Eleven Minutes
Directed by Michael Selditch and Rob Tate
At the Quad Cinemas
“I’m not a reality television entertainer!” Jay McCarroll shrieks at one point in the new documentary Eleven Minutes, as he prepares for his first fashion show at Bryant Park.
But if that comment seems to indicate a person entirely out of touch with himself and the world around him, Eleven Minutes does very little to present McCarroll as anything else. Complaining that he’s tired of talking about Project Runway, the designer seems to have forgotten that he followed up that reality TV series with a one-off Bravo special, Project Jay, about his post-Heidi Klum life. And now comes Eleven Minutes, from the same people behind Project Jay.
But McCarroll’s lack of self-awareness doesn’t end with seeing himself as A Designer first and foremost. Repeatedly in Eleven Minutes, we watch him shoot himself in the same foot he’s trying to get in the door of the fashion industry. He seems as equally intent on destrroying his career before it launches as he does on branding himself, frequently screaming over the phone at his publicist Nancy Kane (who has worked without pay for months) or her boss Kelly Cutrone. Alienating the people in charge of seeing that your work gets publicized isn’t exactly the best way to run a start-up business, but McCarroll remains convinced that he knows best, even when it becomes painfully clear that his ideas aren’t in sync with public demand; the most painful moments in Eleven Minutes come when McCarroll and his staff have to deal with buyers who aren’t terribly interested in his efforts at accessible fashion, nevertheless trying to interest them in boring sportswear
Eventually, the film stops being an entertaining look at what goes on behind-the-scenes at one designer’s headquarters prior to Fashion Week (choosing the designs, hiring models, fitting accessories, wrangling with VIP RSVPs) and just becomes frustrating—especially when no one bothers to find out from the shoemaker why he couldn’t deliver his product any sooner than a few minutes before the start of the show. McCarroll has charm and charisma, but as he vetoes almost everyone else’s ideas to follow his own vision, we start to wonder how much an artist should listen to himself over the voices of so many people who have been in the business longer. Surely, no matter the artistic temperament, anyone seriously interested in being successful has to stop and wonder if maybe, just maybe, other people know better. That thought may flash through McCarroll’s mind on occasion, but it never stays long enough to do him any good.
