biodoc

KURT VONNEGUT; UNSTUCK IN TIME: when tragedy begets humor

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Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” Review – Music City Drive-In
Photo caption: Filmmaker Robert Weide and Kurt Vonnegut in KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is an uncommonly rich biodoc of the social critic/humorist/philosopher Kurt Vonnegut. Most importantly, there’s a heavy dose of Vonnegut himself, which is very entertaining because Vonnegut was so damn funny.

All of the Vonnegut is because filmmaker Robert Weide, early in his career, began to make this documentary of his literary hero, with Vonnegut’s participation. The film had to be paused and restarted several times, mostly due to the usual indie film obstacle of funding. Finally, Weide became very successful as the producer and director of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and didn’t have the time to finish. As a result, Weide collected hours of filmed interviews with Vonnegut in different decades.

Over the years, Weide and Vonnegut developed a personal friendship that facilitated even more access and allowed Vonnegut to be even more forthcoming.. Weide filmed Vonnegut in visits to the homes in which he had pivotal experiences (including the one where he found his mother after her suicide on Mother’s Day).

In Unstuck in Time, Weide adds lots of file footage and interviews with all of Vonnegut’s kids (he sired three and raised his sister’s four sons).

(Incidentally, Vonnegut’s hometown is Indianapolis, which has embraced him posthumously to the extent there is a multi-story Vonnegut mural in downtown Indy.)

Vonnegut’s anti-war attitude came out of his especially horrific experiences in WWII, and he had his share of peacetime family tragedies. But I need to emphasize that Unstuck in Time is anything but grim because of Vonnegut’s humor. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is in some art house theaters and streaming on Amazon and AppleTV.

LISTENING TO KENNY G: derision, devotion and a hard-working guy

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LISTENING TO KENNY G. Courtesy of HBO.

Listening to Kenny G is director Penny Lane’s surprisingly revelatory biodoc of smooth jazz icon Kenny G. Lane chose Kenny G as a subject to focus on the dramatic and passionate conflict of opinion about his music. Kenny G has sold over 75 million albums and has millions of fans, many of whom have gotten married to his music. The consensus of music critics and academics, however, is that his music is insipid, shallow, commercial crap.

It turns out that Kenny G and his critics may disagree about whether it is Good Music or Bad Music, but not on the underlying facts that Kenny G isn’t trying to challenge listeners, to express ideas or to engage in any cultural conversation. He is just trying to be very technically proficient and to make people feel good, especially relaxed and romantic.

We spend a lot of time with Kenny G, a nice guy who is very comfortable in his skin. He doesn’t show the least bit of bitterness toward those who spew torrents of bile at his work. Kenny G, who comes from the any publicity is good publicity school of public relations, is the perfect subject for a documentary film, very accessible, open and transparent. What you see is what you get. And he gladly points out the moments that he got lucky.

Listening to Kenny G works – even if you have zero interest in Kenny G – because of the Penny Lane’s imaginative approach. Lane (Our Nixon, Hail Satan?, NUTS!) has become one our funniest and most trenchant documentarians. Just watch the faces of the critics as they try to express, in a socially acceptable way, their views of Kenny G’s music.

Near the beginning, Lane asks Kenny G what he loves about music and gets this UNEXPECTED answer: “I don’t know if I love music that much. When I listen to music, I think about the musicians and I just think about what it takes to make that music and how much they had to practice.”

What Kenny G DOES love is doing something very well. His need to be the very best, without a bit of self-consciousness, drives him to work relentlessly at his skill on the saxophone – and at golf and aviation.

And here’s something I didn’t know: Kenny G’s Going Home from the Kenny G Live album has become the unofficial national closing song for businesses in China; every day, the song is looped over and over for the final half hour or so that businesses are open.

Listening to Kenny G is streaming on HBO. I highly recommend the 32-minute interview with director Penny Lane in HBO’s Extra Features.

JULIA: cooking right through the glass ceiling

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Photo caption: Julia Child in JULIA. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The charming documentary Julia is an affectionate but clear-eyed portrait of the iconic Julia Child. Child became a best-selling author and TV star in her fifties; besides outlining her importance, Julia tells the unlikely story of how she got to that point.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects to Julia Child was how she broke through every expectation of her gender, class and upbringing. She was liberated by WW II, which gave her the chance to reject the societal limitations of her background.

To mark her impact, Julia shows us both pre-Julia educational TV and pre-Julia American cuisine (think TV dinners and jello salad).

Julia is very well-sourced and based on no fewer than THREE books. We get to hear from some of Julia’s family and friends, and a slew of celebrity chefs.

Julia highlights Julia Child’s life-changing first French meal – sole meunière at La Couronne in Rouen. Through TripAdvisor, I found the restaurant online, and it still offers the dish on a Julia Child menu.

Julia was directed by Julia Cohen and Betsy West, the team behind the excellent Ruth Bader Ginsberg biodoc RBG. Julia is now playing in theaters.

KING OF COOL: penetrating the unknowable

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Photo caption: Dean Martin in KING OF COOL. Courtesy of Turner Classic Movies.

Turner Classic Movies has premiered the Dean Martin documentary King of Cool, and it’s coming back to TCM on November 26. King of Cool is filled with insight into an icon who was extremely successful at being unknowable.

Dean Martin used his charm to mask his detachment. Universally beloved, his internal life was still never understood by his closest friends and colleagues – and even by his family.

Director Tom Donohoe and producer Ilan Arboleda, who had teamed for the essential filmmaking doc Casting By, faced this challenge – how does one create a biodoc on an enigma? Donohoe and Arboleda turned to the device from Citizen Kane – what was the “Rosebud” that drove and explained Dean Martin? (There’s one very fitting answer to that question in King of Cool.)

Superbly sourced, we get to hear from Martin’s closest associates, plus friends and co-workers like Bob Newhart, Angie Dickinson, Norman Lear, Carol Burnett, Barbara Rush, Florence Henderson, Lainie Kazan, Tommy Tune, Frankie Avalon and Dick Cavett,. The clearest – and most poignant – testimonies come from Martin’s daughter Deana Martin and Jerry Lewis’ son Scotty Lewis.

Despite Martin’s unknowability, King of Cool reveals a lot, including what Dino was really drinking on stage in his nightclub act, his close friendship with Montgomery Clift, and his rebuke of the JFK inauguration. There’s a wonderful firsthand account of his hosting big Hollywood parties and sneaking out to watch TV. We also get reading from Mark Rudman’s 2002 poem about Martin, The Secretary of Alcohol and hear how no less than Elvis Presley described Martin as “King of Cool”.

On a personal note, Dean Martin is on my own very short list of the most perpetually cool humans to ever walk the planet, along with Ben Gazzara, Joan Jett, Jean Gabin, Dr. John and Barack Obama.

TCM will replay King of Cool on November 26. Set your DVR.

BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD: a genius opens up

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Photo caption: Brian Wilson (seated left) in BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

A musical genius opens up in Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, an unusual documentary about an unusual man.  Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys’ songwriting and arranging master weighs in on his life and work. 

As depicted in the film Love & Mercy, Wilson was afflicted with auditory hallucinations at 21, triggering painful years of what was essentially captivity at the hands of a quack doctor.  Because Wilson’s affect is oddly flat and he he favors the briefest of answers, he would not be the ideal subject of a conventional interview documentary. 

Instead, the filmmakers have Wilson’s old and trusted friend, rock journalist Jason Fine, drive him around important places in Wilson’s life; it’s the format of Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee, and it pays off with oft emotional revelations.  It turns out that Wilson is remarkably open about his travails and his creative process.

Completely at ease cruising Southern California with with Fine, Wilson matter-of-factly replies to very personal questions and even blurts some revelations of his own – as how he detoxed from alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes simultaneously (giving up cigarettes was the toughest).

Remarkably, some of the places in the Beach Boys origin story are now actually adorned with civic historical monuments, including the site of the Wilson family homeplace and the spot of the band’s photo shoot for their Surfer Girl album cover.

We get to see which of his songs that Brian himself listens to when he is feeling grief or nostalgia.   And there are indelible moments of great feeling when Brian listens to his own music.

The film also brings in assessments of Brian’s work from master songwriters that include Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Linda Perry; Perry says, “Brian Wilson is still trying to beat God Only Knows.  Can you imagine?”

I saw Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road when it opened the Nashville Film Festival. It’s opening this weekend, including at the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley.

AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

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AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy traces the life and times of Norman Mineta, who amassed a startling number of “firsts” and other distinctions in America history:

  • The first Asian-American mayor of a major U.S. city.
  • The first Japanese American member of Congress elected from the 48 Continental states.
  • A Cabinet Secretary in both Democratic and Republican Administrations.
  • The nation’s longest-serving Transportation Secretary.

The achievements were even more remarkable given that, as a child, Mineta was imprisoned by his own US government in a WW II internment camp. And given that his political base had, during his career, an Asian-American population of far less than ten percent.

This didn’t happen by accident.  Norm Mineta is a driven man. At the same time, his ambition and will is tempered by his buoyancy and ebullience.

Documentarians Dianne Fukumi (director and co-producer) and Debra Nakatomi (co-producer) embed the story of Japanese-Americans, from immigration through internment, and on to reparations.

AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The defining event for Mineta’s Nissei generation was the WW II internment of 120,000 Americans by their own government. The central thread in the Mineta story is that the injustice of Mineta’s internment informed George W. Bush’s resistance to treating American Muslims that same way in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Mineta being sworn into the US House of Representatives by House Speaker Carl Albert in AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The film’s most delightful moment may be the octogenarian Mineta sunnily taking his luggage through security at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.

[Full disclosure: I have known Norm since I served in his 1974 primary campaign and interned for him on Capitol Hill in the mid 70s. I saw An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy at an October 2018 special screening with Norm Mineta, Fukumi and Nakatomi in San Jose.]

Norm Mineta is turning 90 years old this month, so, to celebrate his birthday, the film is streaming it for free during November at An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy.

BECOMING COUSTEAU: amazing guy, pedestrian biodoc

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Photo caption: BECOMING COUSTEAU. Courtesy of National Geographic.

The educational if not scintillating biodoc Becoming Cousteau traces the world-changing career of Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

This was an important man. Before Cousteau, we looked at the oceans the way that humans had regarded them for centuries – based on what was on their surface and at their edges. The vastness of the oceans gave them a mask of invulnerability.

Becoming Cousteau tells how Cousteau, a pilot recovering from a motoring accident, became one of one three free divers in France before WWII, and how he was involved with or responsible himself for the invention of the aqualung, undersea stations, the underwater movie camera and his scientific ship Calypso.

Fortunately, Cousteau’s second passion was cinema, which allowed him to reveal the undersea world to the general public. He strongly preferred to call his work adventure film instead of documentary. (The cinematographer for Cousteau’s breakthrough 1956 film was Louis Malle, only two years before Malle’s own breakthrough masterpiece Elevator to the Gallows.)

That allowed Cousteau to become the great popularizer of ocean science through his ABC series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

Becoming Cousteau shows us how, at first, Cousteau had the explorer’s outlook of conquering the elements – but evolved into an ecologist. Cousteau canoodled with the oil industry in the 1950s, which he regretted in the 1970s. The preservation of Antarctica may be his enduring legacy.

Becoming Cousteau is dotted with some revealing tidbits such as how his first wife Simone was in love with Calypso and lived there, while Cousteau was on the road and their sons were in boarding school.

I am usually entranced by documentaries as superbly sourced and revelation-filled as Becoming Cousteau, but I found it a bit of a yawner. Twice Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus packs a lot into 94 minutes, but it seems longer. Vincent Cassel voices Cousteau’s written words.

WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT: her soul and her heart

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Guy Clark holds his favorite photo of Susanna Clark in WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT

The lyrical documentary Without Getting Killed or Caught is centered on the life of seminal singer-songwriter Guy Clark, a poetic giant of Americana and folk music. That would be enough grist for a fine doc, but Without Getting Killed or Caught also focuses on Clark’s wife, Susanna Clark, a talented painter (album covers for Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris) and songwriter herself (#1 hit I’ll Be Your San Antone Rose). What’s more, Guy’s best friend, the troubled songwriter Townes Van Zandt, and Susanna revered each other. Van Zandt periodically lived with the Clarks – that’s a lot of creativity in that house – and a lots of strong feelings.

Susanna Clark said it thus, “one is my soul and the other is my heart.”

The three held a salon in their Nashville home, and mentored the likes of Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle. You can the flavor of the salon in the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways (AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube). It features Townes Van Zandt’s rendition of his Waitin’ Round to Die. (Susanna was also a muse for Rodney Crowell, who, after her death, wrote the angry song Life Without Susanna.)

Documentarians Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield, have unearthed a great story, primarily sourced by Susanna’s diaries; Sissy Spacek voices Susanna’s words. These were artsy folks so there are plenty of exquisite photos of the subjects, too. It all adds up to a beautiful film, spinning the story of these storytellers.

Guy and Susanna Clark in WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT

I loved this movie, but I’m having trouble projecting its appeal to a general audience, because I am so emotionally engaged with the subject material. I’m guessing that the unusual web of relationships and the exploration of the creative process is universal enough for any audience, even if you’re not a fanboy like me.

The title comes from Guy’s song LA Freeway, a hit for Jerry Jeff Walker:

I can just get off of this L.A. freeway

Without gettin’ killed or caught

There is plenty for us Guy Clarkophiles:

  • the back story for Desperados Waiting for a Train;
  • the identity of LA Freeway’s Skinny Dennis;
  • Guy’s final return from touring, with the declaration “let’s recap”.

There’s also the story of Guy’s ashes; the final resolution is not explicit in the movie but you can figure it out; here’s the story.

Without Getting Killed or Caught is in very limited theatrical run; I saw at the Balboa in its last Bay Area screening.

THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE: some dignity for the clown

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Photo caption: Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain in THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE

Jessica Chastain’s powerhouse performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye humanizes and brings dignity to a disgraced celebrity. Tammy Faye, of course, is Tammy Faye Bakker, married to televangelist Jim Bakker of the PTL Club. The relentlessly upbeat couple eschewed fire-and-brimstone for a happy talk ministry based on “Jesus loves you” and “God wants you to be rich”.

Jim Bakker was the preacher and talk show host. Tammy Faye was the singer, puppeteer and sidekick. Tammy Faye’s on-her-sleeve emotions, swinging between pep talks and ready tears – were especially popular (and revenue-inducing) with the PTL Club’s audience.

Of course, the ministry empire was a Ponzi scheme, which eventually sent Jim into federal prison; a sex scandal precipitated the collapse. The story is well-chronicled in the excellent 2000 documentary, also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye, upon which this movie is based (available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube).

Jim Bakker (and certainly not Tammy Faye) was the mastermind of the fraud. But Tammy Faye, with her increasingly grotesque makeup and her flamboyant persona, had also become a figure of widespread ridicule, and her fall from grace was also very harsh.

Chastain’s convincing performance is centered on Tammy Faye’s EverReady Bunny exuberance and naive good intentions. Reportedly, she had to spend several hours each day getting outfitted wih prosthetics and daubed with makeup.

Andrew Garfield perfectly captures Jim Bakker’s smarminess and ambiguous sexuality.

Tammy Faye’s mother is played by Cherry Jones (Transparent), who always gives a strong performance. Here she plays a character who starts out seeming to be an emotionally distant, kill-the-dream stick-in-the-mud, but who evolves into the story’s moral anchor.

The one false note in The Eyes of Tammy Faye is Vincent D’Onofrio, who is supposed to be playing Jerry Falwell. Falwell, of course, was rarely seen without his smug grin. Onofrio plays him as a hulking, never smiling menace and with a much different accent and speech pattern than Falwell’s. It’s as if D’Onofrio had never seen Falwell, and his performance completely misses the insincerity and hypocrisy behind Falwell’s veneer of affability.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is now in theaters.

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL – the drive for relevance

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Pauline Kael in WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance. It’s coming up September 26 on Turner Classic Movies.

Documentarian Rob Garver has sourced What She Said is well-sourced with the memories of Kael’s colleagues, rivals and intimates. Garver’s portrait of Kael helps us understand her refusal to conform to social norms as she basically invented the role of a female film critic and what today we might call a national influencer on cinema.

Of course, one of Kael’s defining characteristics was her all-consuming love of movies, a trait shared by many in this film’s target audience. Fittingly, Garver keeps things lively by illustrating Kael’s story with clips from the movies she loved and hated. Garver’s artistry in composing this mosaic of evocative movie moments sets What She Said apart from the standard talking head biodocs.

Kael was astonishingly confident in her taste (which was not as snooty as many film writers). For the record, I think Kael was right to love Mean Streets, Band of Outsiders, Bonnie and Clyde, and, of course, The Godfather. It meant something to American film culture that she championed those films. She was, however, wrong to love Last Tango in Paris. She was also right to hate Limelight, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Sound of Music. But Kael was just being a contrarian and off-base to hate Lawrence of Arabia and Shoah.

Kael was by necessity an intrepid self-promoter and filled with shameless contradictions. She famously dismissed the auteur theory but sponsored the bodies of work of auteurs Scorsese, Peckinpah, Coppola and Altman. She loved – even lived – to discover and support new talent.

Most of the people we like and admire possess at least some bit of selflessness and empathy. Kael’s daughter Gina James says that Kael turned her lack of self awareness into triumph. This observation, of course, cuts both ways.

I first screened What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael for the 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Again, TCM will air it on September 26, and you can rent it from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.