As a culture, we've developed an impressive appetite for ugliness. Contemporary television, after all, is chiefly concerned with watching people be embarrassed. Matt Ogens's 2007 documentary Confessions of a Superhero, about superhero impersonators who panhandle outside of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, is stronger and more artful stuff than the "reality" found on primetime TV. But man is it hard to watch.
Ogens' four subjects run the gamut from vintage L.A. cliché to utter whack job. Jennifer Gerht (Wonder Woman) is a southern belle who flew to Hollywood to be a star, but ended up married to a prick within eighteen days. Maxwell Allen (Batman), a violent pathological liar who threatens tourists who don't tip, is a caricature and the weakest link in the film. Ogens must've realized that Allen's story wasn't as interesting as the others; he's the only one of the four who's dumped in front of a psychiatrist for analysis while in costume — a cheap trick given that the other three are never placed in canned scenarios. In contrast, Joseph McQueen (the Hulk), who moved to L.A. during the Rodney King riots and was homeless for years while trying to become an actor, is the most sane and sympathetic of the group. It's a shame that Ogens devotes so little time to his story.
Christopher Dennis (Superman) is Ogens' centerpiece. Dennis is terrifying. More than half of Confessions is spent with him on the street and in his ramshackle apartment, a dreary hole overflowing with Superman memorabilia. Dennis' resemblance to Christopher Reeve is like a funhouse mirror held up to the American dream of fame. Ogens plays on this throughout, particularly in a scene of Dennis and his wife sitting next to one another. They're filmed straight on, a twenty-first century twist on American Gothic, and moments like these inform the tone of Confessions as a whole. While Ogens's editing and soundtracking occasionally force the film into a pity narrative, he more often than not allows his subjects (with the exception of Allen) to tell their story unfettered by an authorial agenda. It's ugly stuff, but that's life. — John Constantine