Executive-produced by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Arthur Bradford's shambling 1999 documentary How's Your News?, about a cross-country trip with developmentally disabled "reporters," inspires an immediate feeling of discomfort. Parker and Stone have made a career out of flouting political correctness, so their sponsorship of Bradford's road show seems a little dubious, like a prankish stunt or an irreverent blow to cultural sensitivity. But seeing people's varied reactions to the news team's man-on-the-street interviews throws those concerns right back at the audience: What's the "right" way to interact with them? Who can really dictate what's appropriate?
Created with a bright and generous spirit that makes up for some lapses in craft, How's Your News? grew out of a video project at Camp Jabberwocky, a New Hampshire summer retreat where Bradford works as a counselor. Piling cameras, crew, and five disabled broadcasters into a sputtering RV, the HYN? team took off for a two-week journey from coast to coast, stopping at landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Grand Canyon, as well as out-of-the-way places such as an Arkansas alligator farm and a Texas livestock auction. The reporters vary widely in their capabilities and methods. Receptionist Sue Harrington leads a bus in a sing-along to the infectious How's Your News? theme song, while Ronnie Simonsen, a TV junkie who obsesses over his "spiritual brother" Chad Everett (star of the '70s soap opera Medical Center), engages interview subjects in celebrity impersonations. Others have a harder time communicating, like a 45-year-old with Down Syndrome who speaks in ecstatic gibberish, and a cerebral-palsy sufferer who can only sit in his wheelchair with a microphone extended, waiting for passersby to talk to him.
Though the documentary isn't set up as an explicit parody of broadcast news, some of the answers elicited by the HYN? crew are more revealing and funny than anything on lighter-side-of-the-news TV. Simple questions ("Does it make you feel like The Fonz?") lead a motorcycle enthusiast to ponder his place in the universe for what appears to be the first time. When a Texas farmer confesses his love for the movie Message In A Bottle, Harrington quickly retorts that his is the first good review she's heard. The interviewers who can't speak get even more compelling responses, since they're basically sounding boards for whatever people think is the right thing to say around them.
Bradford, who wrote the superb minimalist short-story collection Dogwalker, doesn't always parse out the good segments from the listless ones, but the savant quality of his fiction carries over into HYN?'s sweet, affectionate tone. In some respects, the DVD's bonus features eclipse anything in the movie itself—they include a This American Life segment with Bradford and his reporters, a surreal audio commentary track, and a triumphant scene in which Simonsen interviews his idol, Chad Everett. By giving the camera and mic over to Simonsen and his friends, Bradford makes a cameo by a washed-up TV star seem like a giddily transcendent event.