Beaver Trilogy

In 1980 cameraman Trent Harris met a fanatical admirer of Olivia Newton John on the station at Salt Lake City. Hesitantly, this Gary invited him to record talent contents where he was to perform as his alter ego: Olivia Newton Dawn. Harris travelled to Beaver, a small village in the countryside. In the style of a cinéma vérité home-movie, he recorded the transformation of Gary into a superstar. The result was the documentary Orkly Kid.Several years later, Harris filmed this documentary again: parts two and three of the trilogy are remakes of part 1, in which Harris is increasingly emphatically present as director and seizes the freedom to interpret events in his own way. Sean Penn plays the role of Gary in part two and is a much more desperate yet also more glorious drag-queen. His act does not receive any support from the audience, as in the original: what Penn does on stage goes a little too far for the tastes of the people of Beaver. Harris himself is played in part two by an actor, who is playing a considerably less honest film-maker. The thought of exploitation comes to the fore, placing the original in a different light. Part three, finally, introduces several different variations on the story. Harris entertainingly questions the phenomena of originality in Beaver Trilogy, and also the truth and integrity of the documentary in general and the documentary of himself in particular.