Along Came Kinky by Dong H Kim

The film Along Came Kinky is a charismatic piece of documentary. The film is full of human dramas, good characters, and the interesting realism to the world of politics. The world of political campaigns and competitions are often highly visible to the public, but also rarely understood or seen as they really are. The documentary follows the campaign of Kinky Friedman, the glorious times of the campaign, the downfall, and the end of the campaign of Kinky Friedman in 2006 election for governor of Texas.
The interesting thing about the documentary itself was, that the film was full of characters. There was no doubt that Kinky Friedman, the former bandleader running for governor of Texas in 2006, is the main character of the story. However, there were multiple characters who were involved in the 2006 election of governor of Texas. The relationship between the candidates and the faculty members working for them created human drama.
Also, the documentary was about how Kinky’s campaign and his relationship with the campaign staffs were different from that of other candidates. Kinky had strange, convention-breaking backgrounds and ideas about politics. He was rude but passionate, and was ‘not afraid to offend people’ for what he said. His campaign was more like a fiesta, rather than a cold-blooded competition to win the position of Governor of Texas. The staffs of Kinky’s campaign, who the documentary was primarily focused on, showed the love and passion for Kinky’s personality and ideals. It was very interesting for me to watch the contrast between the campaign of Chris Bell the Democrat and the campaign of Kinky Friedman, which the director purposefully emphasized. The highly professional relationship in Bell’s campaign and the unconventional and casual relationship in Kinky’s campaign eventually helped the audience establish the image of Kinky Friedman and his ideas as bizarre but fresh, unconventional but passionate, and such.
The director, in the discussion after the screening, admitted that it was his editorial decision to make a comic scene out of the conversation between Chris Bell and his staffs about the nervousness before the TV conference, when Bell is worried and the staffs try to encourage him. I personally loved that moment, and thought that it was the director’s good instinct to use the piece of reality and give the audience the feeling of humor that he intended. It was also a very good character-building technique that I think is really important. The characterizations of the people in the documentary made the world of political campaigns much more realistic to me, compared to the lifeless and stiff images of the candidates on the news shows
After all, it was a good time to watch Kinky’s challenge and his beautiful failure, in the beginning of the year 2010, when he actually challenges again for his political ideals, with the people that loves him. Although I barely know the politics of Texas, I felt the passion in Kinky and the people around him, and was deeply impressed.