I can stream the movie to my TV from Netflix using my new Roku player.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a documentary by Chris Bell about steroid use in America.  It came out in 2008, but I didn’t know about it until I happened to see it on the list of trailers in my iMac’s FrontRow application.  I guess that means they didn’t have a large marketing budget, which is too bad, because the movie is a terrific piece of filmmaking.  Two things set this documentary apart from run of the mill fare:

1. The filmmaker, Chris Bell, rapes and pillages his own family for juicy material.
2. The subject, steroid use, turns out to be fascinating.  It is a far more complex than high school health class would have you believe.  The negative side effects, for instance, appear to be mild in many cases.  In addition, the movie does an excellent job of linking steroid use to that quintessential American ideal: being a winner.

I’ll start with the first point.  Bell’s two brother’s are both heavy steroid users and they both talk freely to Chris about what drove them to steroids and what keeps them on steroids.  The older brother, Mike Bell, wrestled for a short time for the WWE.  The younger brother, known as Smelly, is a high school football coach.

Mike is characterized in the documentary as a wannabe.  During his short stint in the WWE he was a jobber, which is the industry term for a guy who routinely plays the role of the loser. During the course of the documentary Mike moves from Poughkeepsie, where he has a decent life working as an accountant, to Los Angeles, where he fantasizes that he will make his comeback as a professional wrestler.  The scene in which he talks about his dreams is poignant.  His very pretty wife has a tear in her eye and you wonder whether Mike will be able to come to terms with who he is.  Later Chris talks to their father who gives a blunt assessment of Mike — he’s still on steroids but is too embarrassed to tell anyone, he is probably taking other drugs as well, he incorrectly believes that moving to California will solve his problems, he’s “a screwup”, and he’s going to take his young wife down with him.  In fact, his father says that the only solution who sees for Mike is “a miracle,” and it is obvious that he literally hopes for a divine intervention in his son’s life.  But then he immediately goes on to say “you know, I think they’re going to find him dead some day.”

A woman who uses steroids, or perhaps a man who uses steroids in drag.

The obvious question in the viewer’s mind is how Mike Bell will react to seeing the film.  The answer is that in December of 2008, a year after the movie was filmed, Mike Bell was found dead.

Chris’s other brother, Smelly, seems to be in more control of his life.  His main problem is that he lies to his mother about his steroid use, he lies to the guys on the high school football team he is coaching about his steroid use, and he lies to his wife.  His wife is aware that he is a user, but she wants to have a second child, which will require Smelly to stop taking steroids, and she also just wants Smelly to stop using steroids on general principles.  Smelly finally promises his wife that he will stop, but then confesses to Chris, on camera, that he has lied to his wife and fully expects to resume his steroid use.  He shrugs it off with the casual remark that “well, a lot of people have to lie to get ahead — that’s just the way things work.”  The result is a sad picture of man who cannot live an open and honest life.

On the up side, Smelly is able to bench press 705 pounds.

Director Chris Bell wears a baseball cap throughout the movie.

Aside from the raw family drama, however, Bigger, Stronger, Faster get’s right to the heart of the role of steroids in American athletic dominance.  For instance, there is an eye-opening series of interviews with Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, and the Dr. Wade Exum, who is the former director of drug control for the United States Olympic Committee.  Johnson was famously stripped of his gold medal for the 100 meter dash after testing positive for a banned stimulant at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  The gold was given to Lewis instead.  Johnson freely admits to taking performance enhancing drugs, but claims it was okay because everyone else was doing it too.  Sure enough, it turns out that Carl Lewis also failed a drug during the summer before the games (along with 2,000 other American athletes), and Dr. Exum happily delves into the “boxes of proof” that he has, instantly producing the damning reports.  To make a long story short, the United States Olympic Committe made up the category of “inadvertent use” specifically to let athletes off the hook, and Lewis was allowed to compete in the 1988 games after claiming that his positive drug test was the result of using a herbal cold remedy.  Seeing Dr. Exum smirk at that explanation is all one needs to know about its legitimacy.

So who does the gold medal really belong to?  Probably the guy who came in last.

Henry Waxman on a t-shirt. He crusades for justice, but sometimes you wonder if he knows which way is up.

A particularly painful interview is conducted with Henry Waxman, the US congressman who called the hearings on steroid use in baseball.  It becomes clear that while Waxman thinks steroids should be banned, he has practically no understanding of them.  He constantly turns to his aides for answers to questions that he should know instantly, such as whether steroids are in fact currently illegal and what the legal drinking age is.  At the end of the interview Chris Bell asks this anti-steroid crusader how the $15 million that has been allotted for anti-steroid education is being spent and all Waxman can say is “I don’t know.”  It is a particularly pathetic portrait of a lawmaker.

I could go on about this movie — there are great interviews with a wide range of people, from experts on drug use and psychology, to a guy in his fifties who lives in a van behind Gold’s Gym and still hopes to pump up enough to get noticed by someone.  What makes this movie really work, however, is the fact that it holds your interest, keeps testing your assumptions, and leaves you feeling like you want more.  The editing and pacing are perfect (not something I usually comment on, but it really stood out to me) and the overall feeling your are left with is one of educated satisfaction.  The focus on the Bell family personalizes the issue and helps to anchor the movie, while lending a kind of reality-show voyeuristic intrigue.

Highly recommended.