutler asked. "It must be killing Walter Cronkite. I grew up having nothing but reverence for American journalists. But what CBS has done to their news division, the way they've prostituted it to get people to watch this non-event of a show, is so shocking. I'm also a little startled that journalists have not been more up in arms over this. It's repulsive to me. It horrifies me."

Cutler didn't mean to get off on a rant, but it was revealing. Talking to him about what he and his crew went through to put "American High" together, it became clear the man is ambitious, sets high goals and is passionate about his work. And he's clearly unimpressed with network news outfits that seem to be sloughing off or worse — bringing shame to the honorable work of telling it like it is.

For the past eight months, Cutler and a crack team of documentary makers have been working nearly around the clock, seven days a week, driven by the demands of television production schedules and an ambitious vision of a new kind of non-fiction series.

As the genre goes, "American High" occupies a stratrum far, far above that of MTV's "Real World" and most of what you see on Discovery or The History Channel. It's old-fashioned verite storytelling, raised to a whole different level of quality by meticulous filmcraft and a desire to tell enough stories to fill more than six hours of network time. To do it, Cutler and company assembled a staggering amount of raw documentary footage, an amount that might even make Fred Wiseman — mentor and inspiration for Cutler and his colleagues — a little woozy.

Wiseman typically shoots 100 hours or so of footage and spends a year or more whittling that down to a feature film. Cutler assembled his breakthrough documentary "The War Room" in 1993 from just 40 hours of film shot behind the scenes with the Clinton campaign. For his follow-up, the 1996 film "A Perfect Candidate," Cutler massaged 150 hours from the Ollie North campaign trail down to a 105-minute film.

But to make "American High," Cutler's people produced an almost inconceivable 2,800 hours of raw video — 2,000 of it from his own crew and 800 more that came out of a twice-weekly video diary class conducted at Highland Park High with the school's blessing. Twelve of the 14 kids featured on "American High" made video diaries throughout the year.

"It takes a long time to edit verite," said Cutler. "It just does. If you're doing a segment on 'Dateline (NBC),' you script it, you go in and do it. We don't have that luxury. And yet (the finished product) all seems to flow as if it came off somebody's typewriter."

That it does, right from the get-go. Each of the characters so far has gotten a dramatic introduction. There's Kiwi, the kid who admits he has trouble with everything in life except sports — and we cut to a tense moment late in football season where the outcome of a crucial game rests on his kicking toe. There's Sarah, a beautiful girl who seems unnaturally attached to her boyfriend. But as she tells us about the loneliness of her own life, we realize that Robby is more than a companion, he's a form of escape for her.

If the show flows as smoothly as I say it does, Cutler said, then the credit belongs a lot to his shooters, editors and fellow producers. "It's like an all-star team of non-fiction film makers," he said.

And that all-star team was made possible by Fox. As Cutler explained, documentarians are used to working lean. By creating this series for network television, Cutler was able to field a large staff and pay them well so that their work was worthwhile. Yet the budget was a fraction of what Fox pays for a typical scripted series like "Ally McBeal."

Fox decided to double up the episodes of "American High," with two half-hour installments airing each week. The hour running time, said Cutler, was designed to give the show "more weight." If the viewers sense they're watching something special, then look for future years of "American High."

"It's a very exciting model for network television," said Cutler. "The big challenge for us has been, can you do a prime-time, non-fiction drama series that audiences will respond to? I believe the answer is yes. Kids love it because it's an example of people listening to them. Parents get a lot out of it, too. And hopefully, it's a good yarn."

Visit the "American High" Web site

Pick to click

VH1 meets MTV in the new cable drama series "Live Through This," debuting at 10 p.m. Wednesday on MTV. It's the story of a fictional early '80s rock band that decides to stage a reunion tour. The tour represents the coda to the band's own version of "Behind the Music," that signature non-fiction VH1 show with its familiar elements of rags, riches and revival. But for the band members' five teenaged kids who are pulled into the tour, the experience is more akin to "Road Rules," the popular MTV staple.

Although MTV's Kurt Loder is shown in the opening scene "reporting" the news of the band's reunion tour, no one will confuse "Live Through This" with a documentary. "This Is Spinal Tap," it isn't. Still, it's a little unsettling to watch MTV and VH1 (which are sister channels) continue down this pathway of verisimilitude.

Next Wednesday, for example, VH1 is airing an original movie, "At Any Cost," about a band whose members try to cope with success as well as their own potentially disastrous personal problems. Sounds like a future episode of "Behind the Music," except that this is a fake band. Or is it? Go to VH1's Web site and you will find a link to a sort-of-realistic Web site for "At Any Cost," complete with audio of the band's first two singles. At this rate, VH1 won't need to do movies about the life and times of the Monkees — they'll have their own Monkees to promote.

On this date...

in 1980, Bob Barker hosts the "That's My Line," a lighthearted newsmagazine about the wacky jobs of real people who aren't that incredible. How is the show able to use a name so similar to the game show "What's my Line?" The Goodson-Todman production company created both series. -- Tom Heald

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