Otto Baxter: Not A F***ing Horror Story Review A Fun, Clever Show About A Director With A Difference

Half of Otto Baxter: Not a Damned Horror Story, we see an excerpt from a speech given by screenwriter Jack Thorne at the Edinburgh Television Festival a few years ago. "Television has utterly failed the disabled," Thorne said in his MacTaggart lecture. This documentary, which follows a man with Down Syndrome as he writes and directs his own horror film, is a testament to the slow changes we hope to begin to unfold. Interspersed among the many layers, an important theme is clear in retrospect: Baxter had to tell his story and decide how to tell it.

Baxter is 35 years old, but says he has spent most of his life on television. His mother, Lucy, who adopted him as a baby, regularly appears on television and talks about the lives of her four children with Down syndrome "to show everyone how amazing they are". There are TV box office clips of Baxter and his family on TV-am or The Real Holiday Show. But in 2009, she worked with Peter Beard and Bruce Fletcher on the BBC documentary Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas, where she experimented with sex at the premiere of Now.

The three became close friends and, as the documentary later makes clear, Byrd and Fletcher played a larger role in Baxter's life. But here they help him write and direct a film about his life, how he wants to tell it. Baxter wanted it to be a horror story with some musical interludes, and that idea was realized in The Puppet Asylum (which came out soon and is a must-see).

It's a long page-by-page process. They start 2017 with enough money to start filming, although finances are a constant pressure. We sometimes participate in scenario meetings that are almost therapeutic in nature. Byrd and Fletcher note that they rarely see Baxter talk about difficult subjects. He tends to avoid them and prefers to talk about the "top five or ten" movies, music and girls. However, writing her life story opens up conversations about the decisions she made and why, from her birth as a werewolf (that's what people always call her, Baxter explains), to honest and complex discussions about her biological parents. And the pain he suffered. Feel it. . It lingered for many years, a pain Lucy had never even felt in some cases.

Lucy regularly discusses raising Baxter and her siblings. While he's open about the challenges he's faced along the way, he says he wants to make it known. There's archival news with insults, language and concepts delivered with terrifying ease. There are constant outrages and the film is an indictment of historical perceptions of people with Down Syndrome, but also shows that much has changed in the last 50 years; Or things are changing, at least.

Perhaps this is an overly optimistic view. This documentary makes it clear that Baxter faced prejudice and discrimination in many ways. His mother says he deals with it every day. But the film encourages optimism. The tone is fun, crazy and warm. Baxter says he was born in 1897, which confuses the numbers. "That explains the gray in his beard," jokes Bird. Baxter's voice gives shape and context to the story, but when we see him writing at the beginning, he says, "Pete and Bruce... they're really boring." They note that this is not what the text says.

The documentary also does not hesitate to touch on the most sensitive topics. Baxter flirts with one of his co-stars and calls another woman on set "the director's girlfriend"; He was repeatedly told that his behavior disturbed people. There is also an intense discussion with Baxter about his concerns about what will happen to his mother when she dies, which leads to explaining how Baxter's social services work and will continue to work. I'm sure it's just my ignorance, but I've never seen anything like this on screen before.

Ultimately, this smart, thoughtful and endearing film focuses on Asylum of the Dolls and how it was made, as well as what Baxter's life was like when explored through his creative imagination. There is a clear message here that there is greater potential to emerge. "Lots and lots of eights," says Lucy.

Neighbors described him as crazy, but he had the last laugh.