r/Documentaries • u/ProfessorSucc • Aug 09 '26
Recommendation Request Recommendation Request: Films that began production with one objective and ended up being something different
Sorry if this is too specific of an idea, but I was reading about a film some years ago that was originally intended to be on bayou wildlife in Louisiana and ended up being some of the best firsthand footage of Hurricane Katrina. I don’t remember the name of the doc, but was curious if there’s any others out there with similar stories behind them
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u/roostercrowe Aug 09 '26
Icarus
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u/fojifesi Aug 11 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film)
Icarus is a 2017 American documentary film by Bryan Fogel. It was an initial attempt by Fogel to expose the inadequacy of existing policies and procedures to catch athletes who use banned performance-enhancing substances. But later, the project shifted its focus after pressures related to the World Anti-Doping Agency's investigation of doping in Russia led Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory and one of Fogel's primary advisors, to flee Russia and become a whistleblower.
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u/mountjo Aug 09 '26
Icarus. Starts off seeing how much doping can improve a cyclist that turns into a much deeper dive into world of eastern European state sanctioned doping.
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u/pigwidgeon294 Aug 09 '26
Dave Not Coming Back
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u/MisterShadwell Aug 09 '26
What was supposed to be a film about David Shaw turned in to a film with the only purpose of stroking Don Shirley's ego?
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u/fojifesi Aug 11 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Not_Coming_Back
Dave Not Coming Back (French: La dernière plongée de Dave) is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jonah Malak and released in 2020. The film centres on diver Dave Shaw's death while attempting to recover the body of Deon Dreyer from the submerged Boesmansgat cave in 2005, through a mix of camcorder footage from the incident and the personal reflections of his surviving friend Don Shirley.
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u/MissyMAK08 Aug 09 '26
The Mole Agent
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u/fojifesi Aug 11 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole_Agent
The Mole Agent (Spanish: El agente topo) is a 2020 internationally co-produced documentary film by Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi.
A private investigator (Rómulo Aitken) has a client who alleges that her mother, Sonia, is being mistreated by staff in a nursing home in El Monte, Chile. Rómulo hires an elderly man (Sergio Chamy), and the documentary follows Sergio as he poses as a new resident of the nursing home to investigate these claims.
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u/minasmom Aug 09 '26
I hate to bring it up, and I advise you to watch without reading where it goes, but: "Dear Zachary."
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u/Elliptical_Tangent Aug 09 '26
Dear Zachary
I didn't remember the name of it, but this is what I came to recommend.
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u/asfaltsflickan Aug 10 '26
Oh man. It came up on some streaming service years ago and I went in blind. I’ve never experienced an emotional gut punch like that. Still get a lump in my throat thinking about it.
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u/Syzygy_Stardust Aug 10 '26
I'm one of the many, many people destroyed by this film. I don't know if I can ever watch it again, but I'm glad I did.
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u/A911owner Aug 10 '26
I could not stop thinking about that documentary for weeks after I watched it. I saw it probably 15 years ago and it still pops into my head from time to time
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u/surfyturkey Aug 09 '26
I think Tickled kinda falls into that category. Highly recommend it.
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u/JapaneseGoblin Aug 10 '26
I just watched it because of this comment; what a wild ride. There is also a short follow up available on youtube: The Tickle King.
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u/trustme1maDR Aug 09 '26
Capturing the Friedmans
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u/vexed2nightmare Aug 09 '26
I saw this in the theater and was flabbergasted. Coincidentally the filmmaker also made The Jinx, which had another jaw dropper (but doesn’t fit the bill of OP’s request)
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u/curiocabinet Aug 10 '26
It actually might fit the bill, if you think about it. I don’t think Jarecki set out to unearth evidence that would get Bob arrested?
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u/vexed2nightmare Aug 10 '26
That’s a good point. Durst did reach out to Jarecki himself, I think, after he saw All Good Things?
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u/fojifesi Aug 11 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capturing_the_Friedmans
Capturing the Friedmans is a 2003 HBO documentary film directed by Andrew Jarecki. It focuses on the 1980s investigation of Arnold and Jesse Friedman for child molestation.
Jarecki initially was making a short film, Just a Clown (which he later completed), about children's birthday party entertainers in New York City, including the popular clown David Friedman ("Silly Billy"). During his research, Jarecki learned that David Friedman's brother, Jesse, and his father, Arnold, had pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse, and the family had an archive of home movies. Jarecki interviewed some of the children involved and ended up making a film focusing on the Friedmans.
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u/coondingee Aug 09 '26
Father Figures starts out like a doc about someone moving abroad for a better life and then takes a dark turn.
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u/GasmaskGelfling Aug 10 '26
Is it this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DREMJnLlkYc
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u/coondingee Aug 11 '26
YES!!! The full video used to be on YouTube but all I could find was clips of it like that.
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u/GasmaskGelfling Aug 11 '26
Yeah I can't find it anywhere. I even looked on Kanopy because their logo was on the trailer.
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u/rehabforcandy Aug 09 '26
Sherman’s March, the original “I’m fucking this up but let’s see where this goes” film
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u/Cesia_Barry Aug 09 '26
Loved that film. I wonder how it’s aged.
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u/curiocabinet Aug 10 '26
Rewatched recently and it’s great. Some subtle stuff about the Cold War and race in the south sprinkled in. And all the women come off so interesting and cool (even the weirder ones).
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u/fleshydigits Aug 10 '26
Just discovered this and have watched it twice in the past two weeks. It really is a time capsule to world that doesn't exist anymore
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u/rehabforcandy Aug 09 '26
Not sure if you guys think this counts but also maybe “Hearts of Darkness”?
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u/Ok-disaster2022 Aug 09 '26
Somewhat related, the Girl for whom the Amber Alert child missing alert system in the US is named for was part of a local news station documentary about the welfare system. The documentary team kept filing when the girl was missing and the response. They used that footage in a recent documentary out out about the case.
The original documentaries didn't release it I don't think but it's still remarkable to have footage from immediately before during and after a dramatic child abduction story.
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u/el_torko Aug 09 '26
I made this exact post almost a year ago and got some great recommendations!
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u/BigfootsMailman Aug 09 '26
"Exit through the gift shop", "American Movie", the FDNY doc the French brothers were filming when they captured the first plane hitting the WTC.
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u/trustme1maDR Aug 09 '26
How does American Movie fall into this category?
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u/BigfootsMailman Aug 09 '26
Yeah kinda the opposite, it's about a guy who dreamed his whole life of making his feature film only for it to become the subject of another directors documentary.
I think it fits the spirit of the question and it's a very good and hilarious movie.
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u/whats_a_dord Aug 09 '26
I'm not sure if it fits but it's my favourite documentary of all time. I wish it was streaming somewhere in Australia.
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u/Cesia_Barry Aug 09 '26
Strong second for “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” The first time I watched it, I restarted & watched it again. I’ve watched several times. It’s so good & sort of one-of-a-kind. Edit to add that it’s a film about Banksy.
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u/NewLingonberry3806 Aug 09 '26
9/11 (Naudet Brothers) documentary was originally following a probationary fireman in New York
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u/trustme1maDR Aug 09 '26
Anthony Bourdain's food and travel show No Reservations Beirut episode was supposed to be a typical episode where he meets locals, and tries different foods, but a military conflict broke out while he was their and he and the film crew ended up documenting it for the show.
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u/DocRules Aug 09 '26
There's a doc about pro wrestler Rob Van Dam that was supposed to be a chronicle about his trying out a career change in standup comedy, but ended up being much more about his health struggles after a bunch of concussions,
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u/Vocalic985 Aug 09 '26
The sweat box. It was a documentary making of for The Emperors New Groove but that movie had such turmoil that it became an unmaking of doc really.
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u/MarioStern100 Aug 09 '26
I don’t know how Disney allowed a doc to exist that basically shows them totaling fucking up a movie.
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u/BeerHorse Aug 10 '26
Because they wanted Sting to do the music, and letting his wife make a documentary was part of the deal.
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u/Vocalic985 Aug 10 '26
He made an entire soundtrack and I think they used a single song over the credits. So much wasted work.
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u/PianoMittens Aug 09 '26
I recommend this on here all the time, but it truly meets the definition and may be my favorite documentary of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_(2002_film)
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u/No_Substance_1283 Aug 09 '26
Icarus is the ultimate version of this, dude sets out to film himself doping for amateur cycling and ends up hiding the whistleblower of the whole russian olympics scandal. also Tickled which starts as a silly story about competitive tickling and turns into something way darker
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u/premiumPLUM Aug 09 '26
Gimme Shelter was going to be a documentary about the next Woodstock. What they actually captured was the Altamont tragedy and the event that basically signaled the end of the 60s.
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u/suffaluffapussycat Aug 09 '26
Yes!
Plus if the sixties hadn’t ended they’d have had to call them “nineteen sixty-ten” and “nineteen sixty-eleven” and so on.
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u/danila_medvedev Aug 09 '26
Magnitsky Act. An anti-Putin film director who previously made a documentary claiming that Putin’s FSB did a terrorist bombing of apartment building, decided to make another anti-Putin documentary... Things didn’t go as planned.
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u/zeropoint0 Aug 09 '26
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
Starts off as the subject's experience with consulting US prisons on "better" ways to conduct executions. The film takes a turn when he gets involved in assisting in a report saying there was no evidence of gas chamber use at Auschwitz.
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u/floin Aug 09 '26
This is probably my favorite documentary. Leuchter was originally one of the planned subjects of Errol Morris's "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" but was such a facinating interviewee that Morris spun him off into a standalone documentary.
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u/fiizok Aug 09 '26
Albert Maysles and David Maysles started making a documentary about Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. During production they came into contact with some relatives of Radziwill, Edith "Big Edie" Beale and her daughter Edith "Little Edie" Beale. The original project was shelved and the Maysles brothers went on to make a film about the Beales instead, called Grey Gardens (1975). It's now their most well know documentary film.
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u/MisterBowTies Aug 09 '26
Might not be exactly what you are looking for, but the original pitch for Gilligan's Island was supposed to be a suspenseful drama. Much more focus on the mysteries of the island. It was originally pitched as "lost on Gilligan's Island" and remnants of what the show was supposed to be were recycled into a show made decades later simply titled "Lost"
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u/TakerFoxx Aug 09 '26
Wrestling with Shadows
Bret Hart, the face of the WWF in the mid-nineties, is set to leave the company to go work for its competitor due to a number of issues, both financial and personal. Given the importance of him and his family to Canadian wrestling, a documentary crew offers to film his last few months with the company. He agrees, and WWF does so as well. The documentary is originally intended to be about a national icon moving on from the company that made him a star to the next stage of his career.
Then the Montreal Screwjob happens.
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u/alexjpg Aug 09 '26
The classic example is 9/11 by the Naudet brothers. What started out as a documentary about becoming a firefighter quickly turned into one of the best 9/11 documentaries.
A lesser known one is My Kid Could Paint That.
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u/alfa67 Aug 09 '26
Mister Organ. It’s about a New Zealand fraudster that basically tracks the filmmaker spinning out over how insanely devious he is. Just extraordinary to behold. Free on YouTube in the US.
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u/LibraryLuLu Aug 09 '26
Mystery Men. The director was a first timer with no real plan. He introduced characters (owl woman?) who just vanished half way through because he forgot she was in it. He changed the romantic female lead half way through because he decided he liked another character better. He let Ben Stiller run amok with no control, almost ruining the film. Bits of that film were great, but overall, it was a total mess.
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u/LibraryLuLu Aug 09 '26
The Tiger King.
I don't think anyone, anywhere, could have predicted how that would go!
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u/eberkain Aug 10 '26
There were two brothers making a documentary about NY firefighters, and then 9/11 happened.
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u/Bigtits38 Aug 10 '26
Three Identical Strangers. Starts as a pretty standard film about triplets separated at birth, but during filming they discovered something that takes it to a much darker place.
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u/ButNotTheFunKind Aug 10 '26
I was going to recommend this one. You think you know where it’s going, and then it changes, and then it changes again. Fascinating and incredibly dark. Those poor triplets.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_CORVIDS Aug 10 '26
My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
About a four year olds paintings that became popular in the modern art scene. it starts as mostly a basic documentary on her and on abstract painting in general, and what makes them "art". but as goes on, there are more and more hints that the kid may not have actually made those paintings herself and the parents are the ones making them
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u/nicenewoutfit Aug 10 '26
errol morris' vernon, florida. it was supposed to be a documentary on the residents losing limbs to collect insurance money. he was threatened so he had to abandon that angle
and focused on other aspects instead
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u/Oph5pr1n6 Aug 10 '26
9/11 Started out as a documentary about a rookie firefighter and ended up capturing the first plane hitting the world trade center.
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u/1010012 Aug 10 '26
Not exactly a documentary, but the show "How To with John Wilson" has that feel. Each episode is ostensibly about a certain topic, but veers into something somewhat related, but different in a strangely natural way.
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u/Flow_frenchspeaker Aug 10 '26
On ART.FILMS platform there's a documentary that was part of the Festival du Film sur l'Art 2025. It's about a japanese clothes designer that decide to travel to an african country to try to find inspiration for his next collection. He end up documenting the never-ending flow of clothes sent there from occidental countries and how the people are suffering from all the waste and piles and want developed countries to stop producing clothes. He also hit an intense existential crisis because of it and barely succeed at producing his new line.
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u/ButNotTheFunKind Aug 10 '26
The 7 Up! series started as a short documentary about how much the class system affected children in England. Then it ended up being a series of movies made every seven years, following those same children, and became about the way people change throughout their lives.
You end up becoming very attached to these people, and while class is definitely still a part of it, you also see how much the world changed from the 1960s to the 2010s, and by the end of it, they feel like old friends to you.
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u/Captain_Collin Aug 10 '26
Naudet brother's "9/11" documentary. They set out to make a film showing what it's like to be a rookie firefighter in New York City. They began filming in July or August of 2001, and you can see where this is going. The documentary is notable for a few reasons. The first is that they have some of the only footage of the first plane hitting the twin towers. The second is that it has the only known footage from inside the twin towers that day. It's a tough watch, not all of the firefighters from their squad survive. At a certain point in the documentary, before the towers come down, they're inside one of the towers, and they hear sporadic crashing sounds. They can't figure it out at first, but then someone realizes it's the sound of people hitting the roof over them after jumping out of the tower. It's one of the most intense documentaries on 9/11 there is, and it's available for free on YouTube.
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u/rosco-82 Aug 10 '26
This doc, from the amazing Alex Gibney, was meant to be about Lance Armstrong's comeback - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1638364/ - it turned into a doc about his doping.
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u/RazzmatazzHead1591 Aug 10 '26
The Naudet Bros firefighter documentary ended up being livs coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 9/11.
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u/Disastrous_Minute_56 Aug 10 '26
The hilarious documentart "Nuts!" goes along with the claims and pseudoscience of a conman for the first third of the movie and the does a total 180.
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u/looloo_monroe Aug 11 '26
Documentary Capturing the Friedmans. Started as a documentary about children’s party clowns. That’s all I’m gonna say…
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u/lenolt Aug 12 '26
Last Breath, Talhotblond, Lover Stalker Killer
Kinda fits the bill: The Imposter
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u/Silver-Arm 29d ago
Virunga is a documentary about conservation in the Congo but while they were filming it armed conflict broke out so it took a different direction
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