documentary

THE ANONYMOUS PEOPLE: bringing long term recovery out of the closet

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Over 23 million Americans are living in long-term recovery from addiction. How many (or how few) of us know this, is the core of the thought-provoking 2013 advocacy documentary, The Anonymous People.

We all know about Alcoholics Anonymous, where anonymity makes it possible for alcoholics to work on their recovery without stigma. Anonymity is an integral pillar of AA, but some in AA interpret this to preclude publicizing their own recoveries. The Anonymous People challenges that orthodoxy.

The anonymity of those in long-term recovery also keeps the manifestations of recovery invisible to the general public, including the addicts who need it and the policy makers who need to know about it.

The carnage of celebrity addiction, as with Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, is high profile fodder for the popular media. But comparatively few of us know the stories of Samuel L. Jackson and Russell Brand, who are open about their own long term recovery.

The Anonymous People is about the open recovery movement (or public recovery movement). We hear from John Shinholser, President of The McShin Foundation, a leader in the movement, and others in long term recovery like actress Kristen Johnson of Mom. They advocate that folks come out of anonymity to say, “I am a person in long term recovery, and for me that means that I have been sober for X years.”

After all, who needs a role model more than someone struggling with addiction?

There is a strong parallel to the AIDS activists in the 1980s who defeated the stigma of AIDS by shedding the secrecy.

I saw The Anonymous People at a special screening, in an audience with over 90% people in recovery, and they loved it; (I am what people in recovery call a “Normie”). The Anonymous People will also resonate with anyone also for anyone interested in public policy issues like treatment and incarceration.

The Anonymous People can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

SAM NOW: solving a mystery…only part of the story

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Reed Harkness in SAM NOW. Courtesy of HA/HA Productions.

In the surprisingly complex documentary Sam Now, two brothers go on a road trip to solve a family mystery – but that’s only part of the story. Beginning as a teenager, writer-director Reed Harkness spent his teen years shooting movie projects that starred his younger half-brother Sam. Reed and Sam grew up in a blended family of spirited brothers, a family with one striking anomaly – Sam’s mother had suddenly vanished.

Shortly after the disappearance, the family learned that the mom was alive, having left of her own volition. She was choosing to live elsewhere secretly, severing all contact with her family. Reed and Sam’s family went on with their lives, and the subject of the missing mom was no longer discussed.

Years later, as young men, Reed and Sam decide to get in the car with Reed’s cameras and track down Sam’s mom. Will they find her? Why did she abandon her children? Can they resume/salvage their relationship or work out a new one?

The subject Harkness famiy in SAM NOW. Courtesy of HA/HA Productions.

Those are compelling questions, but the quest to find the mom isn’t the whole movie. Once the initial mystery is solved, Reed Harkness kept his camera focused on the participants over the next decade.

Beginning with home movies when the brothers were kids, Sam Now documents 25 years of family life and individual personal growth. It’s all complicated, as we might expect with multigenerational trauma.

Reed Harkness’ use of music in Sam Now is particularly strong. Reed and Sam’s rowdy boyhood and the brother’s road trip is accented with boisterous garage rock. More contemplative music accompanies the personal reflections later in the film.

Sam Now garnered various film fest awards, aired on PBS’ POV, and releases on streaming platforms, including Amazon and Vudu, on June 6.

32 SOUNDS: a concept movie, and the concept is kinda boring

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32 SOUNDS. Courtesy of Abramorama.

The documentary 32 Sounds strives to be an immersive dive into sounds of all types and the impact of sounds on humans. It’s an anthology of 32 bits, each related to sound in different way.

The immersive quality is where 32 Sounds falls short. After seeing the trailer, I made an effort to see 32 Sounds in a theater with surround sound. But, after the filmmakers address the audience at the beginning, the surround sound is not really necessary to enjoy (or, in my case, NOT enjoy) the film.

The two most powerful scenes don’t have much to do with the technical or artsy stuff that comprise much of 32 Sounds. In one, a scientist listens to a long-forgotten letter to his future self that he taped as an 11-year-old. Later, a man muses on “ghost voices” – how he can ALMOST recall the voices of his dead loved ones.

Overall, the 95 minutes I invested in slogging thru 32 Sounds was wasted, except for the ten minutes that I drifted into a deep, blissful nap.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK: triple-threat trailblazers

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Photo caption: Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock documents the first all-female rock band to get signed by a major record label and churn out five albums. Fifty years ago, the band Fanny was breaking ground for women musicians – and for lesbians and Filipinas. Women rockers were a novelty in the early 1970; imagine layering on LGBTQ identity and Asian-American heritage.

Although you probably haven’t heard of them, this was no garage band. They had a major label record deal, European tours, and hung out with big name peers. Unlike many male bands of the period, Fanny didn’t crash and burn due to drug use or clashing egos. They just never caught on with record-buyers.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

It’s pretty clear that sexism in the music industry and media, combined with maybe being a little ahead of their time to deny Fanny stardom. Too bad – I would have loved to listen to them in their heyday.

Their music fits right into the stuff I was listening to in the 1970s. I’m guessing that the reason why I hadn’t heard of them is that they didn’t get played on FM radio in the Bay Area.

These women can still really rock in their 70s, and they’re a hoot. Tomorrow night, May 17, they’ll perform for one time at the Whisky A-Go-Go to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of their now infamous club performance at the Whisky.

Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock is filled with colorful anecdotes from back in the day. Todd Rundgren, an important early associate of Fanny, and Bonnie Raitt appear as eyewitnesses. Cherie Curry of the Runaways, Cathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s and Kate Pierson of the B-52s testify to Fanny’s trailblazing status.

I screened Fanny: The Right to Rock last year at the Nashville Film Festival. On May 22, you can watch it on your very own television when It will be broadcast on PBS and begin streaming on on PBS.ORG and the PBS APP.

BEST WORST MOVIE: a romp through cinematic awfulness

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The notorious “O My God” TROLL 2 scene in BEST BAD MOVIE

Troll 2 was so bad that it earned its very own documentary, Best Worst Movie. Despite its title, Troll 2 was completely unrelated to the earlier movie Troll – and has no trolls in it.

Troll 2 is about a white bread suburban family that vacations in the mountain village of Nilbog (“Goblin” spelled backwards, get it?). The family doesn’t know that all of the locals are vegetarian predator goblins who can take the form of regular humans. The goblins are able to turn humans into vegetative matter (a green slime) that the goblins can ingest.

TROLL 2 scene in BEST WORST MOVIE

Troll 2 was made in 1990 with very primitive production values – and by a non-English speaking Italian crew and a non-Italian speaking Z-list American cast. Best Worst Movie showcases the inept acting and directing aside, but Troll 2’s screenplay is probably the source of the most laughs:

  • Dead Grandpa Seth keeps appearing to the boy.
  • The boy saves his family by urinating on the family dinner.
  • There’s a teen make out scene so “hot” that it literally pops popcorn.

You can see some of the finer bits by doing a YouTube search for “You can’t piss on hospitality” and “Troll 2 O my God”.

Best Worst Movie contains some squirmy scenes with cast members whose mental health issues have since worsened. And the Italian director is a jerk who is narcissistically unwilling to acknowledge its badness, but is all to happy to bask in Troll 2‘s new found cult status. But the goodhearted goofiness of star George Hardy, a cast of good sports and Troll 2‘s cult following dominates.

George Hardy in a TROLL 2 scene in BEST WORST MOVIE

Troll 2 is one of the films in my Bad Movie Festival. Best Worst Movie can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime) and AppleTV.

JEWS OF THE WILD WEST: desperadoes, cowpunchers…and Jews

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Okay, so this is one of those rare movies that had me at the title. One doesn’t automatically think of Jews among the wagon trains, desperadoes and cowpunchers of the Wild West. But, in Jews of the Wild West, documentarian Amanda Kinsey brings us an anthology of impressively well-researched Jewish experiences on the Western frontier.

Kinsey starts off with a saloon girl who married an iconic gunslinger (and buried him in Colma’s Jewish cemetery) and the marketer of the clothing item most identified with the American West (hint – not Wranglers). As a Western history buff, I was familiar with those first two stories, but then I started learning a lot:

  • Why many of the first mayors of frontier towns were Jewish;
  • How Eastern European occupational restrictions on Jews prepared them for a pivotal role in the development of the great Denver and Greeley, Colorado, cattle stockyards;
  • That most Jews found markedly less antisemitism in the West than in the East;
  • That teenage Golda Meir ran away to high school in Denver.

My jaw dropped at the shocking story of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, which in 1881-84, until taken over by the reputable United Hebrew Charities, was helping new Jewish emigrants resettle in the remote West. The seeming benevolence, it turns out, was motivated by an earlier wave of now prosperous Jews who didn’t want the impoverished Orthodox arrivals from Eastern Europe to challenge capitalism and make them look bad.

Interestingly, filmmaker Kinsey, a longtime NBC News producer and five-time Emmy winner, is NOT herself Jewish.

I attended a screening of Jews of the Wild West at the San Luis Obispo Jewish Film Festival that included a Q&A with Kinsey and local historians. Jews of the Wild West is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG: a reflective artist, a reflective movie

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Photo caption. Leonard Cohen in HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG. Courtesy of Leonard Cohen Family Trust.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is a biodoc as reflective as the subject himself. That subject is poet/singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, creator of profound verse and ear-worm melodies. Cohen was such a seeker that he secluded himself for five years at a Buddhist monastery on Mount Baldy. I’m reposting about this film because it is finally widely available to stream.

Co-writers and co-directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine have comprehensively sourced the film with Cohen intimates and a substantial dose of Cohen himself. Geller and Goldfine have braided together Cohen’s journey with that of his most sublime song, Hallelujah.

One doesn’t think of a song even HAVING a journey, but Cohen wrote Hallelujah over years and years, possibly composing over 150 verses, only to have Columbia refuse to issue the album that it had commissioned. Then the song was rescued by John Cale, rejuvenated in the animated movie Shrek, and became iconic with the spectacular cover by Jeff Buckley. Along the way, Cohen himself would reveal alternative lyrics in live performance. Helluva story.

I’ve seen splashier documentaries – this is, after all, about a poet. The one forehead-slapping shocker for me was the initial rejection of Hallelujah. At almost two hours, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is a settle-in-and-be-mesmerized experience.

(BTW, could there be a bigger producer/artist mismatch than Phil Spector and Leonard Cohen?)

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING: never denying his identity, but renouncing it

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Photo caption: Little Richard in LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Little Richard: I Am Everything traces the life of the trailblazing rock-and-roller, and it is NOT your paint-by-the-numbers showbiz biodoc. Director Lisa Cortés (Primetime Emmy winner) has superbly framed the two defining aspects of Little Richard – an unfettered confidence in his exuberant performances and an uneasy assessment of himself as a flamboyant gay man.

As one would expect, Cortés lays out Little Richard’s importance in the very beginning of rock and roll – writing hard-driving hits, many with unmistakably sexualized lyrics and performing them with then unseen animation. Before Elvis. During Jim Crow. Before African-American music was played on mainstream radio.

Most strikingly, from the very beginning, Little Richard never tried to dress or act like a heterosexual male. (Baby Boomers will recall that this was the age of an unconvincingly closeted Liberace and no other hints of homosexuality in American mass culture)

As much as we see Little Richard in later work by artists like David Bowie, Elton John and Prince, there were performers that Little Richard himself emulated. In a staggering achievement in sourcing, Cortés brings us photos and film of queer black performers of the 1940s whom Little Richard saw – and some he worked with as a teenager. I’ve seen plenty of documentaries on showbiz, LGBTQ and African-American history, and I’ve never seen much of this material.

Little Richard is a difficult case for queer people because, although he was an important role model who never DENIED being a gay man, he sporadically RENOUNCED his own sexual identity. He is a difficult case for all of us, because his music would celebrate sex as naughty fun, but then he would occasionally scare himself back into backwoods religion.

Little Richard: I Am Everything also reveals the original lyrics of Tutti Frutti, and how they were cleaned up to Tutti frutti, oh rootie.

David Bowie is joined by Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Tom Jones in appreciating Little Richard’s pioneering career. John Waters reveals that his own pencil-thin mustache is an homage to Little Richard’s.

Little Richard: I Am Everything touches on rock music, race in America, drugs, sex and sexual identity – and spends a lot of time on sex and sexual identity sex drugs. It’s a remarkable insightful profile of a complicated man who was himself very fun for us to watch.

REGGIE: it’s not just about Reggie

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Photo caption: Reggie Jackson in REGGIE. Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video.

After watching the documentary Reggie, I was surprised that I found spending 104 minutes with Reggie Jackson so rewarding. In the 1970s, Jackson seemed to me such an egotist, so consumed by his own stardom. Of course, the media were always asking him about himself. Here, where Jackson has the platform, he talks about himself in the context of larger issues of racial justice, economic justice, righting past wrongs and creating a more equitable future – for everybody, not just for Reggie.

The film could have been titled The Life and Times of Reggie Jackson. America’s struggle with race is in the forefront of Reggie, understandably because of the times. In addition, Reggie sees many of the pivotal events in his life as impacted by race – and he makes a convincing case.

Reggie contains lots of tidbits, many not well known:

  • Reggie’s own experiences with racial prejudice as a child and young man
  • Reggie’s shielding from the dangers of Alabama Jim Crow by minor league teammates Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers and Dave Duncan
  • His early mentorship by Joe DiMaggio
  • His chafing at Charley Findley – and Findley giving him a $2500 pay cut for “too many strikeouts” in a season when Reggie led the league in homers
  • Reggie’s prickly relationship with Thurman Munson, his incendiary mismatch with Billy Martin, and an evolved friendship with George Steinbrenner
  • The origin of the “Mr. October” sobriquet.

Reggie can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime).

I’M AN ELECTRIC LAMPSHADE: the final score is Doug 1, Expectations 0.

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Photo caption: I’M AN ELECTRIC LAMPSHADE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the winning and surprising documentary I’m an Electric Lampshade, we meet the most improbable rock star – a mild-mannered accountant who retires to pursue his dream of performing.

60-year-old Doug McCorkle is fit for his age and has an unusually mellifluous voice, like a late night FM DJ or the announcer in a boxing ring. Other than that he looks like a total square.

There may be no flamboyance about Doug McCorkle, but it thrives inside him. His own artistic taste is trippy, gender-bending and daring. Think Price Waterhouse Cooper on the outside and Janelle Monáe on the inside.

We follow Doug as he goes to a performance school in the Philippines (where most of his classmates are drag queens) and the montage of his training resembles those in Fame and Flashdance. Doug is a good enough sport to wear MC Hammer pants in a bizarre Filipino yogurt commercial. It all culminates in a concert in Mexico.

Doug’s quest would be a vanity project except he has no apparent vanity. He must have some ego to want to get up on stage, but compared to subjects of other showbiz documentaries, he is most humble, emphatically not self-absorbed and low maintenance. We can tell from how his co-workers, friends and wife react to him, that he is just a profoundly decent guy.

Eminently watchable, this is a successful first feature for writer-director John Clayton Doyle. The stage-setting profile of one of the Filipino artists could have been trimmed, but Lampshade is otherwise well-paced.

The final score: Doug 1, Expectations 0. I screened I’m an Electric Lmpshade for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.