Where's My Roy Cohn?

Where’s My Roy Cohn? *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Matt Tyrnauer.

 

Roy Cohn was a malignant force in America for decades. He made a name a for himself while he was still in his early 20s – as the prosecutor of the Rosenbergs for being spies, and used that to become Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man in his communist witch hunt. When that ended, he moved back to New York and entered private practice, where he was the fiercest, most corrupt lawyer around. He would do anything to win, was indicted multiple times, and was finally disbarred late in his life. He would represent any and every one. He plays the press to get the stories he wanted out there. Although a registered Democrat, he worked with the Republican party, helping to get all sorts of people elected. He counts among his protégés Donald Trump and Roger Stone (only the later sits for this doc). He was Jewish and gay, and hated both of those aspects about himself. He would die of AIDS in the later 1980s, insisting the whole time that it wasn’t AIDS, and he wasn’t gay.

 

Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn (a Trump quote – as he wants someone like his old mentor fighting in his corner) is certainly not the flashiest of docs. It’s fairly dry – a lot of talking heads, and old archival footage, and has no new information about him in it – so if you already know, and revile him, you won’t learn anything new. And if you wanted to get to know the person he really was, you’d probably be better off watching Angels in America – Tony Kushner’s masterpiece of a play (that became an excellent HBO miniseries – Al Pacino plays Cohn in that one) in which Cohn is a main character. The Roy Cohn in that can say things that the real Cohn never would in public.

 

And yet, I think the documentary does a good job of giving a brief overview of Cohn – and just what made him such wretched force in American life – one whose impact is still felt today. Obviously Tyrnauer knows this – even before he introduces Trump in the documentary, he plays up the ways that Trump’s playbook mirrors what Cohn did – use the press, because they’ll quote you in the headline, and no one reads beyond that, claim victory even when you’ve lost and on and on and on. You can see just what Trump learned from him.

 

There is a difference though – Cohn was incredibly smart and well-spoken. He hated many aspects of himself, and had some issues with his mother he never resolved, but he was in many ways an evil genius. When you watch the film, and the things he did just keep piling up, you almost have to admire him – for just how horrible and underhanded he was. This isn’t even really a controversial opinion – many of Cohn’s cousins are in the film – and they loved him, even if they disagreed with them, but know exactly who he was. Even Roger Stone seems not to counter the premise that Cohn was an evil genius – he admires him all the more for it.

 

Cohn is probably alone in the fact that he helped shape American life from the 1950s right up until today – from McCarthy to Trump, and much in between, Cohn’s legacy has been felt even though he’s been dead for decades. This film gives you an insight into why – it has a lot of great footage of Cohn himself, spinning right until the end. The film does, to a certain extent humanize Cohn – in particular when they talk about his closeted homosexuality (almost everyone was in the closet in Cohn’s generation) – including the McCarthy Army hearings – which essentially ended McCarthy’s career, and Cohn’s as his right hand man. The people who attacked back were right – of course – but also said such horrifically homophobic things about Cohn (coded, of course, as they would have been) that you understand why Cohn stayed in that closet. That doesn’t excuse his behavior of course – but it does make Cohn into a human being, rather than a monster. And there is value in that.

DVD Views: Valentino: The Last Emperor

Valentino: The Last Emperor ** ½
Directed By: Matt Tynauer.

Valentino is one of the biggest names in the fashion world. At the time of his retirement, he had been in the industry for 45 years, and was the last of the huge names in fashion that rose to prominence in the 1960s still designing clothing. He is a man who values beauty above everything else, and shut out anything that was not beautiful. Throughout all those years, he had Giancarlo Giametti, his business partner and companion, by his side. While Valentino focused on beauty, Giametti focued on the business end of things, and helped make Valentino who he is.

The movie, Valentino: The Last Emperor, follows the man at the close of his career. Right up until his retirement, he was designing beautiful gowns for women, and insisted that he make dresses that women would actually want to wear. The business end of things seems to be a mystery to him. His company went public, and had the majority of its shares bought by one congolerate, and then sold off to another. Valentino doesn’t much care. He wants to continue to make clothes.

The heart of the movie is the relationship between Valentino and Giametti who argue and bicker just like any other old married couple. They have been around each other for so long, that they have a shorthand with each other. Giametti understands Valentino’s flourishes and his insecurities, because he is really the only one that Valentino lets see them. He handles him remarkably well – he gives him a rock to lean on when he needs one.

The rest of the movie is far less interesting to me. I’m sorry, but fashion has never really been an interest of mine, and no documentary is really going to change that. Watching as they prepare for numerous runway shows, and Valentino’s grand exit from the fashion world, simply was not all that interesting to me. For someone who likes this world, I’m sure the movie would be fascinating. For me, not as much.

Valentino is a fascinating man, but one that keeps everyone at a distance. He seems unsatisfied all the time, overly pressured, overly managed. All he wants to do is dress beautiful women in beautiful clothing. He has done that for 45 years, and become a multi-millionaire with everything that he could possibly want. In a way, his life resembles something out of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita – surrounded by shallowness all the time, how could we possibly expect him to be anything but shallow?

And therein lies the problem for me with this movie. It is all surface, much like the dresses that Valentino designs. Yes, it is all very beautiful. But does it mean anything?