Armed Only with a Camera: The Life Death of Brent Renaud | Inside the Frontlines of War Journalism

➡ This summary is about a documentary that follows the life and death of Brent Renan, a journalist who covered dangerous events around the world. The film uses raw footage taken by Brent, showing his experiences in war zones and disaster-stricken areas. It also includes his death, which occurred while he was still filming. The documentary is graphic and intense, but it provides a unique perspective on global tragedies and the risks journalists take to report them.
➡ The text discusses the portrayal of American journalism, particularly through the lens of Brent Renau, a documentary filmmaker who was the first American journalist killed in Ukraine. The speakers express skepticism about the selective and potentially biased nature of the footage shown, suggesting it may not fully represent the reality of the situations covered. They also discuss the emotional impact of the graphic scenes and question whether the documentary serves as propaganda, subtly influencing viewers’ perceptions. The speakers conclude with mixed feelings about the documentary, appreciating the footage but questioning its authenticity and comprehensiveness.
➡ The documentary about Brent Renau’s life and work is criticized for being too short and not providing enough detail about him. Despite his significant contributions to frontline footage, the film only showcases a few impactful clips and rushes through his life story. The critics suggest that a director’s cut or a version created by Renau himself would have been more comprehensive and engaging. They also promote their website and a comic about Stanley Kubrick and the Apollo space missions.

You see lots of dead bodies on this one. Introducing Mainstream Monday’s Paranoid American Sean Chris. This is Under the Docks. We’re back looking at some of the new and some classic hot viral documentaries that normally weird watching old conspiracy documentaries, but that’s on Tuesdays. Monday’s is for mainstream stuff. So, and I guess we’re expanding mainstream to also mean things that just came out this year and have some kind of a buzz about them. And we’ll just review them. We’ll review them conspiracy and alien UFO documentaries. And this one armed only with the camera, the life and death of Brent Renan Renan, Derr.

Say, man, I’m butchered name. So you might want to find like a little French in there. Directed by Brent Renan and Craig Renan. This is an interesting short, easy, very easy watch, like as far as like time wise, like it’s a He’s not the word I would have picked first, but yeah, it’s like people dying the whole time. As soon as you turn it on. And it just follows Brent, Brent Renan’s life. And he was a journalist, photographer, videographer that went around to wars and hot topics where it was dangerous borders.

He has, he’s on the Mexican border. He’s in the Ukraine war. He’s in, I think, Somalia at one point. And it shows raw footage and it does have trigger warnings for some people. Like it is pretty raw. Like I wasn’t expecting it to be as graphic as it was right away. And it’s only 40 minutes. Lighting the course. So in this film, there’s not a lot of talking. There is talking from like eyewitnesses from the events. So it just meshes together a bunch of different video footage that Brent had taken over the years and kind of like made a tribute because they’re kind of like start off right away.

I think at the Mexican border, they show his early lives, where he comes from, who he is. And they want to like paint this picture of like him being heroic, right? It starts off right away. So that’s where like, that’s where my head was at right away. Like, okay, let’s see where this is going. Are you being skeptical? Are you saying he wasn’t a hero? Let me just do a quick spoiler alert. The whole premise, it’s called the life and death of Brent Renau. So I guess they spoil it right in the title.

You know, the dude’s going to die at some point in this documentary. So it’s essentially footage that he captured up until the point where he died that while he was still filming. And then the filming takes over from people that were around him. And then like the brother comes out. So it really is the, like his life and his death that gets kind of captured. You see his dead body. You see lots of dead bodies on this one. A lot, man, in more children than I would have liked to see where it’s pretty graphic and that those scenes.

How many, how many would you have liked to have seen? What’s the exact number? Okay. Technically zero is not a number, but okay. Yeah. I was like, Oh man. Like, you know, cause then you start getting the hard, like it’s very raw footage of like, you’re like, Oh wow. Like one of the thoughts going through my brain watching this, it was like, you know how it was like, Oh, America’s so terrible. I’m like, Hey man, I’m not trying to like Pat USA on the back, but I’m like, some of that footage you’re like, I think this is way worse.

Well, I think, I mean, if, if you go, if you peel back the, the cover all the way on that though, some of those tragedies that are happening elsewhere, like that’s violence. We exported. That was like a conflict that we just exported. Like someone else is going through it. So we don’t have to. And you could even claim, you know, the, the Hades part where the earthquake hit him in for the earthquake machine. We don’t know, man. I’m just saying, let’s go right off the rails. But yeah, see, he goes to Somalia.

He goes to Haiti right after the earthquake. He’s recording people that are trying to sneak from, I think it was like Honduras into the U S like this. Central America countries, like, you know, like Panama and is like, yeah, both of his parents are dead. So he just making this track. He, he goes to, I think like Venezuela at one point. And there’s these, this family, these two kids that are afraid that gang is going to come and kill him. And he just puts himself into the frontline of everything. And he makes this one comment early on that when he would be invited to a cocktail party in Manhattan, that that’s when he would feel scared and freaked out and like not know what to do with himself, but that when he’s on the front line or he’s interviewing people that have just been amputated because of a hurt, like a hurricane or an earthquake, that that’s when he’s like at his most calm.

That’s when he can relax and he doesn’t really freak out. And I think that they claim it’s because he was autistic or something. They didn’t spend a whole lot of time down that angle, but it was basically, he was a recluse when he was with, you know, other Americans in American cities, but then he feels at home when he’s watching tragedy elsewhere. And they even put in the film, I believe it was after maybe a Somalian attack. I think it’s like, no, you behind the camera, the way that you hold that camera, the way that you’re in, it was just like, I get it that that guy said that, but it just seems so rehearsed.

Like you’re like, you’re real skeptical on this one. You’d say, what do you think that this was like a puff piece to cover up a mainstream media reporter? Is that my opinion to just get right to the why I’m so skeptical with I believe this whole film, I think obviously these things happen, but I think the film is to be like, Hey, look how important American journalists are right there. Right now we’re at a all time low on trust with the mainstream media. So I think this is like trying to give you like that feel of like, look, guys, this is the stuff we go through just to give you news.

And people are like, Oh man, they’re American heroes because they even end off in the funeral and the way they send them off. I’m not saying he’s not, it’s incredible footage. Like I was like, wow, this is like an inside view, but the way that it was pushed was that he was a hero in American journalism and he died doing journalism. So like, that’s how you should believe us. Don’t question us, man. Look at what our lives are on the line, man. I don’t know. I don’t know if I got that same take, man.

I feel if anything, I’d make an argument that in the seventies or at least like towards the very tail end of the Vietnam war in particular, that they used to show actual warfare. They used to show bodies. They like all the things that you weren’t expecting to see because they actually had reporters out in the field. And right. And after that conflict, I think the military collectively was like, let’s go dark. Let’s just not show actual wartime footage anymore. So the fact that you even get to see the real after effects of war and like these, these tragedies, a lot of that stuff’s been whitewashed.

You’ll see like a far away shot and you might see like a top down and they’ll pull her out, like some, you know, bodies on the street or something, but it’s really rare to have like completely raw footage from these conflicts. So I mean, I would like, if, if you take it away from this documentary is praising America and American journalists and more like, Hey, here’s this dude that died that was doing some cool stuff. So here’s like a way to maybe show like his best moments that they had caught on camera.

So I got, I got more of that of a feel. If anything, I almost feel like, Hey, if we’re going to honor this dude and he’s done so many great things, how come you’re just giving them 40 minutes to wrap this entire thing up? I’ve seen HBO documentaries that definitely could have been trimmed down. Rarely do I see one. It’s like, man, they could have added a little bit more. Like it says all the footage that he ever got. You’re telling me that the whole thing gets wrapped up in 40 minutes. It felt like they had recorded this just for the funeral.

And they’re like, yeah, someone was like, you should put that into a streaming services. It felt like that to me. Cause you know, you doing a funeral service, you’re going to kind of tighten it up, right? You’re not going to be like two hours. I’m just guessing. I don’t know. But I, I felt that a little bit, but when I’m going off of like the praising, it’s not necessarily just American journalism. It’s like the trusted sources. Right? So I feel like they did show us stuff, but it was like, not just raw footage exactly.

Right. It wasn’t just like, Oh, let’s just see everything. Cause it was still controlled of what you got to see. Cause it was the, you’re not seeing everything that’s happening. Like, I do agree with you. Like when the Vietnam war, like you were seeing gruesome stuff, but they were like, Oh, we’re doing that. Like, right. You can still spin this narrative. Like, look, we’re out there helping them. Like they don’t look, they’re car bombing each other. Like I think it’s just them that certain places that he went to again, like the, the border crisis, I, I, again, maybe that’s just me being skeptical.

And that’s just how I took from my seniors. I’m like, maybe, maybe I got to stop watching loose change and stuff like that. Cause I’m like, yeah, right, bro. Well, he did, he did go to Chicago too. And he made the point that, that there was like 10, I’m going to flub the exact number, but it was like 10 times the amount of deaths that happened in Chicago, then do in Ukraine or in these other war zones that he’s going to where like, you’re like, Oh man, a war zone. I bet people are just dying left and right.

And it’s like, well, actually we could just go to this area of Chicago and it’s just as bad. If not worse. Hidden treasures and overboard moments. I really like, I kind of like let it out in the beginning. Like for me, the hidden treasure is like the footage of like, whether it is edited into a point of where you’re not seeing it all. It is still graphic to the point of where I was like, Oh man, like I’m not really a big bore person. Not like, I just be like, Oh man, I’ll feel bad.

And then they show kids like all like, so it’s like a hidden and overboard because it was like, Oh, that’s crazy that you have all this footage and I’m like, Oh, it’s overboard. Cause I personally don’t like the gore as much. This one’s kind of simple for me. I think that the hidden treasure is just, I guess, knowing that these Renault brothers exist and that, you know, Brent’s dead now. He’s got a brother that’s Craig, I think that’s still continuing on. That was kind of like his wing man, his cameraman for their entire lives.

So the hidden treasure is just seeing some of this footage, knowing that this dude was one of the few actually going out and getting some of the footage, the overboard again, like they just edit it all the way down to as short as you could. I like your, your take, maybe it was a memorial service thing. Maybe it was a small personal memorial and then it just kind of turned into something bigger. I’m not really sure why it was so truncated, why it’s such a short thing. And I guess I can lean conspiratorial on this one.

Cause we don’t really get to hear what Brent thinks about his own footage or the things that he saw, right? Cause he’s dead by the time they start making this thing, he’s already been dead. He caught, he caught a bullet under like the under his neck and it went through the side of his head or something. And he just, I guess he bled out and his cameraman was also like watching him passing in and out and like watching Brent bleed out and wakes up. And there’s a lot of horrific scenes in this documentary.

People are just crying because they just lost someone or, you know, a kid just got hurt. Like it’s really just one traumatic scene after another one, but we don’t get Brent’s take on this. And I do wonder, I bet you Brent saw some stuff, man. Like saw some things that HBO would be like, no, we’re not included. We’re definitely not included in that. So the, the overboard, I guess is just that so much was cut. They just went so hard on here’s the Ukraine conflict. Here’s Haiti. Here’s Somalia. A lot of them were objectively, they’re humanitarian efforts or conflicts in which the U S was a like a treasured alley.

Like we were there because we’re part of the good guys, right? Fighting the evil Russians or some on that. Those cases, I bet you though that Brent was in a lot of conflicts that maybe the U S had more dirt under its fingernails than some of the other ones. Oh, that’s for sure. And I do agree with you that I think like there was, that’s why I think I got conspiratorial is because the box that they were putting in, you’re like, Oh, that’s all this stuff that we’re here. Let us help you.

Let us save the day. But like in a blue lens, right? Like a liberal lens, like where they’re like, look at the border, like these poor people are just trying to, like, you know what I mean? They, the way they pitched it was like always a humanity, even when they’re going to Chicago, they’re like, don’t you see like what the problem is here? Like it’s, it’s again, like this, this more leftist mindset that it, which I understand it’s on HBO, right? It’s eight, it’s on HBO. I got to assume that it’s going to have a little bit of a leftist lean, but I thought that in overall, they just kind of went overboard, like showing too much of some of the footage where they don’t give like the true tell.

Like when the guy’s saying like, Oh, you’re the best cameraman, like I’ve never seen anybody, the way you hold that camera. Like I was like, dude, this is not this stuff. I get it though. That’s why I thought Memorial, right? Cause I’m like, you’re not really showing like some of the real details of what’s going on. You’re just showing the highlights or the moments where you really want to pluck on those heartstrings. I know the exact scene you’re talking about. I totally didn’t take it the way that you’re going at it. Cause the, when I was seeing that was the dude is obviously he’s in the hospital.

I think he just like lost an arm or something like that. Like he’s not having a great week for sure. Whatever happened to this guy. And you can tell that he’s hyped up on either adrenaline or morphine or something because anything other than just moaning and just like wallowing in pain would, would be abnormal for this guy. And then the dude’s like giving them daps and he’s like, you and me brother, like we can change the world. So, you know, he’s high on something, maybe just adrenaline. But I mean, it was a kind of unique scene, but it definitely, as I’m watching it, I’m like, man, what a perfect sound bite for just the ultimate propaganda.

Although again, like this, this particular documentary, I don’t know if someone goes in watching it and comes out and they’re like, man, America’s great. American journalists are great. Uh, I don’t, I don’t necessarily know if that’s the takeaway for me. It was just more like, here’s some cool stuff that this guy did. And well, at least a whitewashed version of it. Well, like, uh, it’s more subconscious, right? Like I’m not thinking that people are going to go watch this and be like, I think it just stays in your subconscious when you hear some of these stories later on.

That’s how I think the propaganda works. Now is they drop little breadcrumbs and people are just following suit as they’re like, Oh man, they’re not thinking like, Oh, they just go with this guy. Brent’s a good guy. He’s showing us stuff that we need to see. But then like, when you watch and you’re like, Oh, Ukraine war, you’re going to automatically lean towards the narrative. Not everybody, but again, I’m a skeptic. I went in this, like, I don’t know what it, what it’s been lately. Maybe I’m just really going after these, uh, viral ones or new ones where I’m, we’re considering mainstream.

I’m like, Oh, here we go. Propaganda. I, so my propaganda lens is automatically on as soon as I start watching these things. Well, maybe rightfully so because the byline for how this movie was marketed. And if you were to like search it online, the byline is an intimate film about a documentary filmmaker, Brent Renau, the first American journalist killed in Ukraine. So you might just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Some name, some guy, Oh, first journalist killed in Ukraine, first American journalist killed in Ukraine, you say. So, I mean, the movie could have also, instead of called the life and death of Brent Renau, it could have just been called the first American journalist killed in Ukraine.

Right. And then I guess that kind of frames the documentary, the way that you fully perceived it. It’s about that time sink or swim. Sink just because I’m sure this dude had a way better footage than, than we get to see in this documentary. It’s so short. Like if you’re really honoring the dude’s entire body of work and you’re saying that he spent his entire life going to these front lines and getting this sick footage, but then you really only get like maybe 10 or 12 impactful clips. And even those like people got hurt, but I don’t feel that the novelty of seeing someone in a hospital room meets the same amount of like, he probably had some really controversial footage.

I bet you if there was like a Brent Renau’s director’s cut, if he knew that he wasn’t going to make it back from Ukraine and he’s like, let me just put together my greatest hits album myself, I’m sure that would have been so much better than whatever we got in this 37 minute sort of fluff piece from HBO. I’m going to give it a sink as well. I mean, the actual footage is kind of cool. Like, I mean, obviously it’s put together. Well, it’s just like you said, it’s too short. And the way they present the story, like you think you’d go more into detail of the guy, like they do briefly, like they rushed through everything.

And like you said, there’s probably so much good footage that you could actually put together. Instead, you kind of just highlight some pieces and maybe that this is the edited edited edited version, right? Maybe there is a real version out there that the brother main that really does it better and does justice. But maybe it went back to HBO and they’re like, lose it. You know what I mean? This, this doesn’t give our message that we want. You know, if the documentary were called something like glimpses of tragedy, that, you know, found footage from Brent Renau or something, then I think I’d give it more of a, I wouldn’t just get like a swim automatically.

It’d have to be a different movie too. But the title alone, the life and death, right? If someone makes a documentary about my life and death, maybe mine would only be 20 minutes too, right? Like I don’t have anything that, that interesting to happen. But to say like this guy’s worth a documentary, here’s his entire life and his death, but really it just focuses on his footage and then his death and the aftermath of his death. But you don’t learn a whole lot about the guy himself. If I had to put a number on it, you maybe get five to seven minutes of his actual backstory and upbringing and the fact that he was a recluse and maybe he was autistic.

And then that’s it. And it’s like, if you’re going to call the actual documentary, the life of blah, you kind of have to go into more detail about the actual life. So, uh, I don’t, this almost felt like someone needed a 40 minute thing to fill between two other movies or like a boxing event. And they were like, crap, we don’t have anything that fits in that slot. Quick. Someone gets something it has, it has that kind of a feel to it. Like an afterthought feel. And I definitely don’t want my death to be a sorrow to prompt.

You know what I mean? That’s a, that’s a fear now, like of, of 20 seconds to like a minute and a half of like, this is his life. And don’t forget, go to kill the mockingbirds.com, paranoid american.com, get you some comics, get you an MK ultra ultimate guide. I mean, you can, there’s tons of stickers, tons of stuff, support, share under the docs on every platform to all friends. Just tell people about it, go to work and be like, Hey man, do you like documentaries? These two guys, they like, they break it down and they tell you if you should watch it or not.

Fun for the whole family. That’s it for us today. Peace. Yeah. Ready for a cosmic conspiracy about Stanley Kubrick, Moonlandings and the CIA? Go visit nasa-comic.com Yeah, go visit nasa-comic.com nasa-comic.com CIA’s biggest con Stanley Kubrick put a song that’s why we’re singing this song about nasa-comic.com Go visit nasa-comic.com Go visit nasa-comic.com Yeah, go visit nasa-comic.com Never a straight answer is a 40-page comic about Stanley Kubrick directing the Apollo space missions Yeah, go visit nasa-comic.com This is the perfect read for comic, Kubrick or conspiracy fans of all ages For more details, visit nasa-comic.com Go visit nasa-comic.com Go visit nasa-comic.com
[tr:trw].