The first documentary I ever remember seeing was Scared Straight by Arnold Shapiro. It was about a program for juvenile delinquents that took groups of law-breaking teenagers into a state prison for a day to be “mentored” by a group of hardcore convicts serving minimum life sentences or longer. (I should point out here that prison mentoring is a whole lot different than regular old mentoring.)
I was about 9 or 10 years old and it was billed as a major TV event. They told parents to watch it with their kids. It was shown uncut and uncensored on primetime TV with a bunch of warnings about the language and subject matter. And ...
Get The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
