Also no longer on the sponsorship payroll are great American hopes like golfer Tiger Woods and all those noble heroes who work in movies—GM will no longer funnel money, like Jane Fonda to the Vietcong, to the Academy Awards. Those two entities, though, can probably bounce back with their remaining kajillions intact. Burns, on the other hand, relied pretty heavily on GM's 35% stake in each of his films (like The Civl War and Jazz), and benefited in goodwill and prestige from the educational outreach the automotive manufacturer coordinated for each premiere.

A GM spokesperson keeps their reasoning short and simple:

We've been proud to be associated with Ken's work over the years, as he is certainly the 'gold standard' of documentary filmmaking. But the company's financial crisis has forced GM to rein in such spending.

Were this a Burns film (which generally air on PBS), this would be the point where the camera pans across the spokesperson's letter or email or whatever, while Joan Allen reads it aloud. The folksy music would swell or dip, and we'd get a great, choked-up feeling in our chests.

Much the same feeling Rick Wagoner gets when he looks at his bonus checks. As read to him, at great expense, by Joan Allen.

We hope they enjoyed the goodwill, because we're also hearing that the folks overseeing next week's GOP Convention in Minneapolis may do things a little differently:

Late Monday night three videographers from the New York-based Glass Bead Collective were detained by Minneapolis police officers, who spent about an hour questioning them and searching their belongings. In the end, they were released without charges, but they say officers confiscated a number of personal belongings, including their video and computer equipment, cell phones and clothing. ...

[P]olice asserted that "they were allowed to conduct the search and seizure under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security due to security risks leading up to the Republican National Convention." (The police report obtained by Daily Planet lists an unspecified "Homeland Security Offense.") The videographers had been walking by a railroad, and Daily Planet reports that police were seeking a warrant to search the items for evidence of trespassing in a railroad yard, a misdemeanor offense, but a lawyer tells us all their belongings have been returned, except for some cash and [a driver's] license.

"Except for some cash"? A documentarian actually had cash? On her person?!? And they let her go? Stay indoors, Minneapolis! Suspect is loose!

[Photo credit: indieWIRE]

• Filmmakers Descend Upon DNC [indieWIRE]
• Videographers Accuse Minneapolis Police of Illegal Search and Seizure [Gothamist]

Hence today's fairly seismic introduction of SnagFilms — Leonsis's own marketplace for a world that some think may have passed the documentary by. He isn't taking any chances, though, buying the film news outlet indieWIRE just in case and putting upwards of 700 feature docs under contract before today's launch. And suddenly, Leonsis's change has a whole new batch of industry careers at stake.

"Most of these films are created with a double-bottom-line in mind," Leonsis told us in a conversation today. "You want to activate discussion, and you want to activate charitable giving." He calls it "filmanthropy," and SnagFilms is intended to spur more by allowing bloggers and other Web publishers to embed full-length docs. Leonsis likens it to a theatrical model writ large, with 90 seconds of advertising per hour (sold by AOL, natch) generating revenue that Snag splits 50-50 with the filmmakers.

Except, of course, even bigger fish than Leonsis have tried and failed to monetize online video. And docs are proven box-office poison, with everyone from Oscar-winners Errol Morris and Alex Gibney to, of course, Leonsis himself, taking baths on acclaimed films in the last year. Leonsis acknowledged that despite current programming that includes Super Size Me and the Sundance hit Dig!, the majority of SnagFilms titles will come from distribution libraries on the "short end of the long tail" as well as fest-circuit faves that may not have made it into theatrical release. "We're a viable new window for a lot of films that are laying there collecting dust," he said.

Hardly music to advertisers' ears, right? Enter indieWIRE (where, full disclosure, this author interned for one grad-school semester in 2004), the influential 12-year-old Web site featuring news, blogs and social networking components for the indie film community. "While the market is going to have to develop, I do believe that some of their films ... suffer from limited availability," iW co-founder and editor-in-chief Eugene Hernandez explained to us earlier. "And by connecting those films to the causes that people care about, I think Ted has hit on something unique."

And IndieWIRE is key to that connection, averaging around 500,000 unique visits per month and hosting nearly 11,000 members on its networking site indieLOOP. Meanwhile, iW gets an unspecified bump in resources for covering a niche it has almost entirely to itself — which may or may not emphasize SnagFilms' core product. The Hollywood Reporter placed the sale at under $1 million, though, provoking concern among territorial indie circles that indieWIRE is anything but, or worse yet, that Leonsis bought a house organ for a song.

Leonsis and Hernandez reject the claim outright, though one can sense the latter has lost more than a little sleep over it. "We put 12 years into this, and we didn't build this brand to undermine the integrity developed over the years." Hernandez said. "But at the same time, [I] wanted to find a partner. We almost sold the company a few times in recent years and in every single instance, if we had done the deal we could have been compromised or the acquirer is now out of business. ... I know that people will call us on it if we fuck up."

So: Grand experiment? Genre dumping ground? Either way, for better or worse (if still not for good) the doc is in.

The documentary version, which came out last year, tells the story of Burt and Linda (pictured above, with Klores on left), a New York couple who are straight up crazy. Why? Because Burt was so in love with Linda, he hired goons to throw acid in her face after she broke up with him. And she married him anyways! And they're both still together and acting crazy to this day! I imagine the fictional version can't be any crazier than the real story. Which was—as advertised—crazy. Trailer for the Klores documentary is below:

[Variety. Pic via NY Mag]

After all, both the trailer streaming over the doc's Web site and Billboard's own review confirm it: "A distribution deal hasn't yet been inked, but the teaser clip [features] onstage footage and such amusing backstage segments as Kilmister testing out a bass amp at deafening volume and telling dirty jokes." The hell with it — make it two films with Benicio Del Toro as Lemmy and a sack lunch with beer during intermission when it premieres at Cannes '09. Distributors love that shit! Oh, wait.

• Lemmy Kilmister subject of planned docu [Billboard via THR]

The series, which began airing on Monday night, puts its focus on the years between the advent of the birth control pill in 1960 and the time of the Reagan administration's first public acknowledgment of the AIDS crisis in 1987. Much like TDY, the show's narrative sweep is driven by interviews with key observers of the sexual revolution, including influential participants (Hugh Hefner, Susan Brownmiller, Helen Gurley Brown) and savvy cultural critics (David Allyn, Gay Talese). And although the timeframe the doc covers mirrors that of TDY, it diverges from the way that series was structured in that each episode does not revolve around the activities of a particular decade. As the series' Executive Producer Brad Abramson told Defamer, "There's so many more threads here. The Drug Years was more of a straight ahead story. Here, we have the story of sexual liberation, the story of gay rights and feminism, and the challenge was how we could do all that stuff and keep it together."

"Sex is one of those subjects where people have wildly divergent notions of what the 'important' stories are, relative to other stories," Torgoff added. While that may be true, the series is successful at tackling a broad swath of topics in a manner that is both smart and entertaining. It traces the evolution of Americans' attitudes toward sex from '50s era sexual repression through the "free love" Sixties and concludes with the hedonistic "Me Decade" that was the 1970s and its aftermath. But while the story is largely driven by talking heads, the manner in which the episodes are scored using both music and wonderous archival footage helps this doc remain compelling throughout its four-hour runtime.

And while the series concludes in the Reagan era, the creators of the series readily acknowledge that our culture continues to grapple with issues pertaining to sex to this day. And while the media's fascination with sex has not slowed, the manner in which the stories are covered certainly have. "In terms of coverage, it feels a lot more cynical and hypocritical these days," Abramson explained. "Be it Dateline or whoever, they will do a story on the latest outrage while they are laughing all the way to the bank. It allows them to 'tut-tut' and have some distance."

Some critics have argued that the show presents a biased and left-skewing perspective on the sexual revolution, the creators are quick to point out that it's not for a lack of trying. As Torgoff told us, "For the record, let me just say, that we contacted numbers of the most prominent conservative pundits and commentators in this nation — like James Dobson of Focus On The Family — and they did not want to participate. I think that they have their own agenda and are not interested in engaging in a debate on the subject."

That said, plenty did come to talk. In particular, Hugh Hefner gave one of the more extensive (and, frankly, more lucid) interviews he has given in a number of years in this series. And we can't forget Danny Glover, whose anecdotes about the Haight-Ashbury scene will forever change the way you think about Sergeant Roger Murtaugh.

And although you may have already missed the first two installments of the series, the series continues through Thursday night (and, because it's Vh1, you know you'll end up watching a four-hour marathon while you're hung over on a Saturday afternoon in the not too distant future). If you loved The Drug Years as much as we did, we have zero doubts that you'll be disappointed in this doc that's equal parts entertaining and educational.

• Sex: The Revolution [Vh1]

HBO Documentary Films purchased Wanted and Desired for $1 million out of Sundance, planning a cable premiere and a DVD release — but no theatrical run. Except that to qualify for an Oscar, you have to screen "for a minimum of seven days in both Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan." We don't know what to tell you about Los Angeles, but we know now — thanks to an eagle-eye who pointed out the microscopic newspaper ad above — that HBO is protecting its audience for the June 9 cable premiere and keeping its Oscar hopes alive by dumping it in the farthest reaches of Upper Manhattan for the bare minimum two afternoon screenings per day.

An HBO rep contacted by Defamer had no word on Los Angeles screening location or dates, so we're not sure if you've missed it already or not. Check your local listings, we suppose. In any case, we know docs are a tough sell these days, but either way: This isn't exactly the kind of treatment supposedly Oscar-worthy films deserve, is it?

UPDATE: A resourceful tipster sends word that Wanted and Desired is in fact currently screening in Pasadena at the Laemmle One Colorado through April 3 at the convenient hours of 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.