If you are reading this, you probably first heard Moby’s music at the end of Michael Mann’s Heat. It is an incredible scene: De Niro’s character gets shot by Pacino’s, and in a small moment of human kindness, they hold hands as De Niro’s character expires. The Moby tune “God Moving over the Face of the Waters” plays in the background, and its haunting tone is right for the material. But for most people in the late ‘90s, you first heard a Moby song in a commercial. That is because, after his album Play failed to sell, the electronic artist decided to license more of his music:
Moby has managed to license the songs on Play more often than any other songs in history. He has sold them and re-sold them: to manufacturers of mid-range motorcars, to manufacturers of upper range motorcars, budget motorcars, home appliance distributors, coffin polishers and electric dog grooming equipment rental companies.
In other words, Moby had to sell out before he could become an unlikely celebrity. This was arguably the most interesting decision he ever made, and not just because the late ‘90s was a period where “selling out” was something that sincere musicians tried to avoid.
Why is all this worth mentioning? Moby Doc, the new documentary co-written by Moby and director Rob Gordon Bralver, makes no mention about licensing the songs from Play. None. In fact, Moby completely glosses over why his album went from 6,000 copies a week to nearly 200,000 copies. He would rather have his audience believe he became a superstar in a normal, completely organic way. Lies by omission are common in documentary filmmaking. Few are this brazen.
This lie leads to more questions. What else is Moby exaggerating? What is he not saying about his reasons to make this film? These unanswered questions do not make Moby Doc enigmatic, and instead reveal the endeavor for its true purpose: a vanity project that wants to rewrite a small, well-documented piece of pop culture history. It is little surprise that Moby does not mention his recent controversy with Natalie Portman (it was revealed in 2019 that he hit on her while she was teenager).
Moby Doc is not a traditional documentary, but still manages to be derivative. There are self-aware moments and sketches where Moby reflects on his life, like when he has actors reenact painful episodes from his childhood. Other documentaries like Tarnation have played with the documentary form in this way, except they arrive at resonant points about trauma and forgiveness. In this film, Moby repeats clichés and speaks in platitudes that sound deep to him because he’s too vain and incurious to realize art explores these topics all the time.
The most interesting thing about this film is probably unintentional. Bralver intersperses the biographical elements with some performance footage. We see Moby DJ clubs, play massive music festivals and even play with an entire orchestra. What is noteworthy about this footage is how Moby’s presence is purely incidental. The orchestra does not need him to recreate his music, and the light show at the festival is more spectacular than what he does on stage. By all accounts, his voice is unremarkable, and he has little prowess on any musical instrument.
Moby’s process in the studio – where he samples, loops, and shapes jagged pieces of music into something new – is where the real creativity happens. That process does not make him appear like a rock star or a heroic animal rights activist, so it has little use in this film. Instead, the film uses the language of sincerity and recovery to sell one narrative, but like everything else about Moby Doc, the attempt is more hilariously cynical the more you think about it.
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