I've been trying to get an MMA podcast off the ground for the better part of a year.  With that said, I would have no problem doing occasional special release podcasts under the DiF banner.  More than that, I'd love to hear the individual podcasts of my fellow DiF'ers.

For example, I'm not a VFX guy, but I listened the SHIT out of Teague, Ryan's and Dorkman's VFX union podcast because I found those guys interesting.  I think a two-three man podcast centered around a castmembers specialty is a good thing.  I'd love to hear Trey and Brian talk space.  Brian, as an emerging editor himself, could talk Editing with me.  Mike and I could talk fights, etc.  I'm open and interested in that.

Doug was dating my friend Erika at the time.  This was around 2000 or so.  She's an actress as well, so when they'd hang out with us, I was one of her few non actor friends, and therefore one of the few to be NOT blatantly star fucking him.  While everyone else was bugging him about acting tips or breaking in, I would just shoot the shit with him, and he genuinely loved documentaries, so we had plenty to talk about.  He was a good dude....I'm truly perplexed by this marriage business.   Also, I have a really hard time believing she's 16.

Green Mile fun fact...

I used to be friends with Doug Hutchison who played Percy.....

.....and also just married a chick 35 years his junior.

One of my major gripes is the fact that there is no tracks to manage.  I routinely export OMF's and won't be able to.  Also, when we are working with several hundreds of hours of footage on a standard show, and have to downres our offline cut, then how am I supposed to upres and reconnect media?  For every thingI mentioned there's several more that I didn't.

Apple's reaction, and that of appologist bloggers, has been either "FCPx DOES do that thing you're talking about, only in a different and ore convoluted way," or "You can get a third party patch/device to do that thing."  Neither of those answers is acceptable.

My new gig is on Avid.  This is my first time working on Avid in 2 years and my first on Media Composer 5.5.  I think as long as Avid supports multicam and OMF and FCP does not, its clear where companies are going to go.  I'm not sure if Premiere supports multicam, but for TV, that is huge.  When FCP 5 debuted its multicam function, THAT was what caused most pro shops to switch over. 

I cut my doc on premiere 5.1 back in 2000 and it was a nightmare.  I've owned versions since then, and I did play around with the version that can be found in CS5 and thinking it wasn't bad.  I know for you after effects peeps, you can edit AE projects in the timeline.  While I'm sure that's handy, it rarely is something needed in a TV or Film studio's workflow since they have separate graphics departments.  But I see this as an opportunity for Avid to shake loose its complacency and reclaim what was once theirs.  I learned on Avid and have always preferred its interface, if not its antiquated break out boxes.  But with 5.5 you don't need that anymore.

I still have a big dumb place in my heart for Hot Rod

I like your attempt at vivisecting the documentary form, and you admit its not an exact science.  I would say there are no inherit brands of doc's, only genre's.  The real truth is that anytime you start editing the words of something somebody says, you are altering the reality.  The degree to which you do it is what makes the difference between KB's "The Civil War" and "Bowling for Columbine."  Its important to remember that even with "Essay," type docs that its not unmitigated truth.  There are several historians who take umbrage to KB's work, even though there is no manipulation immediately apparent.

All the Essay's I wrote in HS and college weren't devoid of opinion or perspective.  In fact, they depended on it.  Having an objective point of view, a voice, is necessary and I would dare say unavoidable.  How heavy the hand is with the filmmaker's opinion is what separates an investigation into something (an event, person, subject, etc) versus a polemic (Im Michael Moore and this is why I'm right!). 

So, I would breakdown documentary genre's into as such:

Observational:
Observing a person or an event for a set period of time, exploring ideas, themes, and feelings, while following a character, or characters, arc.  Usually told in real time, as it was filmed.
Hoop Dreams
Twist of Faith
Overnight
Eileen: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Paradise Lost
The Staircase
Confessions of a Superhero
King of Kong
Woodstock
The War Room
E-Dreams

Reflective First Person
A doc about a person, place, or event that was in the past, told from the perspective of the subject in question, or those directly involved with it/them.  Can use archive footage or recreations to elucidate the past.
The Brandon Teena Story
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Capturing the Friedmans
Hearts of Darkness
The Fog of War
Standard Operating Procedure
Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room.
Dear Zachary
Party Monster
Z Channel
We Live in Public
Girl 27
When the Levees Broke
Waking Sleeping Beauty
Kurt and Courtney

Reflective Third Person
Covering a person, place, or event in the past but completely objective in that no one directly involved participated.
The Civil War
Baseball
Cropsey
Jazz
Waco: Rules of Engagement
most historical documentaries

Biographical
Covering one person or group of persons lives.  Story is second to character as there is not always a clear arc that a storyline takes place over.  Rather, this is just
The Kid Stays in the Picture
Mr. Death
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
The Cruise
The Boys
Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Subculture immersion
Investigating a sub culture, meeting usually a cast of characters that expose a movement or way of life to the audience.
American Pimp
Wasteland
Pumping Iron
Murderball
Trekkies
Vernon, Florida
Revolution OS
The Bridge

Preset Hypothesis
Hypothesis is tested with a predetermined time limit, objective, or gimmick to structure the ideas it wishes to explore
Super Size Me
My Date with Drew
King Corn
Super High Me

Polemic
An opinion has been determined on a subject and other viewpoints have been excluded
Who Killed The Electric Car
Expelled
The Corporation
Faranheit 9/11

That's very rough, and theres a few that qualify for two catagories and others that dont fit easily into any of them.  But that's a bit more clinical way to look at it.

Very easy.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Here's mine:

"Oxygen Conveyance Cell Competition"

Great example of preference when it comes to shlock.  I saw the Shoot Em Up panel at Comic Con and was convinced I was going to love it, then I actually saw it.  I love when movies don't give a fuck and do it right.  Most of Van Damme's filmography speaks to this.  But Shoot Em Up was too cute by half and just a hair to the side of my line of demarcation of fun crap to just crap.  That line is different for everyone.  I absolutely adore Hot Rod, but understand it doesn't work for most.

The Theatrical cut of Once Upon a Time in America has pretty bad hackery.  That one was infamous for the film being locked, and then the studio had the Assistant Editor for Police Academy 2 go in and cut time out.

Watching the 743 versions of Blade Runner you can get a real sense of just how much things had been shifted around.  And there's a schlocky 60's film called, "The Girl With the Gold Boots,"
(no, NOT a Lisbeth Salander prequel) that was featured on an MST3K collection I own.  It's a wide shot of two people sitting at a coffee table eating breakfast conversing when their friend, no shit, jump cuts into existence.  Servo responds with a hilarously appropriate, "I'M HERE!!!" but really, it needs no added joke.

Most of the DiF'ers have talked about the original impact Star Wars had on us.  That can't really be overstated. 

Many movies had an influence on me, but in terms of making me say, "Oh, movies can do that?"  there's three and they impacted me in very different ways.

The first was The Dark Crystal.  I knew Henson had done it, but that movie was the first to really uncork my imagination and it was unlike anything I had ever known.  Granted, I was 5.

One was Midnight Cowboy.  You had these incredibly flawed characters that were just shattered reflections of America in the 70's.  I saw it at age 15 and it redefined what a movie could of in terms of tone, rhythm, and how characters are supposed to relate to one another.  Also, first movie where I actually cried at the end.

Lastly, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but Clerks.  This was the first movie where the characters talked like me and my friends, cared about the same things as we did, and had the same feelings I was feeling at the time.  I had drawn this concrete line of demarcation in my mind about Classic Cinema and the films of today.  Most modern, consumer film may have used vocabulary similar to mine, but I rarely connected to the themes and ideas.  Classic Cinema often had a theme that was timeless, but it had the baggage of its era, so it worked better as allegory.  Clerks was one that felt modern and fresh, but relevant to what my experiences were and about themes I identified with.  Its not a perfect film, and Smith is not a perfect filmmaker, but Clerks hit me at that perfect time.

^ Dorkman just gave birth to his baby, and named it TEH CORRECT.