The joy of pecs

From DallasVoice.com

Screen
The joy of pecs
By Steve Warren - Contributing Film Critic
Jun 5, 2008 - 6:04:03 PM

’Roid doc packs a punch as looks at both side of juice debate

SUPERSIZE ME: “Big Will” Harris, left, and director Christopher Bell discuss muscle mass and fraudulent jock kings.

The new generation of documentarians — Michael Moore, Errol Morris, Morgan Spurlock — have so accustomed us to nonfiction films with agendas that Christopher Bell’s “Bigger Stronger Faster*,” which takes a balanced look at the steroids issue, seems impossibly retro.

It’s not that Bell is trying to be fair: He just can’t make up his mind. And he figured taking out his ambivalence on us would be cheaper than telling it to a therapist.

Listening to the talking points on both sides will probably leave you as conflicted as Bell, as he talks with “experts,” athletes, medical professionals and steroid users — including his two brothers — on both sides of the issue.

Visuals show how the stakes have risen, from the 1950s comic book ads where Charles Atlas promised “98-pound weaklings” he could make bullies stop kicking sand in their faces to the images the Bell boys grew up idolizing: Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan — any of whom could have kicked sand in Atlas’ face. The evolution of the G.I. Joe doll from a fit soldier to a muscular behemoth encapsulates the transition.

The use of anabolic steroids, the illegal-in-the-U.S.-since-1990 tip of the performance enhancing drug iceberg, is traced back to the 1956 Olympics, when the Americans learned the Russians were using them and the Muscle Race joined the Space Race, Arms Race, etc. By 1964, a former coach attests, “Everybody was taking them.”

In 1988, the Olympic Gold Medal for the 100-meter race was taken away from Ben Johnson (Canada), who was found to have used steroids, and given to Carl Lewis (USA), who wasn’t, even though he was later revealed to have failed a drug test.

There’s anecdotal evidence on both sides. A man with HIV credits steroids with raising his T-cell count from two and keeping him alive. Lyle Alzado’s claim that steroids gave him a brain tumor is generally discounted. Donald Hooten blames steroids for the suicide of his 17-year-old son, Taylor. Sen. Joe Biden calls steroid use “un-American.” A TV movie invents “‘roid rage.”

It’s questioned why steroids give an unfair advantage but not beta blockers, Tiger Woods’ Lasik eye surgery, the “study drug” Adderall and other enhancers. Will “gene-doping” produce future athletes who are exempt from the rules?

Woven in with all this investigation is the story of the Bell family. Filmmaker Chris, “a fat, pale kid from Poughkeepsie,” is the middle brother, and the shortest. “I came from an overweight family,” Bell says.

Their mother, who looks incredibly like Divine, helped his self-esteem by comparing him to the filling in an Oreo. Their father’s boyhood heroes were pre-steroid (as far as we know) baseball players like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, whose records have been shattered by the likes of Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Barry Bonds.

Big brother Mike, nicknamed “Mad Dog,” was “the fat kid.” Mark, the baby, nicknamed “Smelly,” had a learning disorder. They all had something to overcompensate for. When they learned their muscular idols had taken steroids, all three Bell boys tried them too. Mike became captain of his high school football team and later turned to wrestling. He has a compulsion to be famous that will probably never be realized and at one point attempted suicide, probably more from a reality check than steroid use.

Steroids made Mark a successful power lifter. In the end, he’s trying to quit so he and his wife can have another child (steroids don’t help fertility) but knows he’ll go back on them.

Chris had a crisis of conscience and didn’t stay on steroids for long, giving him the moral high ground in conversations with his brothers, who are outed to their parents as steroid users in the course of the film. (Dad calls Mike a “screw-up.” Mom is far more upset.)

A sidebar looks at the supplement industry, showing how phony it can be. Yet because it’s big business in Utah, Sen. Orrin Hatch was successful in getting it deregulated. A photographer demonstrates how he can take “before” and “after” photos for ads on the same day.

Things like that provide more entertainment in “Bigger Stronger Faster*” (the asterisk connects to a subtitle, “*The Side Effects of Being American”) than its humorless, charisma-challenged narrator.

Does being American mean we have to excel at everything? And if so, at what cost? Will we, should we, continue to do what it takes to go to the head of gym class, even as our leaders preach against what they tacitly endorse?

If they can’t figure it out, what hope is there for a humble filmmaker (or his audience)?

	BIGGER STRONGER FASTER
C+	Director: Christopher Bell Featuring: Cast: Barry Bonds and Carl Lewis Opens: June 6 at The Magnolia. 1 hr. 46 min. PG-13