Frat House

A documentary about the pledging process at American university fraternities. The method is direct participation: the filmmakers enter a fraternity as pledges and film the process of admission from inside. What is shown is not a ceremony of acceptance but a system of humiliation; what the pledges are put through includes shouting, sleep deprivation, heavy drinking and physical coercion. It won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance in 1998 and was acquired by HBO. Then it was not broadcast. Students at the university where it was shot said parts of the scenes had been directed by the crew and reshot. The argument over whether the documentary could be counted as fiction grew out of those claims, and HBO left the production on the shelf. So the film was almost never shown and was known for years through copies passed hand to hand. Todd Phillips directed; after this documentary he made comedies and his career went that way. Some of the material here reappeared in his later fiction. An interesting file for anyone curious about the ethics of documentary and about campus culture. Before you watch, know this: how much of what is on screen is real remains disputed, and that uncertainty has to be held in mind throughout.