Abel Raises Cain

USA 2005 / 82min.
Directors Jenny Abel, Jeff Hockett / Producer Jenny Abel

As far back as she can remember, co-director Jenny Abel has seen her father appear on TV under a variety of aliases, fooling news reporters and talk show hosts in one of his many plots to infiltrate the media with one of his seemingly absurd causes.

Growing up in Ohio with a short but successful drumming career, Abel quickly found that his taste for Swiftian satire was taken literally by Americans. With stunts like Euthanasia Cruises, the KKK Symphony Orchestra, a “How-to” school for street begging, campaigns such as promoting the nutritional benefits of eating only hair or to stop animal nudity, Alan Abel is about more than just getting his kicks. His goal? Exposing the media’s willingness to air pretty much anything as long as it’s salacious enough.

Accused of being a scam artist or an impostor, Jenny follows her father on his latest campaign to stop breast-feeding and attempts to explain the true motives behind Alan’s hoaxes. It has an emotional angle to balance out its exhilarating humour and is a wonderfully funny presentation of America’s greatest hoaxer and his confrontation of a serious concern — you can’t believe everything you see, read or hear.

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