DVD Review: Eleven Minutes

Posted Mar 1, 2010 by Kevin Walker

Updated Mar 1, 2010 at 12:23 PM

Eleven Minutes
Stars: Jay McCarroll
Director: Michael Selditch (“Fixing Frank”) and Robert Tate (“Neptune’s Rocking Horse”)
The plot: This documentary follows McCarroll, winner of the first “Project Runway” series, as he designs clothes for his first fashion show. He has about 11 minutes of runway time at New York Fashion Week in Bryant Park. The show closely follows the designers, the publicity people paid to make the show a hit, the people trying to sell clothes from his collection and McCarroll and his team of designers. All of them are in near panic stage by the time the show arrives.
Bottom line:  There’s an entire world of “reality show celebrity” that I am not really that familiar with, because I don’t understand the appeal of most reality shows. McCarroll certainly can be funny, but it’s a “little goes a long way” situation. That makes this movie by turns interesting and then deadly dull or, at worst, annoying in its vapidity (such as when McCarroll talks about his design inspiration, see quote below). Despite the fact he won “Project Runway,” the show’s promise that it had found the “next great American designer” is obviously not true, as McCarroll ends up selling nothing. Maybe he’ll blossom later; I don’t pretend to understand the fashion world, either. That said, I sort of enjoyed a look into the strange shenanigans that go into producing a fashion show, although I felt much like I did while watching “The September Issue” last week. Fashion is a lot like particle physics. The more you break it down to its component parts, the more you discover there is nothing there. In physics, this is interesting. In fashion, not so much.
Extras: Deleted scenes, not very interesting.
Quote: “You realize my collection is inspired by diarrhea and vaginal discharge.”
103 minutes (R; profanity)