The Elephant People bare all in controversial documentary

Tufts' annual Naked Quad Run is the subject of an expos?© entitled The Elephant People, which will be shown today at 7:30 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Movie Theater. The documentary tries to uncover the motives behind years of Jumbos' participation in the tradition, said producer Jeremy Noritz, who graduated from Tufts in the combined degree program through the Museum School in 2000.

The first cut of the documentary was shown at both Tufts and the Museum School in the spring of 2001, and has since been revised. It was completed a year ago, and Noritz would like to organize a showing of the new cut on campus sometime before this December's Quad Run.

Noritz said he decided to explore the subject because he was interested in the Quad Run's origins and why it became a tradition. "I was interested in... what compels college students to run naked in a group, and to kind of just see what it's all about," Noritz said.

Although the tradition has been described as a way for students to blow off steam the night before the first day of reading period, Noritz said, "it had to be more than that for it to keep going on."

The documentary, billed in a press release as "revelatory and controversial," explores the role of peer pressure in students' decisions to run. While each participant has his or her own reason for running, Noritz said, his investigation revealed that "a lot of it became about peer pressure at times."

Tufts alumni such as Michael Dupuy (LA '01), who worked with Noritz on projects for Tufts' radio station WMFO, helped with the endeavor. "I think it's obvious that it's a very interesting phenomenon in and of itself," Dupuy said of the Quad Run.

The film investigates the opinions of various University community members, including those of students, faculty, pre-frosh, former chaplain Scotty McLennan, and actor Hank Azaria (LA '85).

Before shooting footage of the December '99 Quad Run, Noritz attempted to make his face and name known amongst students while interviewing and shooting for the documentary throughout the semester.

In past years, films of the event have landed on the Internet and have been circulated by other methods, heightening controversy surrounding the already disputed event, Dupuy said. Noritz and his crew wanted to "let people know this didn't have those other motives that people were worried about it."

Despite this effort, and despite numerous other cameras filming the event, some runners were upset at the sight of Noritz's eight cameras and crew. "The night of the run there were a lot of people who were very angry at me and my crew," Noritz said. "One of my crew [member's] cameras was smashed by an angry person."

"A lot of people really do get angry when they see people flashing photography at them, for very legitimate reasons," Dupuy said. But the documentary maintains anonymity whenever possible, he said.

The camera shots are framed, for the most part, so that the audience cannot see a runner's face and body at the same time, and the chaotic nature of the run makes it hard to recognize runners, Noritz said.

Even so, Dupuy said, it would be a natural, "knee jerk response" for a person to view the documentary as pornography or simply as a joke without having seen it.

Noritz wanted to explore the idea of tradition in general, using the Quad Run as a point of investigation. "...Because this was a tradition with nudity and people are sensitive to that, it clouded the issue a bit," Noritz said. "But in a way that made it stronger also."

The documentary does contain an element of lightness. "It's just a really humorous event and it deserves a little airtime," Noritz said.

The documentary explores the issue of Quad Run training, Dupuy said with a hint of jest. "All the runners had to mentally prepare and some physically prepare for the run," he said. "Some people only need a bit of alcohol to prepare for it; others need some pep talk or some jogging practice."

While the film allows for "a bit of self mockery," Dupuy said, "I don't think its intention is to just make fun of the Quad Run, but to sort of draw attention to it as an unusual sort of rite of passage for Tufts students."

Dupuy added that the tone of the documentary is "a little more respectful than you might expect."

While the documentary was primarily aimed at the Tufts community, it was also meant to "entertain the public at large," Dupuy said.

The Coolidge Corner Movie Theater is located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline, MA