Chick Flick: The Miracle Mike Story (2003)

Farm tragedy turns to carnival comedy in this feature-length documentary, which tells the outlandish (yet true) story of Mike the Headless Chicken, the legendary Colorado-born rooster who, in 1945, cleverly avoided becoming an entree during a misguided axe-swing, and instead survived 18 months--without his head--traveling U.S. carnival circuits until his eventual death in a cheap Arizona motel room. Featured in Life magazine and in Ripley's Believe It or Not, Miracle Mike continues to inspire, appall, and amuse people around the world, most notably during the annual Mike the Headless Chicken Days in Fruita, Colorado. Shot in the style of the Golden Age of comic books, Chick Flick is a real-life Waiting for Guffman in which truth and fiction's struggle for the spotlight raises potent questions about the nature and power of fame and mythology in popular culture.