In Me @the Zoo, Web Celeb Chris Crocker Offers Window on Internet ... - Wired News

New documentary Me @the Zoo chronicles web celeb Chris Crocker's rise to fame, both before and after his "Leave Britney Alone!" viral video.
Image courtesy HBO Documentary Films

PARK CITY, Utah â€" We are witnessing the coming of age of the first true internet generation, people who barely remember a time before “social networking” was a buzzword.

For some members of that generation, their real identity is almost inseparable from their online personality. In the new documentary Me @the Zoo, directors Chris Moukarbel and Valerie Veatch examine the lives of these young people through the eyes of Chris Crocker, whose “Leave Britney Alone!” YouTube defense of pop star Britney Spears in 2007 made him the kind of internet famous that’s only been possible in the last seven years.

The filmmakers, who didn’t set out to make a movie about Crocker, give the young man the lion’s share of credit for inspiring the film.

“Chris [Moukarbel] and I began this film as part of a larger project looking to explore themes of performing yourself through reality television or social media,” co-director Valerie Veatch said in question-and-answer session following Me @the Zoo‘s premiere Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film is in the fest’s U.S. documentary competition. “And as we were looking around online and working on this film, Chris’ videos and his story really emerged as a really good way to communicate a lot of the themes we were looking to get at.”

Me @the Zoo, which gets its name from the first video uploaded to YouTube, is a story about what it means to be a viral video star, but it’s also about how our society’s bulimic appetite for pop culture can chew up and spit out its web celebs.

For example, Crocker was an internet punching bag (and celebrity) before (and after) his Britney Spears incident, but managed to persevere and build a following from his 15 minutes of fame. He called on his fans to fund Me @the Zoo‘s Kickstarter campaign when he made a vlog declaring “the documentary is the answer to every question about me” and promising it would focus on what happened before and after he went viral.

Me @the Zoo delivers. The film, which was picked up for U.S. broadcast by HBO Documentary Films last week, shows the complete picture of a YouTube celebrity instead of just the quick takes that surface on the internet. Using hours of Crocker’s own unreleased home videos, the documentary shows what was happening to the young man as he was making his viral video clips â€" from being bullied to the point he had to be home-schooled to his complex-but-loving relationship with his mother, who had Crocker at 14, then went on to join the Army and has since struggled with drug addiction.

The film, which is edited in such a way that it can almost feel like a prolonged YouTube clip (in a good way), also shows how Crocker’s experience was a unique predecessor to online efforts like the It Gets Better project.

“I started doing videos because I couldn’t go to school so that was my outlet to turn to,” Crocker said during the post-screening Q&A. “It’s really interesting to me how much has changed â€" just the acceptance online in the last three to four years, with the It Gets Better campaign and things like that. I mean, those kids are way more confident…. I feel like the internet is really kind of a stomping ground for kids to get that self-esteem and network with other gay kids when they can’t find that in their hometowns like I couldn’t.”

“Even though I’m bat-shit crazy in a lot of my videos, hopefully the overall message is, ‘Be yourself and take no shit.’”

“Even though I’m bat-shit crazy in a lot of my videos,” Crocker continued, “hopefully the overall message is, ‘Be yourself and take no shit.’”

The film goes deep on the “Leave Britney Alone!” viral video moment that changed Crocker’s life. A moment of internet celebrity has never felt so real. We’ll leave the details to those who catch the film on HBO, but after watching Me @the Zoo, it’s hard to see Crocker â€" or his video â€" in the same way again.

It also answers the one question nearly everyone who knows Crocker’s name â€" or at least his infamy â€" usually asks: Did he ever hear from Spears or get thanks for his support? The answer, which even his grandmother decries in the documentary, is no. But Crocker, who received several rounds of applause following the movie’s premiere, holds out hope that the film could change that tune.

“I don’t know if she knows this film is out,” Crocker said. “Hopefully, one day she’ll see this and understand why I did it.”