Movie Review: They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead **** / *****

Directed by: Morgan Neville.

 

Morgan Neville’s They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead was made by Netflix to coincide with the release of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, as it tells the story of what Welles and company went through making the film itself, and what others had to do to finally finish the film decades later. If that sounds like the kind of dull, “making of” doc territory that used to be on practically every DVD, back in the good old’ days of 10 years ago, you’re not wrong. And yet, Neville’s apparent enthusiasm for the project – and the enthusiasm of everyone interviewed in the film about Welles, and their experiences with him, is so evident, and the story of making the film so fascinating, that it becomes more than the standard fare it probably should have been. It helps, of course, that Welles has been dead for more than 30 years now, so the hurt feelings of some of the participants have had time to heal, and people have had times to at least except the sacrifices they made, even if they were never reciprocated by Welles. The film paints a portrait of Welles as a difficult genius – but one that everyone wanted to work hard to please.

 

First and foremost, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a treasure trove of footage of Welles himself – as a jokes with reporters when trying to describe his project, being jovial and happy when describing it – which if you’ve seen the finished product (and if you’ve haven’t, why the hell are you watching this) is odd because of how dark that film is. It’s got a lot of footage from the film itself – the hours and hours of footage not used in the film – footage of Peter Bogdanovich playing a different character than he ultimately plays in the film, and Rich Little playing the role Bogdanovich played (which is probably for the best – why hire Rich Little to do a Bogdanovich impression, when you can just hire Bogdanovich?). Everyone who survived that shoot, and are still around to talk about it, are here in interviews as well – many with fascinating stories about those who haven’t. The sad story of cinematographer Gary Graver for instance, who cold called Welles one day, and ended up being his go-to cameraman for years, never making any money (he also made A LOT of porn to pay the bills) will remind those who has seen Filmworker of Leon Vitali, who did everything Kubrick asked him to for decades – with little to show for it.

 

The interviews with those involved in the production are all fascinating. Bogdanovich is probably the most interesting – he was in many ways very close with Welles, who even moved into his house and wouldn’t leave for months on end at one point, but who also had a falling out of sorts with Welles, who viewed him in many ways as yet another person who betrayed Welles. While many of those wounds have healed over the years for Bogdanovich – he still speaks of Welles with sadness – of seeing him and Burt Reynolds on TV making fun him, and writing Welles a note saying “I tuned in last night to see what you really think of me, and I guess I now know” to which Welles sent him back two letters – one apologizing for betraying their friendship, and another saying Bogdanovich brought it on himself – he could choose which to believe.

 

The film is ultimately fascinating in its portrait of Welles, because like the film it is about, this film itself is full of contradictions – here in the form of different memories and opinions on Welles. One person things Welles never wanted to finish the film – had he wanted to, he would have. He is shouted down by others. Bogdanovich tells the story of the film’s title – saying Welles said it to him once, but everyone else disagrees – saying Welles never would have said it.

 

I do think that we are past the days when we can view asshole geniuses through an uncomplicated lens – without wondering about the human costs associated with geniuses demanding everyone sacrifice themselves at the altar of their genius. But while you could argue that about Welles, the portrait that really comes across of him here is as someone everyone was willing to follow everywhere – whose enthusiasm was infectious, and who everyone willingly, would do whatever he wanted.

Movie Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? **** / *****

Directed by: Morgan Neville.

 

I guess I need to admit this right off the top of this review – I never really watched Mr. Rogers as kid. I was, of course, aware of his work, but perhaps because in Canada we had the likes of Mr. Dressup or Fred Penner’s Place – two shows I remember a lot more than Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – I didn’t watch as much of the latter as so many others did. I will say this though – that didn’t really matter when I finally watched Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor – his excellent documentary about Mister Rogers, and just how radical and important it was – and by implication, how much it is missed today. It is a film designed to make you cry – and unless you’re heartless, it will undeniably succeed – and yet unlike so many films designed the same way, you don’t feel guilty about it when the film is over – you don’t feel angry or manipulated by the film. You cry because you’ve just seen something undeniably good – that has undeniable value – and now it’s gone.

 

The film does an admirable job of telling the story of Mister Rogers – how the ordained Presbyterian Minister decided to dedicate his life to children’s television, precisely because everything else he saw on TV aimed at children was so loud and crass. A bullied kid (they called him Far Freddie), Mister Rogers always knew that children felt things very deeply, and that needed to be respected by adults – but often was not. The key to the success of the show is that Rogers never talked down to the children – he treated them with respect. His show tackled serious subject matter, and while he would reassure his audience of children – he didn’t sugarcoat things. He would talk about war, about death, about assassinations, about divorce, about racism, about insecurity and anger – and did it in a way that children understood. More than anything, he taught children that no matter what they were special – that they were worthy of being loved, and loving in return. Those who criticized him for ruining generations of kids by telling them all they were “special” are idiots who do not understand what Mister Rogers was doing.

 

In many wants, Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a simple documentary. The film has interviews with many of Rogers’ family members – who make it clear he wasn’t perfect, and give tiny glimpse into his eccentricities – and those who worked on the show with him for all those years. The overall verdict is basically that what you saw, is what you got – he was that way with everyone. This is backed up by the interviews we see with Rogers, or his testimony in front of the Senate, when they wanted to cut the funding of PBS – and he turned it around simply by reciting the words of one of the songs he sang to children. He believed in his mission – and he was stubborn about it. Like many great artists, he believed his way was the proper way. But unlike many of those great artist we idolize, and make excuses for their terrible behavior – as if they had to act that way in order to produce great art, Mister Rogers made it clear that you didn’t. He may have a little bit of King Friday the XIII in him – but he was kind to everyone.

 

The film was directed by Morgan Neville, who clearly has an interest in the history of television, and where it led us. His last film was the excellent Best of Enemies, which focused on the debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley at the 1968 conventions. Those debates were legendary and were done by two very smart people. What it led to is a current culture when every TV network puts chattering idiots on TV to yell at each other. Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a little less direct when addressing the present (it’s no accident that Neville does take some time showing us the first week of shows Rogers did – which included the King building a wall to keep others out because he was afraid of change) – and the film doesn’t answer the question of what Mister Rogers would make of today’s climate. Trump is never mentioned in the film, but he hangs over it just the same. As the movie states, it’s less important that we know what Mister Rogers would do today, and more important what you are going to do. If we were all a little bit more like Mister Rogers, then the world would be much better.

Movie Review: Best of Enemies

Best of Enemies
Directed by: Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon.
Written by: Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon.

When I watched the pretty good documentary, Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia last year, the few minutes the life spanning portrait of Vidal spent on his televised debates with William F. Buckley Jr. were my favorite parts – so much so, that I wished the entire movie had been about them. As if reading my mind, director Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon made Best of Enemies this year which does just that. The film doesn’t just show the debates – although it does that as well – but it also digs into all the stuff that was going around the debates, and the effects that the debates had – on the lives and careers of Vidal and Buckley, and on television news itself. Some of that was good – much of it wasn’t.

In 1968, ABC news was a distant third behind NBC and CBS. The top two networks were going to run “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions that year - but ABC decided to try something different – an hour and a half “wrap-up” show that would show the highlights of the conventions and feature other coverage as well. One of the things that they decided to do was to get the well-known Conservative – Buckley – founder of the New Republic Magazine, and the well-known Liberal – Vidal – to debate the issues raised at the debates. The pair ended up making television history. Pretty soon, every network had this sorts of debates during their coverage – and in today’s landscape, whole cable news outlets are built around them.

The Vidal-Buckley debates were different than what we see on TV today – which is basically blowhards on each side yelling at each other (the movie shows the infamous clip of Jon Stewart decrying Crossfire while on the program for doing this during its end credits). Vidal and Buckley were not like that – they were intellectuals, who spoke like intellectuals, and would likely be dismissed as snobs if they tried to go on TV today. For another thing, while you get the impression that many people on today’s TV are simply posturing for the camera, Buckley and Vidal legitimately hated each other – they hated what the other person stood for, and thought that if the country, that they agreed was at a crossroads, were to follow the other one, it would be destroyed.

All the debate clips the movie show are interesting and funny – it’s nice to see two incredibly smart people debate each other using their considerable gifts of language. The infamous exchange – where things got very personal – happens in the 9^th debate – where Vidal calls Buckley a “crypto-Nazi”, and Buckley responded with “Listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” This exchange would still be shocking today – so you can only imagine the stir it caused back in 1968. Even stranger is the effect it had on the two men – who would not or could not just let it go. Buckley was embarrassed that he allowed Vidal to get under his skin so much – and wrote a long article trying to come to grips with why he did it. Vidal, not smart enough to leave well enough alone, and realize he won, responded with his own article – where he insulted Buckley to such an extent, that Buckley sued him and the magazine who ran the article. To the end of their days, they talked about these debates – Buckley horrified when the clip was shown on his last PBS show after decades on the air, and Vidal relishing the fact that he outlived Buckley – so he could have the last word.

The movie is terrifically entertaining for most of its running time – with the clips from the debates, and other appearances by Buckley and Vidal, as well as modern interviews with many of the people who surrounded the two of them at the time, and for years afterwards. When it gets to the post-debate stuff, it turns a little darker – what a shame that something that started out so well has devolved into the clusterfuck of cable news “debate” we have to today – and how kind of sad, and a little pathetic, is it that these two intellectual giants could not just let the damn thing go. The result is a fascinating documentary, about the past and present of American media.

Movie Review: 20 Feet from Stardom

20 Feet from Stardom
Directed by: Morgan Neville.
Featuring: Lou Adler,Stephanie 'Stevvi' Alexander, Patti Austin, Chris Botti, David Bowie, Ray Charles, Merry Clayton, Sheryl Crow, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Mick Jagger, Mabel John, Gloria Jones, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, Darlene Love, Lynn Mabry, Bill Maxwell, Bette Midler, Nia Peeples, Janice Pendarvis, Phil Spector, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Luther Vandross, Táta Vega, Stevie Wonder.

Because I am a fan of the Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese, I have heard one of their greatest songs – Gimme Shelter – approximately a million times. If you know the song, you know that it doesn’t just feature Jagger on vocals, but has a memorable refrain that has a dynamic female voice singing at full tilt. It’s one of my favorite vocal performances of all time, and until 20 Feet to Stardom, I never knew who sang it. Now I know – it was Merry Clayton – who had a long career as a backup singer, but was never able to break through as a solo artist. 20 Feet to Stardom is about Clayton – and many others like her – who have all the talent – in some cases much more talent – than the music stars we all know and love, but for whatever reason never had much success as a solo artist. Documentaries exist for stories like this.

The movie begins its narrative in the 1960s. In the early days of the decade, backup singers where pretty, blonde and boring – they faded into the background, because that is what they were expected to do. But through the decade, backup singers changed – and that’s mainly because people started letting African American singers background. These women could sing with the best of them, and if you had a producer – like Phil Spector – who knew how to use them, they could elevate any song they worked on. Spector had Darlene Love under contract – and she sang backup on many songs, and even recorded songs that were released under other band’s names. Spector kept promising her a career of her own – but never delivered – and because she was under contract, there was little she could do about it. When her contract finally ended, she signed somewhere else – hopeful to finally get her career off the ground – only to have her new label “sell her” back to Spector. It may have taken decades, but at least Love finally got some recognition – she’s in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Most of the other backup singers will never get that sort of recognition.

Watching 20 Feet from Stardom  is fascinating in a number of ways. First of all, who ever really thinks about the backup singers? We see them in every concert, standing in the background, dancing and adding in some vocals, but no one really pays much attention to them. But this is why a documentary about them works so well – they have seen a lot in the music industry, worked on some of the greatest songs of all time, and have many stories to tell. And secondly, it makes you hear songs that you have known for years in an entirely different light – whether it’s Gimme Shelter or Bowie’s Young Americans or Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side to Sweet Home Alabama and everything in between. It’s amazing home much of those songs greatest moments come not from the frontman, but the backup singers.

And it’s also fascinating to see what makes the difference between becoming a star and not. It’s rarely talent – after seeing this movie, you’ll have to say that rarely have you ever heard a better singer than Lisa Fischer – but despite a Grammy for her solo album, she never became a celebrity in her own right – and still sings backup (and loves it). Racism certainly played a role in some of the people in this movie not making it. Or sometimes, they don’t have the right “look”. Or while they are talented singers, they are dependant on others for songwriting and promotion. Sometimes it’s a lack of ego or ambition – a willingness to grab hold of it and not let go. And often it’s just plain old dumb luck.

20 Feet from Stardom is a wonderful documentary – that is angry and sad yet invigorating and inspirational. It shines a light on a little considered corner in the world of music. This is the type of story that documentaries are made for.