Rating: 3.5/5 
In response, Gertten hired a new film crew to chronicle his fight with Dole, ultimately releasing a second documentary entitled Big Boys Gone Bananas!* In a sense, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is a documentary about a documentary, though it is more concerned with the freedom of an artist to create without corporate or government interference, while Bananas!* discussed the Tellez v. Dole Food Company Inc. lawsuit directly. Big Boys Gone Bananas!* barely touches on the case at all, never providing enough information to make any kind of accurate conclusion about Tellez v. Dole, and that is exactly the point: the legal aspects are merely tangential to the film’s true focus.
Dole and its public relations group worked to discredit Gertten and his production company as well as threaten members of the L.A. Film Festival with legal action if they allowed Bananas!* to be shown. Media spin pushed Dole’s side of the story, presenting what could charitably be called editorial as fact, with snotty news presenters and ridiculous rhetoric straight out of fiction; it’s a real life Bob Roberts, and it is sometimes frightening. Most chilling is the revelation that UCLA law professor David Ginsburg, without having seen Bananas!*, compared it to the infamous Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda film Der ewige Jude.
Stylistically, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is nearly identical to the first 2009 docu Bananas!*. The aesthetic is limited, bordering on tedious, as low-key and inoffensive as Gertten himself. Gertten spends much of the film with a hangdog look and stooped shoulders, and while it never seems like a put-on, it is decidedly dull.
Gertten, though, was willing to reveal that both he and his colleagues had problems of their own. The first Dole propaganda article causes Gertten’s PR agent to lash out with a sexist “bitch” at the journalist, something he immediately realized was a mistake. An expert interviewed by Gertten pointedly calls him naïve and asks, regarding Dole’s reaction to Bananas!*, “What did you think was going to happen?”
As an exploration of the effects of a large, billion-dollar company using their money and power to silence someone in a way that violated their rights, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is both informative and chilling. Unfortunately, it’s because of this focus on censorship rather than the pesticide lawsuit that the most interesting facets of the situation remain unexplored. And though Big Boys Gone Bananas!* may in the end be just a defense of his first documentary, one must remember that Bananas!* was in no need of defending before Dole and their lawyers tried to silence him.
You and your readers should be made aware that I watched Bananas!* many, many times before writing my opinion in connection with the lawsuit. Moreover, my comparison was not between Bananas!* and Der Ewige Jude as films, but rather it addressed the techniques of editorial montage and how the grammar of film could serve a defamatory purpose. I would hazard a guess that the author of this review, in fact, never read my actual opinion. If she had, she might well have found more with which to agree than she assumes.
Hello David, and thanks for stopping by.
I should point out that Big Boys Gone Bananas!* repeatedly states that the first film, Bananas!*, had not been seen by anyone involved with Dole before the defamation lawsuit was filed.
That you saw the film prior to submitting the opinion doesn’t change my review. I studied history at uni under Dr. George Kren and specialized in the Weimar and Nazi Germany eras, and my familiarity with Der ewige Jude definitely informed my opinion on this issue. While I appreciate the points you bring up, I personally don’t agree that there is a stylistic comparison between Bananas!* and Der ewige Jude.
Stacia, without unduly belaboring this matter, at no point in my Declaration do I say or imply that the two films are stylistically similar, because I do not think that they are. For dramatic purposes that distorted the objective reality of my Declaration, the film focused on a citation to Der Ewige Jude adduced in my Declaration only as a classic example of juxtaposition and montage. If the filmmakers truly wanted to avoid disingenuousness, they would have noted on camera my careful disclaimer that expressly narrowed its thrust to editorial grammar, “but not, I hasten[ed] to add”, to the film in any thematic way. If you have any real interest in getting to the bottom of this, I would be happy to send you my actual filing in full. That context will illuminate your perspective.
My job here is to review the film. I am not in the business of legal commentary. However, within the context of Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, a few details of the lawsuits were used as part of the film’s overall message. As such, those details were (and are) fair game for film reviewers.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that the exact segment of the opinion that you refer to in your last comment actually is shown during BBGB!* The section of your opinion labeled B: Juxtaposition and Montage is shown, with most of the sections #59 through #62 remaining on screen long enough that even without pausing, much of it can be read. The “but not, I hasten to add” part is shown in two lingering shots, and much of the segment is read aloud by WG Films lawyer Lincoln Bandlow.
I understand the examples of juxtaposition and montage in your opinion. Your first example is a shot of a door creaking open followed by a shot of someone turning their head, creating the impression that the person reacted to that door opening. You state that this technique “goes back decades to the Nazi-era anti-Semitic film Der ewige Jude” with the example of a pack of sewer rats shown, immediately followed by a scene of a group of Jewish people. You conclude that this same technique was used in Bananas!*, a funeral shown which was immediately followed by discussion of the use of pesticides.
BBGB!* has, I believe, a relatively comprehensive summary of this one specific point in your opinion. Based on what I saw in the film, I stand by what I said regarding the use of Der ewige Jude as a classic example of juxtaposition and montage. Nearly any film could have illustrated your point, and I say that without hyperbole. It’s ridiculously common, dating back to the silent era and of course still in use to this day. That Der ewige Jude was the example chosen is, in my very honest opinion, “chilling,” just as I said in the review.
I have no quarrel with your job as a reviewer. And I expect a difference of opinion from opposing counsel; that is part of the system. But I am confident you will agree that, to the extent a film or a reviewer chooses to comment on my professional methodology, I am entitled to accuracy in that description. By a conflated sentence that repeated a fundamentally inaccurate misconception about whether I had seen the previous Gertten film—which I had, many times, laboriously—before I rendered my analysis, your review described as “chilling” a categorically untrue but compound “revelation” that, “without having seen Bananas!* “, I made some comparison to editorial techniques in Der Ewige Jude. Simply put, your readers were thereby wrongly advised by you that I never looked at Bananas!*. It is that damaging inaccuracy to which I object, and where I will leave the matter.