biodoc

PADDY CHAYEFSKY: COLLECTOR OF WORDS: “X-raying us all the time”

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Photo caption: Paddy Chayefsky in PADDY CHAYEFSKY: COLLECTOR OF WORDS. Courtesy of HBO Max.

Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words brings thought-provoking insights into the life and work of the great screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. Chayefsky is the only person to win three solo Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, for Marty, The Hospital and Network.

Those three films, along with the grievously overlooked The Americanization of Emily, the biting satire Wall Street (“Greed is good“) and the very trippy Altered States make up an essential body of work.

It’s hard to think of a film with more aching humanity than Marty. The titular character in Marty is a guy who no one notices, but Chayefsky shows us his yearnings, disappointments and inner pain in a searing and heartbreaking portrait. To bring that empathy to Marty and to spotlight the human foibles satirized in The Americanization of Emily, The Hospital, Network and Wall Street, Chayefsky had to be an uncommonly penetrating observer of human behavior. In Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words, one of Chayefsky’s colleagues says that he was “X-raying us all the time.”

Most folks see Network as Chayefsky’s masterpiece. Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words reminds that, as well as poking at the greed and cowardice of TV networks and the slide of television journalism into infotainment, Network probed the midlife crisis rocking the character played by William Holden and the impact on his wife, played by the Oscar-winning Beatrice Straight.

And, most of all, Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words shows us Network as a work of prophecy. The cynical executive played by Faye Dunaway directs her team to chase demographic research thusly:

Well, in a nutshell, it said: “The American people are turning sullen. They’ve been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they’ve turned off, shot up, and they’ve fucked themselves limp, and nothing helps.” So, this concept analysis report concludes, “The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them.” I’ve been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows.

Guess who comes to mind? And when the exec makes a pitch to the network CEO (Robert Duvall), he responds with:

For God’s sake Diana, we’re talking about putting a manifest irresponsible man on national television.

Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words also brings us some nuggets: how the son of Russian Jews got and adopted the nickname Paddy, about his longstanding lunches with Bob Fosse at the Carnegie Deli, and about a mistaken line reading of one of the most iconic lines of dialogue in cinema history,

The director of Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words is Michael Miele, who also directed this year’s Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion. Miele lets us know in the opening titles that he agreed not to include discussion of Chayefsky’s family and personal life. No matter – it what Chayefsky put on the screen that counts.

Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words is streaming on HBO Max and on the HBO Max YouTube channel.

ORWELL: 2+2=5: we didn’t get the message

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Photo caption: ORWELL: 2+2=5. Courtesy of NEON.

The impassioned and innovative documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 is less a biopic of the author George Orwell than a cry of alarm, imploring us to heed Orwell’s message about resisting totalitarianism and its tools of propaganda and repressive violence. It’s a distress signal – and an urgent one.

Primarily through clips from movie versions of 1984 and Animal Farm, we are reminded of Orwell’s revulsion at those who deny objective fact and try to pervert public opinion. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Big Brother. Thought Police. Newspeak.

Historical clips illustrate figures like Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Pinochet employing these methods. And contemporary news clips focus on the evil deeds of today’s authoritarian nationalists in Russia, China, Myanmar, Hungary, Italy, France and, notably, in the US.

Orwell: 2+2=5 takes us from Orwell’s work to instances of book burning from the Nazis through to today, including a jarring list of books banned in American libraries. Orwell found goosestepping particularly offensive, and Orwell: 2+2=5 shows us plenty of contemporary examples of that, too.

When Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984, he had seen Goebbels’s Big Lies in action and experienced Stalinist thought-oppression. But, although he hadn’t seen AI, election deniers or corporate hegemony of television news, Orwell: 2+2=5 makes it clear that his guiding principles still apply.

We do get just enough content about Orwell’s life to help understand what shaped him. He spent five years in his early twenties as a colonial policeman in Burma, which caused him to understand (before his peers) that European colonization was exploitation based on white supremacy and that he himself had been an instrument of repression. He fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, where his leftist unit was purged by communists. Physically disabled from wounds in Spain, he got another chance to fight fascism in World War II by working for the BBC, ironically, as a propagandist.

Orwell: 2+2=5 is the work of Oscar-nominated documentarian Raoul Peck. His James Baldwin biopic I Am Not Your Negro was also innovative; Peck chose to present Baldwin’s thinking through only his own words, in archival recordings or voiced from Baldwin’s writings, unadorned by talking heads. As in I Am Not Your Negro, the editing in Orwell: 2+2=5 is brisk.

Orwell: 2+2=5 is a fine film and an important piece of advocacy. It’s playing in arthouse theaters, but difficult to find.

KISSINGER: he sought to justify the means

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The exceptional American Experience biodoc Kissinger brings a balanced perspective to one of the most visible and important figures in 20th Century US history, Henry Kissinger. It neither canonizes or vilifies Kissinger, but presents a clear-eyed, unsparing look at his career. That’s important, because Kissinger’s genius at public relations may have exceeded his formidable diplomatic skills and distorted his image during his lifetime.

Kissinger is solid, well-sourced history. We hear directly from several former Kissinger staff members with an intimate, inside view of Kissinger the man and his work, We also hear from Kissinger’s son, who adds insightful personal stories about his father. And, of course, we hear and see archival footage of Kissinger himself, although perhaps never candidly. Kissinger is told in two parts over three hours.

Kissinger emerged into American public consciousness seemingly fully-formed in his mid-forties, a Harvard brainiac with a heavy German accent. Kissinger brings us his German childhood, family emigration to the US and the WW II and college experiences that molded him.

Naturally, Kissinger details the two great foreign affairs triumphs of Kissinger’s partnership with President Richard Nixon. First, there was the historic opening of relations with China, a hitherto mysterious and sinister closed society, The story of Nixon’s original idea, of the ping pong diplomacy and Kissinger’s secret trips is still exciting.

Second, once Nixon and Kissinger had established a relationship with China, they had outflanked the Soviet Union. That resulted in detente with the USSR and the SALT negotiations leading to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the first limitation of the proliferation of nuclear arms.

These were real, groundbreaking achivements that sprang from Kissinger’s brilliance, but also his sense of realpolitik. He was all about superpower positioning, which he prioritized above other considerations. Along the way, Kissinger found tradeoffs acceptable that had undeniably momentous consequences.

In the decade from 1965 though 1975, American society was torn apart by the Vietnam War. Taking responsibility for the war in 1969, Nixon and Kissinger based their policy on “peace with honor”, which meant they wanted to avoid the unpleasant optics of Vietnam falling to the Communists. But, from 1968, at the latest, it was always apparent that the Republic of Vietnam would fall to North Vietnam as soon as the US abandoned their South Vietnamese allies. Wanting to avoid the PR consequences of South Vietnam’s ignominious collapse, Nixon and Kissinger extended the war for another six years. That six-year extension of the cost 38,094 American and countless Vietnamese lives, all to achieve exactly the same outcome as a withdrawal in January 1969.

Kissinger references, but does not emphasize something even worse – that Kissinger and Nixon encouraged the Vietnamese Communists NOT to settle with the US in 1968, but to hold out for a better deal with Nixon.

Kissinger does document, in the greatest detail I’ve seen, the Kissinger-Nixon secret war in Cambodia, and their paranoid and unconstitutional concealment of it. And it covers Kissinger’s role in the overthrow of Chile’s leftist, but democratically elected government, leading to decades of human rights violations by the repressive Pinochet regime. Kissinger also presents voices from Cambodia and Chile, pointing out how, over fifty years later, the two nations remain traumatized by Kissinger policy.

And then there’s Watergate. Kissinger shows how the Nixon Administration’s secret wiretapping of Americans was started b.y Kissinger, wiretapping his own staff suspected of leaks to the press. Of course, the paranoid and vindictive Nixon took it from there. Ironically, this led to Nixon’s downfall, while Kissinger remained at the heart of US foreign policy in the successor administration. Of course, Kissinger was always Teflon to Nixon’s Velcro.

While in government, Kissinger’s public image was shaped by his sickening manipulation of the press, who made him popular celebrity. The public thought of Nixon’s War in Vietnam and Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia, while ,lauding Kissinger for diplomatic wins with China and the USSR. It culminated with Kissinger actually winning a Nobel Peace Prize for ending a war that he had extended for six years. The guy with whim Kissinger negotiated, Le Duc Tho, turned down his Nobel, rightfully noting that the war was still going on, albeit with Americans having left.

So, Kissinger lays out the history and lets us connect the dots and assesses the legacy of Kissinger’s pragmatism and opportunism. We are able to talk with the Chinese government today, although the relationship is wary at best. We were able to avoid a nuclear showdown with the USSR up to the disintegration of the Iron Curtain in 1991, although Russia remains our most volatile foreign enemy. But at what cost?

If your goal is to project American influence around the world, it’s a fair question to ask, just what does America stand for? If you think that America stands for democratic values, why destroy a democratically elected government? If you think that America stands for freedom of thought and expression, why persecute Americans for their advocacy?

Kissinger is currently airing on PBS’ American Experience. You can watch on PBS, on the American Experience website and on its YouTube channel.

THE TRUE STORY OF TAMARA DE LEMPICKA & THE ART OF SURVIVAL: a daring icon revealed.

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This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is tamara-de-lempicka.jpg
Photo caption: Tamara de Lempicka (right) in Julie Rubio’s THE TRUE STORY OF TAMARA  DE LEMPICKA & THE ART OF SURVIVAL. Courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival.

The biodoc The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival reveals an astonishing life. The art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka was as groundbreaking in her lifestyle and her self-invention as in her art.

De Lempicka painted her female subjects as confident and comfortable with their sexuality, and her highly-stylized nudes are striking. A de Lempicka has sold for over $20 million, the third-highest price ever paid for a painting by a modern female artist.

De Lempicka lived substantial parts of her life Russian-ruled Poland, France, the US and Mexico. Her adventurous personal life, dotted with rich husbands and affairs with celebrity lesbians, brazenly disregarded all the prevailing societal mores of the first half of the twentieth century. She said, “I live life in the margins of society and the rules of normal society don’t apply to those who live on the fringe.” Although de Lempicka didn’t care what anyone thought of her sexual behavior, she constructed much of her own image, sometimes embracing fiction as fact.

The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival is the third feature and first documentary from Bay Area director Julie Rubio, the producer of East Side Sushi. Rubio’s extraordinary research has uncovered that, in building her flamboyant persona, de Lempicka obscured much of her identity, including her heritage and her real name. Bringing birth and baptism certificates, 8mm home movies and the testimony of family members to light for the first time, Rubio completes a new and accurate understanding of de Lempicka.

The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival has been playing select theaters and is at the Palm in San Luis Obispo September 20-21, before Laemmle LA hosts 15 shows in five theaters September 27-29. I originally screened it for its world premiere at the Mil Valley Film Festival.

BIX BIEDERBECKE: AIN’T NONE OF THEM PLAY LIKE HIM YET: rediscovering a lost jazz legend

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Bix Biederbecke in BIX BIEDERBECKE: AIN’T NONE OF THEM PLAY LIKE HIM YET

The thorough documentary Bix Biederbecke: Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet rediscovers a lost jazz legend. Bix Biederbecke was a cornet prodigy and an age peer of Louis Armstrong. His love for and obsession with music was undermined by alcoholism, and he drank himself to death at age 28 in 1931.

Biederbecke was an innovator and soulful performer. One of his bandmates compares the thrill of listening to Bix to hearing a woman say, Yes.

This superbly-sourced documentary was released in 1981 release, and includes interviews filmed in 1978-1980 with fellow musicians and band-mates, including his friend, Hoagy Carmichael. Bix’s sister also appears. There are also recordings of Bix’s performances.

Bix Biederbecke: Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet has made my list of Longest Movie Titles.

This is a bit of a Lost Film, having been very, very hard to find on streaming platforms over the last few years. Bix Biederbecke: Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet can now be streamed on Amazon.

JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE: she stepped onto the roller coaster at 16

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Photo caption: Janis Ian in JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

In Janis Ian, Breaking Silence, the biodoc of the earnest pop-folk singer-songwriter, a teen prodigy steps onto the roller coaster of the music industry at a tender age and experiences the highest highs and the lowest lows. And, it turns out that there’s more to Janis Ian than Society’s Child and At Seventeen.

The word prodigy is overused, but accurately describes Ian, who was doing professional-level song-writing at age 14. Her dad answers a booking request on the home phone with with, “You know she’s only 15, right?“

We’re not surprised that Ian experiences the shock of instant national stardom, the vicissitudes of record companies, the proverbial crooked business managers, (but not as MANY drugs as in most music biodocs).  But it’s insightful to hear from Ian herself about how all this seemed and felt as it happened. Ian recounts her relationships while touring, with both men and women, and the impact of being outed involuntarily.

When Ian is unexpectedly confronted by someone who broke her heart years before, she blurts out the perfect last laugh.

Janis Ian: Breaking Silence was made with Janis Ian’s cooperation, and takes a very sympathetic point of view; that’s okay because Ian herself is clear-eyed, self-deprecating and maintains a solid, often wry, perspective on her experience. Janis Ian herself testifies, along with others close to her (including old pals Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez). 

This is the third feature for director Varda Bar-Kar, who is aided by excellent editing from Ryan Larkin in his first feature.

I originally reviewed Janis Ian: Breaking Silence for its brief thetricl release earlier this year. It’s now playing on PBS American Masters; you can find American Masters on your PBS channel or watch the film on the American Masters website.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF: a man hidden in his own invention

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Photo caption: Paul Reubens in PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF. Courtesy of HBP Max.

The delightfully wacky character Pee-Wee Herman sprang on the scene, seemingly from nowhere, sweetly celebrating his own weirdness. Pee-Wee was the creation of actor Paul Reubens. Reubens, of course, had a life before Pee-Wee, and he had a very private personal life distinct from his invented persona. Sadly, Reubens lost his privacy in, not one, but two career-killing tabloid scandals.

HBO Max is airing the bio-doc Pee-Wee as Himself, from the acclaimed Silicon Valley native, New York-based documentarian Matt Wolf. Wolf has an uncanny gift for finding compelling stories that everyone else has overlooked: Teenage, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Spaceship Earth and Rustin. Here, Wolf reveals three stories, each in itself worthy of a documentary.

The first is Paul Reubens’ origin story – his childhood, his self-confidence as an avant garde art student and his comfort in an out gay lifestyle. Reubens was failing as an actor, and his overweening drive to be successful as an actor led him to leave his partner and go back in the closet.

The second is Pee-Wee’s creation story – how Reubens joined the famed The Groundlings improv group, working with the likes of Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman and Elvira, and originated several characters, one of which was Pee-Wee. Amazingly, Reubens, as Pee-Wee, was a winning contestant on The Gong Show and even The Dating Game. When Reubens failed to be selected for Saturday Night Live, he determined to produce his own TV show – and the sui generis Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was born. Another helluva story.

Finally, we come to the tabloid scandal, an unexpected comeback and then a second scandal. As Reubens himself ruefully notes, by the time he realized the privacy tradeoffs that come with fame, “the ink had dried on my pact with the devil”. 

Wolf had elicited permission from Reubens to make a film about Reubens’ life, and secured 40 hours of on-camera interview footage. But the mercurial Reubens, highly ambivalent to sharing his personal story, kept pulling the plug on the project. In the interviews, Reubens often brings up that ambivalence and repeatedly jerks Wolf’s chain. When Reubens fell ill, Wolf was in a race against mortality to get Reubens back on board. Fortunately, Wolf succeeded.

We also hear from Reubens’ sister and his longtime personal assistant, along with old pals like Laraine Newman, Elvira and Natasha Lyonne. We see an archival interview of Phil Hartman, reflecting on what he saw as a betrayal by Reubens.

I’m not sure that I’ve seen another biodoc where the subject himself, so wounded and humbled, stiffens his dignity to reflect on his own brilliance and his suffering from both injustices and his own mistakes. Pee-Wee as Himself runs three hours and twenty-five minutes and is airing on two parts on HBO Max.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF: a man hidden in his own invention

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Photo caption: Paul Reubens in PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF. Courtesy of HBP Max.

Tomorrow, HBO Max begins airing the bio-doc Pee-Wee as Himself, from the acclaimed Silicon Valley native, New York-based documentarian Matt Wolf. Wolf has an uncanny gift for finding compelling stories that everyone else has overlooked: Teenage, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Spaceship Earth and Rustin.

The delightfully wacky character Pee-Wee Herman sprang on the scene, seemingly from nowhere, sweetly celebrating his own weirdness. Pee-Wee was the creation of actor Paul Reubens. Reubens, of course, had a life before Pee-Wee, and he had a very private personal life distinct from his invented persona. Sadly, Reubens lost his privacy in a career-killing tabloid scandal.

Wolf had elicited permission from Reubens to make a film about Reubens’ life, and secured hours of on-camera interview footage. But the mercurial Reubens, highly ambivalent to sharing his personal story, kept pulling the plug on the project. When Reubens fell ill, Wolf was in a race against mortality to get Reubens back on board. Fortunately, Wolf succeeded.

Pee-Wee as Himself runs three hours and twenty-five minutes and will be aired in two parts on HBO Max, beginning tomorrow.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH: provocateur explained

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Photo caption: Andy Kaufman in THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Courtesy of Drafthouse Films.

Andy Kaufman was an original, whose art always confounded the expectations of others. The fine biodoc Thank You Very Much both reminds us of Kaufman’s gifts and explains the roots of his offbeat, often bizarre humor..

Director Alex Braverman takes us to Kaufman’s formative childhood and the parental lie that shaped much of his psyche. We hear from Kaufman’s dad, his creative partner Bob Zmuda and Andy’s girlfriend Lynne Margulies. Friends Danny Devito, Marilu Henner and Steve Martin pop in, too.

Kaufman was a prankster and a provocateur, so much so that, when a woman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage, the audience suspected that it might be a part of Kaufman’s act; (it wasn’t).

And what about his notorious wrestling wrestling against women? It’s the most controversial element of Kaufman’s work and the most inexplicable. Thank You Very Much sheds important light on this obnoxious performance art.

And here’s a delightful nugget – we even get to learn the origin of Latka’s accent on Taxi.

Thank You Very Much is in theaters, with filmmaker appearances at several LA theaters this week. You can also stream it on Amazon and AppleTV.

JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE: she stepped onto the roller coaster at 16

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Photo caption: Janis Ian in JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

In Janis Ian, Breaking Silence, the biodoc of the earnest pop-folk singer-songwriter, a teen prodigy steps onto the roller coaster of the music industry at a tender age and experiences the highest highs and the lowest lows. And, it turns out that there’s more to Janis Ian than Society’s Child and At Seventeen.

The word prodigy is overused, but accurately describes Ian, who was doing professional-level song-writing at age 14. Her dad answers a booking request on the home phone with with, “You know she’s only 15, right?“

We’re not surprised that Ian experiences the shock of instant national stardom, the vicissitudes of record companies, the proverbial crooked business managers, (but not as MANY drugs as in most music biodocs).  But it’s insightful to hear from Ian herself about how all this seemed and felt as it happened. Ian recounts her relationships while touring, with both men and women, and the impact of being outed involuntarily.

When Ian is unexpectedly confronted by someone who broke her heart years before, she blurts out the perfect last laugh.

Janis Ian: Breaking Silence was made with Janis Ian’s cooperation, and takes a very sympathetic point of view; that’s okay because Ian herself is clear-eyed, self-deprecating and maintains a solid, often wry, perspective on her experience. Janis Ian herself testifies, along with others close to her (including old pals Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez). 

This is the third feature for director Varda Bar-Kar, who is aided by excellent editing from Ryan Larkin in his first feature.

The theatrical release of Janis Ian: Breaking Silence is rolling out, including California cinemas: Laemmle NoHo, Laemmle Monica, SBIFF Film Center, SBIFF Riviera, Smith Rafael Film Center, Rialto Cinemas Elmwood and Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol.