Fast, cheap & out of control = Fast cheap and out of control [NTSC]

Fast, cheap & out of control is another ‘non-fiction’ film from acclaimed director Errol Morris. It continues his highly imaginative and inventive exploration into the relationship between the individual and society. Four men are interviewed in this documentary, and are identified more according to their extraordinary, eccentric obsessions then anything else. They include: a lion tamer (Dave Hoover), a topiary gardener (George Mendonca), a mole-rat specialist (Ray Mendez) and a robot scientist (Rodney Brooks). Once again, Morris succeeds in presenting us with well-chosen, highly articulate characters who, in a relaxed manner, discuss the origins of their passion and reflect on its importance today. Despite their eccentricities, Morris refrains from judging or mocking each character and instead is even-handed and respectful. As they discuss their obsession, each reflects on philosophical matters that range from evolution, the Other, survival to life and death. Morris reveals how these obsessions reflect not only their personalities and values but also elemental emotions and thoughts: fear and survival for the lion tamer; nature and its human manipulation for the topiary; the Other and the act of confronting something completely foreign for the mole-rat specialist; and the interface between machine and man, technology and life for the robot scientist. Morris interweaves early cinema footage with present-day material in a dreamlike, musical manner that emphasises the connections between each individual’s obsessions. Ultimately, what these individuals obsessions come to represent is less an eccentricity or weirdness and much more an act of attempting to come to a genuine understanding of the world, society and human life.