Today I'm listening to the commentary track on the DVD of Spellbound, which is extraordinary: it's humbling to realize how many wonderful moments its director and editor were forced to cut away, given that the finished movie has more life and incident than just about any other movie I've ever seen. Hearing them describe these agonizing choices is a reminder of how fertile the process of documentary filmmaking can be, and how everyday life, with its infinite branching of interlocking stories, can be much more surprising than most works of fiction.

Here's one example. One of the most memorable segments in the movie involves Neil and his father, who puts his son through an incredible regimen in preparation for the spelling bee. What the film doesn't reveal is that Neil has a severe stuttering problem, which explains, in retrospect, how little he says in the movie. And then you realize that when you see his father praying at the spelling bee, as the director notes, he isn't just praying for his son to win, but praying that he won't be disqualified by stuttering in the middle of word and accidentally saying a letter twice.