CELEBRITY (M) 
Starring Dominick Dunne
Directed by Kirsty de Garais

In the early 1960s, Dominick Dunne held the best parties and knew all the right people. People like Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Truman Capote. People who ignited a passion for celebrity that would never fade. It was love at first sight, one that would exact a hefty toll on his life. Before he hit rock bottom, Dunne had lost a brother to suicide and a wife to ego: “She was the real thing, I was the fake,” he said.

Then his actor-daughter was strangled in a grisly murder, a tragedy that gave him a vocation-crusading for justice. With three novels and a Vanity Fair cover under his belt, Hollywood was once more his playground: O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Princess Diana his biggest stories.

Celebrity is a compelling yarn that toys with a man caught between withering disdain and singular adoration for an industry that sought to reward and destroy him in equal measure. Now a celebrity journalist in his own right, Dunne is as opinionated and derisive of his subjects as he is of himself – a chink neatly exploited in this warm, compelling and surprisingly funny documentary. Ultimately Celebrity is the affirming paradox of a man who got what he wanted after losing everything.

- Colin Fraser