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Featuring often-graphic operating-room footage, home
videos, personal "before" and "after" photos, and interviews
with patients' doctors and lawyers, Plastic Disasters is a graphic, disturbing look at the dark side of the
typically American notion that medicine can make
everyone look beautiful, this HBO Documentary Films
presentation follows three people - two women, one
man - who are recovering from disastrous plastic
surgeries.
Lucille, whose "plastic surgery journey"
includes collagen injections, two facelifts and a nose job,
believes her cosmetic surgeon performed her nose job
too soon after her first facelift, causing her skin to swell
and then sag, which made her look 20 years older and,
she says, left her with problems breathing and
swallowing. Mona, whose bowel was punctured during a
routine liposuction procedure, sustained an infection that
led to more surgeries and persistent bed sores that
wouldn't heal. Eventually, both of her legs had to be
amputated. And Tony, who wanted to have a nose job
because he thought it would make him look younger,
ended up damaging his nasal bones during the
procedure; he has since had four additional surgeries to
correct the problem.
Though plastic surgery is widely used today for non-
essential cosmetic reasons, we learn that, in fact, it
evolved out of necessity. One of the doctors interviewed
in the film explains that the origins of plastic surgery can
be traced back to the First World War, when many
soldiers suffered gunshot wounds to the face. Doctors
began to recognize that these horrible disfigurements,
which often made the men social outcasts, could be just
as devastating as having a serious illness, and
developed innovative techniques to reconstruct the face.
After the 1970s, when breast implants were introduced
and plastic surgeons started advertising, cosmetic
surgery took a steep upward trajectory. Today, we
learn that "Over 9,000,000 cosmetic surgeries are
performed each year in the United States." What's
rarely advertised is the chance of something going
wrong: "The total number of medical complications is
not a matter of public record."
Plastic Disasters was produced and directed by Kate
Davis and David Heilbroner, who last collaborated on
HBO's 2004 documentary Jockey, which won an Emmy®
Award for Outstanding Directing for Non-Fiction Programming (Davis). Davis also
produced, directed and edited HBO's Southern Comfort,
which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance
Film Festival and other prizes worldwide. The team's
recent efforts include Pucker Up: The Fine Art of
Whistling, and Scopes: The Battle Over America's Soul
(for the History Channel's upcoming series 10 Days that
Unexpectedly Changed America).
Directed and Produced by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner; Associate Producer: Nancy
Stanton Knox; Music Composed by Gary Lionelli; Sound Recorded by
David Heilbroner and Nancy Stanton Knox; Field Producer: Erika Hahn;
Edited by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner. For HBO: Coordinating
Producer: Greg Rhem; Supervising Producer: Lisa Heller; Executive
Producer: Sheila Nevins.
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