Their inspiration owes less to traditional journalistic notions of objectivity and more to such pioneering documentarians as RobertFlaherty, who produced the 1920s classic Nanook of the North after spending years with his Eskimo subjects.
As a precocious 14-year-old on holiday from school in England, young Leacock filmed the life story of a banana, all the way from dry soil to boxed crate, edited the results Russian-style with astonishing brio and sent them to RobertFlaherty, the leading American documentary maker of the day.