D.C. MOVIE GUYS

Beer Wars
Directed by Anat Baron
Playing nationwide one night only 4/16/9 and proceeding to home theater release later this year

A new documentary about the explosion of the American craft brewing industry over the last two decades provides an enjoyable quaff and an interesting review that should work best with dedicated beer lovers and assorted foodies. However, the truly eye-opening aspect of Anat Baron’s Beer Wars is the way it came to a theater near you… and will continue to a theater even nearer you—but more about that later.

Baron, a former brewing industry executive (and as we learn herself allergic to alcohol), examines nothing less than the evolution of the American brewing industry over the 20th century. Following the 1933 repeal of Prohibition, the brewing industry returns to what it was before 1920 with a network of breweries mostly producing beer for local consumption. But over the succeeding decades, the nationwide growth of a few corporate brews squeeze out the local beverages resulting in a substantial shrinkage in the number of breweries. And thus American beer became known as the blandly consistent lager best limited to drinking by the six-pack during sporting events and providing a punch-line for Monty Python jokes.

However, over the last 20 years beer lovers of a more serious nature have helped spur a beer revolution in America with locally-made craft brews becoming more widely available nationwide and beers from Anchor Steam and Sam Adams causing people to turn their backs on the likes of Bud and Miller while refusing to settle for the same old suds. The growing popularity of the microbrews has even brought about the return of such blasts from the past as Yuengling and Pabst Blue Ribbon become the chic choice for young urban drinkers.

The twin heroes of Beer Wars are Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head, and Rhonda Kellman, former co-founder of the Boston Brewing Company now striking out on her own with a caffeine-laced beer (“Hey kids, want to be able to stay up late to study for finals, but don’t want to waste any valuable beer drinking time?”). And it is in their story that we learn the true lessons of Beer Wars. One of the little post-Prohibition triumphs of the temperance crowd was to separate the production and distribution arms of the alcoholic beverage industry setting up pointless roadblocks that only the big fellows can cope with. And so with local distribution controlled, a small (and government-licensed) number of distributors, the largest manufacturers can exert substantial control making sure that their brands get the best retail spots and preferential treatment overall. Kellman is seen going from bar to bar literally self-distributing samples in order to grow her market share. Meanwhile Greg Koch (brother only in spirit to Jim Koch of Boston Brewing) of the Stone Brewing Company is trying to get his new Arrogant Bastard Ale more widely known. For the purposes of research, I bought a bottle at Whole Foods and if you could get 6 ounces of this stuf inside every 21 year old in this country, a single generation from now children would ask their fathers, “Daddy, what’s a Budweiser?”

Most of Beer Wars is a well-known story to greater degrees by the cognoscenti that will be most attracted to the subject matter. But even dedicated hopheads will find the movie’s final third enlightening as it examines how just making a great beer is actually the easiest part of getting interesting beers into the glass in your hand.

Beer Wars is a perfect addition to the documentary sub-genre of food-related road films that have become so popular with PBS during their semi-annual begathons such as A Hot Dog Program (the Citizen Kane of this ilk), Pennsylvania Diners, and Sandwiches That You Will Like. So even if you missed it, moviegoers will have plenty of opportunities to see Beer Wars—just not at local cinemas. And that brings up Beer Wars particularly revolutionary distribution.

Coincidental to the resurgence of American craft brewing was a similar one in American independent film and, later, in the theatrical release. Thanks to Michael Moore and any movie that features penguins (think of how many hundreds of millions you would make on a documentary of Michael Moore interviewing penguins), documentaries are more widely seen in theaters than ever before. But as with the beer how do you get the produced films in front of people’s eyeballs? Increasingly any kind of wide distribution is moving toward costing ten of millions of dollars and with home theater distribution removing any panicked sense of immediacy to “see the movie now or never see it again.” So Fathom Entertainment has come up with the idea of taking movies with a more “specialized” audience and package them as one-time only events, digitally-streamed to cinemas that can exhibit digitally (still a woeful minority) as a special event showing.

Beer Wars received just such a “pre-DVD release” showing with attendant shorts and featurettes (the equivalent of DVD extras) including a post-screening Q&A hosted by a pointlessly bloviating Ben Stein. It would have been better if they had just distributed bottles of Arrogant Bastard.

3 *

–Bill Henry