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.
Photo caption: Margot Robbie and Diego Calva in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Babylon is a whole lot of movie. More movie than you’re expecting. And maybe more movie than you want.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) has delivered a kinetic and kaleidoscopic showbiz epic of over three hours, which is visually stunning, ever entertaining and sometimes shocking. Now, is it a good movie?
Set beginning in 1926, Babylon traces Hollywood’s transition from silent film to the talkies by tracing the stories of a mega-movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the ambitious starlet Nelly LaRoy (Margot Robbie), the African-American trumpet prodigy Stanley Palmer (Jovan Adebo) and the sultry Chinese entertainer-by-night Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li). The audience largely experiences Babylon from the point of view of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican household gofer whose abilities as a fixer propel him up the movie studio ladder. Chazelle’s view of Hollywood is as a human-crunching pool of toxicity, that a person must leave to survive with any decency or happiness.
This is also a Hollywood of unsurpassed debauchery and hedonism, which we taste right away in a movie mogul’s house party with lots of bare-breasted women and naked people engaging in sex, kinky sex, and perverted sex. The scene is clearly inspired by Ceil B. DeMille’s orgy scene in the silent The Ten Commandments, which seems quaint in comparison. This scene could have been imagined by Federico Fellini on speed and Hugh Hefner on acid.
Margot Robbie (center) and a cast of thousands in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
“Wanton excess” is inadequate to describe this party scene and much of Babylon. Like the guitarist in This Is Spinal Tap, Chazelle has set his amp to eleven. There’s so much eye candy here that Babylon will cause Baz Luhrman to feel bad about himself.
This is also the most scatological mainstream movie that I’ve seen. There’s projectile diarrhea (from an elephant), projectile vomit (from a person on a person) and urination (both from a woman onto a titillated man and from a man onto himself).
Back to the story. Chazelle shows us the Silent Era Hollywood studios with wall-to-wall outdoor movie sets, simultaneously grinding out comedies, romances and westerns. We see a cast of thousands in a medieval battle epic, and the transition to sound during the period when the technical challenges were so excruciatingly unforgiving that the sound men briefly usurped the control from the directors. Babylon’s characters are thinly-disguised recreations of John Gilbert, Clara Bow, Fatty Arbuckle, Anna May Wong, Erich von Stroheim and Louella Parsons, with some real life figures like Irving Thalberg.
Brad Pitt and Diego Calva in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
If you’re going to cast an actor to play a movie star from the classic era, you’re not going to cast Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr. or Bradley Cooper. Just cast Brad Pitt and you’re most of way there in your storytelling – Pitt’s handsome looks are just weathered enough, and he exudes physicality, confidence and insouciance. If you want a Douglas Fairbanks or Clark Gable type – he’s your guy. And, yes, he is perfect in this film.
Likewise, Jean Smart is your gal for a cleareyed, devastating truthteller. Her character’s matter-of-fact Bad News Good News assessment of Jack Conrad’s career may be the distillation of Chazelle’s core message, if there is one. It’s the most compelling speech in Babylon.
I’ve seen actors throw themselves into Wild Child performances, but none with as much abandon as Margot Robbie. It’s a fearless, over-the-top and singular performance. Unfortunately, Chazelle’s Nelly is two-dimensional. There’s not much there except her insatiable grasping for fame and drugs, but Robbie does wring out every ounce of humanity.
This a well-acted film. Other notable pedal-to-the-metal performances:
Li Jun Li soars with sexy charisma in an underwritten part. I want to see more of her.
Eric Roberts sparkles as Nelly LaRoy’s venal and opportunistic father, who has reappeared once she is a money machine of a movie star.
Tobey Maguire’s performance was perfectly described by David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter as seeking to “out-weird Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker combined.”
Sydney Palmer’s trumpet work is downright exciting, I assume that someone other than Jovan Adepo is actually playing the instrument, but I couldn’t determine who from the credits. In any case, Adepo gets props for credible fingering, which is no small thing.
The fine cast also includes Lukas Hass, Patrick Fugit, Samara Weaving, Katharine Waterston, Jeff Garlin, Spike Jonze and, very briefly, Olivia Wilde.
Elements of Babylon are indisputably superb and Oscar-worthy, especially the cinematography by Linus Sangren (Oscar winner for La La Land), the production design by Florencia Martin and the costumes by Mary Zophres (Oscar nominated for True Grit, La La Land and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs).
Is this a good movie? There is an unusually wide range of critical assessments, which average into a a middling 59 score on Metacritic. It’s a gorgeous thrill ride, for sure, but we just don’t care about most of the characters. Some viewers will be just too distracted and exhausted by the freneticism. I think it falls short of being a great movie, but it’s so outrageous and fun to watch that it’s a must see.
THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER.: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile is a portrait of a music legend with sapped confidence, whose career is jumpstarted by admiring younger musicians. The audience gets a glimpse into the creative process of writing of a song, an Emmy winner at that.
Tanya Tucker, in showbiz from age 9, exploded onto the country music scene with the monster hit Delta Dawn at 13. After stardom in her teen years and a Wild Child period in her twenties, her career dipped, setting up a comeback in her thirties. Now sixty, by 2019 she hadn’t released any recording for 17 years.
In 2019, Shooter Jennings began a project to showcase Tucker’s talent with new material (a la Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash) and invited Brandi Carlile to help. Carlile, a huge Tanya Tucker fan, became central to the project, coaxing Tucker along, pumping up her confidence and riding the roller coaster of Tucker’s reliability issues. The Return of Tanya Tucker is essentially a “making of” documentary about the project.
Now 60 and looking older, Tucker has a lot of mileage on her (and has launched her own brand of tequila, named with the Spanish translation of Wild Thing). Carlile finds out that Tucker is a handful.
Tucker is still a formidable song stylist, though, with a distinctive cry-in-her-beer break in her voice. The project goes better than anyone could have expected, and there’s a Feel Good ending. The Wife particularly enjoyed this film.
I screened The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile for the Nashville Film Festival. It is now in theaters.
Photo caption: Oscar Martínez, Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in OFFICIAL COMPETITION. Courtesy of IFC Films.
The smart and biting satire Official Competition uses the world of filmmaking (where better?) to send up professional jealousies. A billionaire wants to produce a great movie as his legacy, so he assembles a filmmaking Dream Team: the famed director Lola (Penélope Cruz), the global movie star Félix (Antonio Banderas) and the renowned sage actor Iván (Oscar Martínez). Their egos come along, too.
Ivan, a leading acting teacher who pioneers new and challenging theater, is the critical and academic world’s most esteemed actor. There’s a wonderful scene where Ivan and his wife (a children’s’ author) sit in their boho apartment listening to an avant garde audio performance.
Felix, in contrast, has become a world-wide celebrity by starring in what Martin Scorsese calls global audio-visual entertainment to distinguish these movies from cinema. Adored by millions of fans and used to having his whims and appetites satisfied by toadies, Felix is convinced that he has earned his reputation as a great actor. (And he shows up to every event with a different bimbo on his arm.)
The tycoon has purchased a Nobel Prize-winning novel (that he hasn’t read) to be adapted into a screenplay. It’s about a rivalry between brothers. (In one of Official Competition’s many delicious ironies, this source material is very pedestrian, several rungs below East of Eden, for example.)
Lola (Cruz wears a wig that is a mountain of reddish tangles) is a piece of work herself. She enjoys abusing her power as director and is devoid of personal boundaries.
Felix and Ivan are oil and water,and Lola, for artistic reasons (and more than a touch of sadism), provokes their latent rivalry, seeking to enhance what will be the tension in their on-screen rivalry. In nine days of rehearsals before the shoot, Lola plunges Ivan and Felix into a series of evermore ridiculous, intrusive and degrading acting exercises. She has them read lines under a huge, suspended rock, binds their bodies together in cling wrap, and overamplifies their kissing noises.
Lola’s caprices accomplish two things with Ivan and Felix. She turns their passive contempt for each other into open hatred. And she makes them hate her, too.
Each actor (and Lola, too) has a massive ego begging to be deflated, and the battles between them in Official Competition are very, very funny.
The ending of Official Competition is perfect – one of the cleverest and most satisfying that I’ve seen in a good long while.
The Argentines Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat co-directed Official Competition, which they co-wrote with Andrés Duprat. Official Competition is being described as an arch takedown of the movie industry, but the egos parodied here are present in many walks of life.
Cruz, Banderas and Oscar Martínez (the hilariously dark Wild Tales) each deliver dynamite performances. Irene Escolar is very good in a deadpan and essentially silent role as the billionaire’s daughter cast in the movie.
[Note: Prior to Official Competition, the Spanish stars Cruz and Banderas had only shared the screen for about two minutes in I’m So Excited; they did not work together in Pain and Glory, in which they both appeared in different segments.]
Official Competition, so far the wittiest film of 2022, is in theaters.
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.
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 opening July 8 in some Bay Area theaters (including the Roxie, the Opera Plaza, the Rafael and the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood), and will expand into more theaters on July 15 and 22.
The 2017 documentary James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America traces the mostly parallel and mostly contrasting Hollywood careers of icons James Stewart and Robert Mitchum.
Hero and anti-hero. James Stewart became perhaps American cinema’s greatest screen actor by portraying earnest, well-meaning,, play-by-the-rules types like George Bailey and Jefferson Smith. Mitchum, so identified with film noir, is known as an insolent rebel with no pretense of following anybody else’s rules. (Of course, it’s more complicated than that – among Stewart’s greatest performances are his darkest, in Hitchcock classics like Vertigo and Rear Window and in Anthony Mann’s psychological Westerns like Winchester ’73.)
James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America is not a deep dive into this optimism/cynicism theme of American postwar psychology. Instead, it’s more of a marriage of two showbiz biodocs.
That being said, fans of the actors (and I am a big fan of both) get some insights. Both actors reflect on their own work (see trailers below). The most evocative segment is about Stewart’s grief at the loss of his son, a marine killed in the Vietnam War that Jimmy himself supported politically.
Stewart and Mitchum did not socialize, despite their daughters knowing each other in high school. They only worked together once, late in their careers, in the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep. James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America highlights a remarkable coincidence in their deaths.
I watched James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America on Turner Classic Movies, where it will be replayed on June 25. It is also streaming on the subscription services WATCH TCM and DIrecTV.
OSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING. Courtesy of TCM.
If you don’t know who Oscar Micheaux is, you should – so watch the documentary Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking. As writer/director/producer, the African-American Michaeux created so-called “race films” – movies made for black audiences from a black perspective during the most shameful years of American racial segregation. Michaeux himself directed 42 feature films DURING Jim Crow.
There’s a lot in Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking:
Micheaux’s pivotal sojourn in a cabin in, of all places, the Dakotas.
His very personal and hands-on distribution methods.
His discovery of Paul Robeson’s on-screen charisma, a full eight years before Robeson’s first Hollywood film (The Emperor Jones).
Micheaux’s comfort in portraying that most incendiary topic – interracial relationships.
How he slyly bent rules to avoid censorship.
I have seen some Oscar Micheaux films, and their stories, freed of the White Hollywood lens, are eyeopening. They allowed black audiences to see big screen characters that acted like real African-American – not the degrading stereotypes in Hollywood movies.
That being said, Michaeux did not make “Noble Negro” movies. His work is authentic, and criticized, for example, black preacher-hucksters who exploit religious devotion in the African-American community for their own venal and carnal appetites.
Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking features a solid panel of expert talking heads to explain Micheaux’s place in cinema and in African-American history. The most compelling are screenwriter Kevin Wilmott and University of Chicago cinema professor/TCM host Jaqueline Stewart.
Animation is used sparingly and effectively, including one inspired segment to Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
I watched Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking on Turner Classic Movies, and it is streaming on HBO Max.
Photo caption: Alanis Morissette in JAGGED. Courtesy of HBO.
Jagged is a surprisingly addictive biodoc of singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, packed with Morissette’s own reflections. Jagged traces Morissette’s beginnings as a child prodigy and teen pop princess (big hair and all) to the point where she matured into an innovative songwriter and groundbreaking stadium act.
The deepest dive is appropriately on Morissette’s debut album Jagged Little Pill and the 18-month concert tour to support it. With sales of over 33 million, Jagged Little Pill is still the number one selling album by a woman. It’s amazing to reflect that Morissette was only 19-20 when writing the songs and only 20-21 on the tour.
Alanis Morissette in JAGGED. Courtesy of HBO.
Of course, Morissette’s breakthrough came with one of the bitterest of all breakup songs, You Oughta Know, raising the question of just how angry is she? Not at all, says Morissette, who notes that she released her anger in the writing of You Oughta Know and moved on.
Director Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry) takes us back to the 1994 media coverage, by male music writers, of Morissette as Angry Young Woman. Jagged takes advantage of lots of candid backstage/tour bus footage from the tour; and that Morissette is an even-tempered and playful person, not even temperamental, let alone raging.
In her years a teen pop singer, Morissette was allowed to tour the world without parental protection, which predictably made her vulnerable to exploitation by older men. It’s really worth watching Jagged to hear Morissette’s framing of how women publicly discuss sexual abuse years afterwards: “They weren’t silent. The culture wasn’t listening.”
Oddly, Morissette herself is unhappy with the documentary, calling it “salacious”. I thought that Klayton handled Morissette’s own words about her sexual abuse in a way that was the opposite of salacious. Klayton has Morissette present herself as insightful and well-grounded, which adds up to a flattering impression.
Photo caption: Charles Chaplin in THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN. Courtesy of Showtime.
The biodocumentary The Real Charlie Chaplin has some insights, as far as it goes. The film aspires to cover these elements of Charlie Chaplin’s life and does a pretty good job:
the crushing poverty of his childhood,
his quick rise to world-wide celebrity,
his exploitation of his very young wives, and
his blacklisting.
The highlights are video interviews with Chaplin’s school mate and childhood neighbor Effie, an absolutely delightful old gal. Unusual for a celebrity biodoc, the filmmakers also do a good job in giving voice to Chaplin’s wives.
Of course, you have to pick and choose, and the filmmakers only reference Chaplin’s pioneering filmmaking as it pertains to his personal life. If you’re looking for insights into Chaplin’s artistic genius and innovations, look elsewhere.
The Real Charlie Chaplin is streaming on Showtime.
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.
