Main Cast: Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Neil Kadakia, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg, Ashley White
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
MPAA Rating: G
Plot
Eight youngsters vie for one of the most hotly contested academic awards in the United States in this documentary. Every spring, the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee attracts students from all over the United States, and filmmaker Jeff Blitz follows eight promising entrants as they journey to Washington, D.C., in hopes of claiming the national championship and a 10,000-dollar prize. Neil Kadakia, from California, has spent months training for the event with the help of his parents, computer tutorials, and professional coaches. Angela Arenivar grew up in a small Texas town with her parents, who immigrated to America from Mexico; Angela's skills as a speller are self-taught, a remarkable achievement since her parents speak English only with great difficulty. Nupur Lala is determined to go to the finals in the 1999 competition, even though three boys from her Florida Junior High are determined to stop her. Ted Brigham grew up in a rural Missouri community where his intelligence has made him stick out like a sore thumb; both Ted and his teachers hope the National Spelling Bee will give him a chance to prove his gifts to his peers. Ashley White lives in a housing project in Washington, D.C., and has risen to the spelling championships largely through the help of her teachers and her own determination. April DeGideo comes from a low-income family in Pennsylvania and is determined to use the Spelling Bee as a stepping stone to a better life. Emily Stagg comes from a wealthy Connecticut family and manages to squeeze her study for the Spelling Bee in between riding lessons and practicing with her choral group. And Harry Altman, from New Jersey, wavers between joy and agony as he makes his way through the competition. Spellbound won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2003 South by Southwest Film Festival, and received a nomination in the same category at the 2003 Academy Awards. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Though not without a certain homespun charm, director Jeff Blitz's debut documentary chronicling the ultimate overachiever rite of passage -- the spelling bee -- unfortunately isn't above the occasional easy laugh or cheap shot at the expense of the families it chronicles. There's a built-in narrative tension to any nonfiction competition film, and in this respect, Spellbound doesn't disappoint. Smartly, Blitz doesn't suggest that winning is dependent upon a child's socioeconomic status, desire to win, or even his or her raw knowledge. It's a crapshoot as to which one of the kids profiled in Spellbound will be the most successful, even if they themselves blame minor failures on their own inadequacies. That's the most compelling thread in the film: the psychological burden of the perennial teacher's pet. But Blitz allows some of his participants -- parents and kids alike -- to stammer on about geeky hobbies and other irrelevant personal habits to the point where the director's gaze sometimes crosses the line from sympathetic observer to nerd gawker. There's a certain social ineptitude involved with any academic endeavor, but after spending so much time with his subjects, you'd think that Blitz would have confined scenes of it to the beginning of his film instead of far into its last third. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Cast
Harry Altman - himself
Angela Arenivar - herself
Ted Brigham - himself
April DeGideo - herself
Neil Kadakia - himself
Nupur Lala - herself
Emily Stagg - herself
Ashley White - herself
Credit
Jeffrey Blitz - Director, Yana Gorskaya - Editor, Daniel Hulsizer - Composer (Music Score), Jeffrey Blitz - Cinematographer, Jeffrey Blitz - Producer, Sean Welch - Producer, Ronnie Eisen - Producer, Sean Welch - Sound/Sound Designer
Spellbound is a 2002 documentary that was directed by Jeffrey Blitz. The film follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature;[1] Yana Gorskaya's editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary. Spellbound won the Emmy for Cultural/Artistic Programming and Jeffrey Blitz was nominated for directing. In 2008, it was voted one of the "Top 5" documentaries of all-time by the members of the International Documentary Association.
The spellers were Neil Kadakia, Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Harry Altman, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg and Ashley White. As they appear from left to right on the DVD's cover:
Neil Kadakia
Neil (as speller # 139) missed "hellebore" in the bee to get ninth place. Other words Neil spelled include: encephalon, desecration, mercenary, Darjeeling, and hypsometer. Neil now attends a school in California. Before he went to college, he went on a jet ski expedition with his father and his sister. As of three years ago he was working at NASA as an aeronautical engineer.
Ashley White (speller 149) represented The Washington Informer in Washington, DC in the bee. Following Ashley's teenage pregnancy (she was 18) , a marketing consultant who had seen the movie managed to rally support from other viewers of the documentary to help Ashley into Howard University. [1] The proctor of the Washington Informer regional spelling bee featured in the film is Mac McGarry.
April DeGideo
April DeGideo, who lives in Ambler, Pennsylvania, participated in the 1998 and 1999 bees, in the latter of which she placed third, representing the Times Herald of Norristown, Pennsylvania. April graduated in 2007 from New York University with a degree in Journalism.
Harry Altman
Many critics who reviewed Spellbound singled out Altman (speller # 8) as its most interesting "character". Roger Ebert wrote that he "has so many eccentricities that he'd be comic relief in a teenage comedy... He screws his face up into so many shapes while trying to spell a word that it's a wonder the letters can find their way to the surface".[citation needed] He went to the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology in Hackensack, New Jersey. In autumn 2005, he enrolled in the University of Chicago. Harry now attends the University of Michigan Ann Arbor pursuing a PhD in Mathematics.
Angela Arenivar
Angela Arenivar is a former student of Texas A&M University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish in May 2007. Arenivar obtained her Master of Arts degree in Spanish at the University of New Mexico in May 2009. She hopes to become a university-level professor. Arenivar spent the first half of 2006 studying abroad through Texas A&M at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain.
Nupur Lala
Nupur Lala was the champion of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee (as speller # 165), spelling "logorrhea" to win. She entered University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2003 to study brain and cognitive sciences and pre-medical studies. Nupur won the bee against David Lewandowski, a speller from Indiana who misspelled "opsimath."
Ted Brigham
Ted Brigham was attending medical school in Kansas City, Missouri (2007) before passing away in December 2007.[2] From Rolla, Missouri in 1999. Represented the Rolla Daily Record, based in the same town. One of the more notable stories from his experience is the congratulations posted by students on the marquee in front of his high school in which "champ" was misspelled (presumably as an ironic joke) as "chapm". He was speller # 1.
Other notable spellers
George Thampy was speller # 245 in the bee and was mentioned several times within the film. He misspelled "kirtle" as "curtle" for third place, tying with April DeGideo. Thampy eventually won the 2000 national bee.
David Lewandowski finished second place in the spelling bee, spelling "opsimath" as "opsomath". After David's mistake, Nupur spelled "logorrhea" to win the competition.
Allyson Lieberman was originally slated to be featured as one of the spellers in the documentary, but her clips were ultimately left out of the film; the scene involving her can be found in the special features of the DVD. The youngest contestant in the entire 1998 bee, she misspelled "purblind".
Frances Taschuk and Ann Foley are shown in the final set of scenes prior to the last round of the spelling bee. Frances misspells "acoelous" and Ann "quinquevir".
Vinay Krupadev is in a scene involving Harry's mother feeling "sorry for the boy from Texas who got 'yenta'". She was referring to Vinay, and his pronunciation of "yenta" is shown in the film. He eventually spelled it "yente".
Jess Altham was mentioned in a scene by Harry Altman for being a terrific speller and that he was disappointed she didn't make the Nationals.
