David Holzman's Diary

Jim McBride's mockumentary is a delightful satire about the filmmaker's compulsion to capture everything on camera, and also a wry character study of one young man who uses his "art" as a pretext for complete self-absorption. This film from the sixties eerily forecasts our present absorption with social media.

As played by L.M. Kit Carson, David is on an irreconcilable mission: to at once understand a world in chaos, and cocoon himself from it in his own cinematic world.

He is lucky that his girlfriend ( Eileen Dietz) didn't chuck his camera when he filmed her sleeping nude.

One thing I found fascinating is the "Observer Effect" as defined by David. Once you start filming, you cease to have reality as you change in response to the film. It is not real life, it is a movie. One would wonder here, if you wore a GoPro Hero all day would you record a normal day, or would you look for the abnormal?

With irritation, alienation, a sex-hungry lady sitting in a car in the middle of traffic, and a few bloody noses, this one "Diary" worth peeking into.