No Bigger Than a Minute

Tuesday, October 3 -- that's tomorrow! -- on PBS' POV series, Steven Delano's documentary called "No Bigger Than a Minute" will air. (It's on at 10 p.m. here, check locally for the time where you are.)

From the film's synopsis:

"My name is Steven. I am 48 years old and I'm a dwarf." So begins Steven Delano's unusual new documentary, "No Bigger Than a Minute." What follows is neither an academic discourse on the life and times of America's "little people," nor a project in self-affirmation in the face of social discrimination — though the film includes healthy doses of both of these. "No Bigger Than a Minute" has tongue-in-cheek re-enactments, a music score structured after Delano's own mutated DNA sequence, short-statured Hollywood stars such as Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent") and Meredith Eaton ("Family Law") and musicians, rappers, comedians, novelists, doctors and ordinary folk. Not to mention filmmaker Werner Herzog and an uneasy, and very funny, cameo by Randy Newman, singer-songwriter of the top ten hit, "Short People."

What really stirs this eclectic mix into potent form is Delano's own reluctant "star turn" at the film's center — a film he didn't originally envision appearing in at all. Delano's opening statement is both the culmination of one story, about what he'd learned of dwarfism after 40 years of ignoring it, and the beginning of a new story. It's this new story that thrusts him into his own film to delve into questions of humanity's treatment of difference, tensions between personal and group identities and the future evolution of these contradictions. It's here that Delano faces the most untidy dilemma of all: In the brave new world of genetic engineering, when it is conceivable that dwarfism can be bred out of human populations, is this what we want?

You may have noticed my imaginary boyfriend will be part of the film. He was on Nip/Tuck recently too, and his nanny-character made a little speech saying very disability rightish things. I do believe he could improve any seedy sexist drama he acted on. Any documentary too.