Just like it sounds, Growin’ a Beard is a documentary about a beard-growing contest. In particular, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Donegal beard-growing contest in dinky Shamrock, Texas. The Donegal beard is a mustache-less style — think leprechauns and the Amish. Starting just before New Year’s Day in 1997, director Mike Woolf focuses his camera on four longtime residents (and oft-winners), asking their strategies and secrets. A monkey wrench is thrown into the tradition when a young art director from Austin enters on a lark and threatens to usurp the regulars, even though an outsider has never won.
That man, Scotty McAfee, is the subject of the film’s funniest moment, when people who know him compare the ad man to a series of hirsute pop icons, including Grizzly Adams, the original G.I. Joe doll and Jonny Quest guardian Race Bannon.
Thirty minutes is plenty long for this doc. Although pleasant and unthreatening, its numerous shaving scenes grow tiresome and could have been, um, trimmed. The video is jerky at times, but such is to be expected for a no-budget, handheld effort — and Woolf deserves props for not making fun of his subjects. He shows them as they are, which unintentionally depressed me, because I get easily bummed out thinking about small-town life.
The real reason to check out this DVD is for a bonus short titled The 72 Oz. Steak, which packs three times the laughs and suspense in a third of the time. At the famed Big Texan in Amarillo, a friend of Woolf’s attempts to eat the titular object — plus potato, salad, shrimp cocktail and dinner roll — in an hour in order to avoid paying $50 for it. Who knew four pounds of meat could be so enthralling? —Rod Lott
Speaking of poop, Treadwell is shown touching a fresh, steaming pile because he thinks it’s beautiful it came from the butt of his beloved Wendy. If you think that’s weird, wait until he sheds tears over a dead bee. Yes, there’s something that wasn’t right with the man; apparently, he drank too many brain cells away to think he had forged some relationship with them that they understood his words. He’s like 
It’s this material, most of which is spoken by one of Bugs’ papas, Bob Clampett, that generated some hurt feelings when this film was released. Co-creators Avery and Friz Freleng are also interviewed, and while Clampett had complimentary things to say about Chuck Jones, Jones — who could nurse a grudge like Silas Marner could nurse a nickel — accused Clampett of being a credit hog. The thing is, when this picture was made, almost everyone from the days of classic animation was looking for credit for the work he’d done for hire in the 1930s-1950s, so a lot of exaggeration was going around. 
Many of the film’s visuals are derived from period photos taken by Charles Van Schaik, including a lot of children in their coffins, and the narration by Ian Holm comes entirely from newspaper articles and obituaries of the time. Many of the incidents are re-created using actors. 
Which is a shame because there are several interesting points raised in the film. Especially intriguing is the question of whether or not any act can be considered truly consensual once money is added into the equation. In one interview, a model admits a scene she took part in could be considered rape, but she let it to continue and appeared in several more after it, because the money she earned allowed her to go on frivolous shopping sprees.