Hollywood already got into bird watching in 2011. Big yearwhere Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson play competing birders in a quest for a “big year”, that is, seeing as many bird species as possible in one year.
Truth turns out to be as strange as fiction, like an indie YouTube doc. Listers: A Look at Extreme Birdwatching artfully explores the strange personalities and obsessions that drive people to dedicate entire years of their lives to checking birds off their list.
A bit similar FUBAR Regarding birding, the doc was created by Owen and Quentin Reiser, two brothers who aren't particularly interested in birdwatching but decide to make 2024 important as a joke after a few bong breaks. Owen is mostly behind the camera, while Quentin is the on-screen personality – a hockey dude with a mullet and mustache who dispenses hilarious nuggets of wisdom at every turn.
It is the ironic detachment of the Reisers that cements Listerswhich might otherwise come across as mean-spirited as it pokes fun at birders – from quiet Floridians who eagerly compete to a 19-year-old evangelist to a guy who awkwardly tries to acknowledge his white privilege while birding. Even when the Risers make fun of others, they are always the punchline as they vomit and defecate their way through the lower 48 states while getting their dicks bitten by mosquitoes.
You expect a light-hearted doc about birds to be funny, and Listers delivers, but its production value is also a revelation. The Risers obviously have great equipment, allowing them to mix low-resolution phone footage with truly stunning high-resolution stills and film. Quentin draws all the birds he sees (he even published a book), there's elaborate stop-motion animation, and one scene convincingly recreates a retro-style educational DVD. They're all professionally done, and there's even an environmental message about preserving habitats that gives this wacky project some extra thematic weight.
The subjects' fixation on meaningless lists is understandable, since I opened a Letterboxd account back in October after years of resistance. So imagine my disappointment last night when I logged in and found that Listers was removed from website for failure to comply with movie database requirements about what a real film is. Listers is two hours long, and as of this writing, has racked up 2.3 million views on YouTube since its premiere in August—not to mention, it's one of the best films I've seen all year. But because it's not backed by a studio or production company, it's not on Letterboxd, meaning it doesn't count toward my big year of movie watching, which is honestly bullshit.
