Caught In the Act

Above, left to right: Ariel Schulman, Yaniv Schulman and Henry Joost

From the outset, it looked like Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's short film about Ariel's younger brother Yaniv was headed to their large graveyard of other half-finished movies. "It was just a casual filmmaking project," says Henry.

That is, until it wasn't anymore.

"There was a moment," Ariel (who goes by Rel) recalls, "when Henry and I literally leaned into each other and I said, 'Don't stop filming until this ends.'"

Although likely to be one of the most talked-about movies of the year, the less you know about Catfish before seeing it the better. Some Catfish purists even suggest you avoid the trailer. For the purpose of luring you in so that you do in fact go see it, we will say that Henry, Rel and
Yaniv (known as Nev) are three New York City natives in their mid-20s who look like they could be in a Brooklyn band with a woodland creature in its name. Nev is a photographer;
and Henry and Rel have been making movies with their production company, Supermarché, since 2007, establishing themselves as players in New York's indie film scene through collaborations with the likes of Red Bucket Films and the Neistat brothers.

The documentary opens as Nev begins a (G-rated) friendship with an eight-year-old artist from Michigan named Abby Pierce. She sends Nev an email asking permission to paint a picture inspired by a photo of New York City Ballet dancers that he shot for the New York Sun, and their relationship develops from there. She starts sending him her paintings, and through their correspondences, Nev gets to know (mostly via Facebook) Abby's mom, Angela, as well as her very pretty older sister, Megan. Nev and Megan start Gchatting, then talking on the phone, and as their relationship escalates, sending each other letters and even "sexting." "Last night she told me that chickens lay an egg every day. Did you know that?" exclaims a truly smitten Nev.

One night on assignment in Vail, Colorado, the guys discover a series of YouTube videos that suggest the members of this family are clearly not who they claim to be. It was at that point that they realized they had a feature film on their hands. "It was the wildest week of our lives," says Rel. "From there we decided we were going to just drive to Michigan and see what
happened," adds Henry.

Nev corrects him. "They made the decision.""We got giddy," Rel says, "The plot was thickening and we forgot to weigh in the fact that this was Nev's life. While our story was unfolding, his life was unraveling." Nev, whose entire relationship with Megan and her family was thrown into question, adds, "They had just hit the jackpot -- and I had just gone bankrupt."

While ambivalent about going forward, Nev ultimately agreed to continue filming. "One major way we convinced him was that we said, 'How can you never know who painted those paintings?'" explains Rel.

Without giving too much away, things get really dark. Most viewers will likely find themselves wide-eyed, mouths agape, hands shaky and overcome with an overwhelming sense of "What... the... fuck." The story is told chronologically, interspersed with surprisingly beautiful flickering shots of Gmail messages, Gchats, Facebook wall-posts, friend requests and Google maps. "Henry had this epiphany," Rel recalls, "that the Internet is cinematic if you accept its
flatness. We learned to embrace the pixels and love the aesthetic of the Internet. That was a real revelation for us."

Indeed, part of what makes the story so compelling is its straightforward, incredibly simple presentation. After filming ended, they toyed with the idea of adding voiceovers and typical talking-head interviews. "We went in circles for a long time," says Henry, "but the most obvious answer was to tell the story exactly how it unfolded and try to give the audience the same experience we had going through it in real life."

Some curmudgeons, however, are muttering out of the corners of their mouths that there was no "real life" and the story was fabricated. How could the filmmakers have been so blind? How could they have been so royally duped? "That anyone would think it was fake -- that never even occurred to us until someone we didn't know saw the film and had that reaction," says Henry. "It totally caught us off guard. We had had this real-life experience, we had filmed it and edited it and dealt with it for over a year. What do you mean you think it's not true? How
could we possibly have faked this?"

Adds Rel, "Suggesting that gave us so much more credit than we deserved. We'd have to have been the greatest writers in the world and Nev the best actor in the world." "New Yorkers," Henry admits, "just aren't as smart as people think they are."

Now with only a few weeks left until Catfish's high-profile Universal Studios release, Rel says he's "proud of Nev for being quote un-quote duped. It was all very romantic and hopeful, and I hope it happens to him again." Nev interjects, "For your sake." "Yeah," laughs Rel, "for the sequel.