Documentary Review: 'My Life Over the Top'

The documentary My Life Over the Top shares a lot in common with the last documentary I reviewed, Blind and Battered: The Story of a Blind Kingpin. In addition to being directed by Curtis Elerson and co-written by Elerson and Ben Gillespie, both documentaries chronicle the life of a well-known, high-rolling criminal. While the subject of Blind and Battered (Mac Wayne) was primarily a drug dealer, My Life Over the Top follows the now-retired pimp Ray Virgil Fairley who also dabbled in drug dealing. When it comes to quality, however, these documentaries are night and day. While Blind and Battered was a solid documentary that brought humanizing nuance to Mac Wayne without glorifying his criminal actions, My Life Over the Top lacks that nuance and appears hellbent on glamorizing Ray Virgil Fairley's illicit profession.

Before going into the problems that ultimately wrecked this documentary, there is one positive that My Life Over the Top shares with Blind and Battered: a charming lead. Putting aside the ramifications of his career, Ray Virgil Fairley has an easygoing and likable air to him. Despite many of the things he says being disagreeable at best and disgusting at worst, Fairley exhibits an attitude that makes it understandable why he would become so influential in his work and have so many people rallied behind him and singing his praises. Fairley's charisma easily makes his interviews the most enjoyable parts of the documentary, even if it ends up being a double edged sword.

Unfortunately, Fairley's charm is the only thing compelling about My Life Over the Top that might keep viewers tuned in. While Blind and Battered highlighted Mac Wayne's troubled past and how it led to the less-than-honorable choices he made later in life, My Life Over the Top seems less interested in exploring who Fairley is and how he got involved in the pimp life than it is in exploring the "trappings" of that life. The most we learn about Fairley's early life is that he grew up in poverty, and after that, we're only treated to vague "he's been through some rough stuff" statements from his associates. This proves to be a fatal error for My Life Over the Top, as since we're not given the chance to connect with Fairley, any sense of understanding the documentary tries to make us feel for him collapses under the weight of his problematic work and attitudes.

Those attitudes mainly involve the view Fairley appears to have for the women working for him as prostitutes. While there are a handful of female colleagues of Fairley's that tell us he's a good man who cares for the women in his employ, the casually degrading way he speaks of them in his interviews call this into question. Two specific incidents especially make these claims of Fairley's care for the girls employed to him feel disingenuous. One moment has Fairley outright declaring he doesn't want any women "calling the shots" in his business, and the other poses the disturbing implication that he has no problem with his prostitutes being beaten by customers. For all the charm he brings through his screen presence, such blatantly misogynistic attitudes are sure to make My Life Over the Top a hard--or even impossible--watch for many to stomach.

(The fact that the ramifications of Fairley's profession are largely ignored makes the documentary's attempts to tie the illegalization of prostitution to racism more than a little insulting. While racism very likely had a hand in the law being made, this brief segment of the documentary still says nothing about the many negative consequences prostitutes face in their line of work--consequences that do much more to harm marginalized minorities than help)

My Life Over the Top also has problems on an aesthetic level. Like Blind and Battered, the background music sometimes overpowers the audio of the interviews, with some interviews taking place on the streets being painful to listen to due to the blaring background noise of traffic. The low budget is also much more noticeable than Blind and Battered, with some moments near the end of the documentary giving off the feel of a hurriedly-put-together PowerPoint presentation. Most damning of all of the documentary's faults, however, is My Life Over the Top's horrific pacing. Several scenes drag out longer than necessary, and with many such scenes consisting only of Fairley's colleagues talking about how great a guy he is and boasting of his pimp-related escapades, it's dull at best and insulting at worst.

While we get snippets of proof that there is some humanity to be found within Ray Virgil Fairley (his advising youth not to get into the pimp game, the house he bought to essentially house friends in need), it's not enough to offset the glamorization of Fairley's crimes and the casual sexism he displays regarding the women employed to him. Instead of being the troubled but morbidly inspiring figure that Blind and Battered allowed Mac Wayne to emerge as, Fairley just comes across as a suave criminal who only has kindness and generosity to give to those he considers worthy friends.

Overall, it's hard to tell what My Life Over the Top was aiming for as a documentary. With the tagline, "It's going to cost you something", and the opening line of the film implying we would be learning about what brought Fairley into the pimp life, you would assume the documentary would explore Fairley's life story and the inherent negative consequences of his illegal actions. But instead, My Life Over the Top seems dedicated to painting Fairley as a stand-up guy, despite the evidence to the contrary. Add to that the pace that will have your mind frequently wandering, and you have a documentary that only has its charismatic-despite-his-toxic-attitudes leading man to provide salvation. Since this documentary came out four years before Blind and Battered, one can assume Curtis Elerson and Ben Gillespie learned from their mistakes from this Unfortunate-Implication-ridden mess.

Score: 2 out of 10 Cadillacs.