2003, Documentary
Directed by: Mike Woolf

Just like it sounds, Growin’ a Beard is a documentary about a beard-growing contest. In particular, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Donegal beard-growing contest in dinky Shamrock, Texas. The Donegal beard is a mustache-less style – think leprechauns and the Amish.

Starting just before New Year’s Day in 1997, director Mike Woolf focuses his camera on four longtime residents (and oft-winners), asking their strategies and secrets. A monkey wrench is thrown into the tradition when a young art director from Austin enters on a lark and threatens to usurp the regulars, even though an outsider has never won.

That man, Scotty McAfee, is the subject of the film’s funniest moment, when people who know him compare the ad man to a series of hirsute pop icons, including Grizzly Adams, the original G.I. Joe doll and Jonny Quest guardian Race Bannon.

Thirty minutes is plenty long for this doc. Though pleasant and unthreatening, its numerous shaving scenes grow tiresome and could have been, um, trimmed. The video is jerky at times, but such is to be expected for a no-budget, handheld effort – and Woolf deserves props for not making fun of his subjects. He shows them as they are, which unintentionally depressed me, because I just get easily bummed out thinking about small-town life.

The real reason to check out this DVD is for a bonus short entitled The 72 Oz. Steak, which packs three times the laughs and suspense in a third of the time. At the famed Big Texan in Amarillo, a friend of Woolf’s attempts to eat the titular object – plus potato, salad, shrimp cocktail and dinner roll – in an hour in order to avoid paying $50 for it. Who knew four pounds of meat could be so enthralling? I would have loved to see this as the main feature and Growin’ a Beard as the supplement.

Also included is a bit on How Not to Make a Documentary and footage from the film’s Austin and Shamrock premieres. The DVD package also contains a second disc, being a soundtrack CD with music performed by The Gourds. Your enjoyment of that hinges completely on your liking for Irish-tinged, banjo-and-fiddle laden music about beards.

Review by Rod Lott.