Category Archives: Documentary

SIFF 2019: Putin’s Witnesses (****)

May 18, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

While watching this extraordinarily intimate behind-the-scenes look at Vladimir Putin as he (sort of) campaigns for the Russian presidency in 2000, I began to think “OK…the guy who made this film is now either (a.) Dead (b.) Being held at an undisclosed location somewhere in Siberia or (c.) Living in exile…right?” I was relieved to learn that the correct answer is (c.) – Director Vitaly Mansky is currently alive and well and living in Latvia.

In 1999, Manksy (a TV journalist at the time) was assigned to accompany Putin on the campaign trail; hence the treasure trove of footage he had at his disposal for creating this unique time capsule of a significant moment in Russian history.

The most amazing sequence doesn’t even involve Putin…Mansky and his cameras are right there in the living room of noticeably unwell outgoing president Boris Yeltsin as he anxiously watches TV coverage with his family on election night in 2000. When former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pops onscreen in an interview, Yeltsin (likely half in the bag) flies into a rage, yelling at the TV and demanding that it be turned off (Armando Ianucci couldn’t have written a funnier scene).

Conspiracy a-go-go, Documentary, Politics

SIFF 2019: Cold Case Hammarskjold (***1/2)

May 18, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Initially, Mads Brugger’s documentary promises to be straightforward investigative journalism regarding the mysterious 1961 plane crash in Zambia that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarsjkold. But around the halfway mark, Brugger pivots, now claiming (admitting?) it may all just be a wild conspiracy theory. Either way, it’s a riveting political thriller (and if true-very disconcerting). I was reminded of Orson Welles’ (more playful) semi-documentary ‘F’ for Fake, which teases the viewer’s perceptions regarding what it’s “about”.

Con Game, Documentary, Drug Culture, Sports

‘Roids R Us: Screwball (***½)

March 31, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 30, 2019)

Did you know there is now a popular aggregator website called Florida Man, created to keep track of a seemingly endless stream of bizarre news items from The Sunshine State?

There is a possibility that the site is satirical. That said…the stories seem plausible to me.

It is in this spirit that one must dive headfirst into Screwball, the newest “is he making this shit up?” documentary from film maker Billy Corben (perhaps best known for his Florida drug trade trilogy-Cocaine Cowboys, Cocaine Cowboys 2 and Square Grouper).

I had some trepidation going in. On the upside, the film involves one of my favorite things (drugs). On the downside, it also heavily involves my least favorite thing (sports).

The subject of the film is Anthony Bosch, a Florida man (heh) who gained notoriety from his involvement in the Biogenesis “performance-enhancing drug” scandal back in 2013. Biogenesis was the name of Bosch’s clinic, where he “consulted” (“dispensed”, mostly) for a wide-ranging variety of clientele, from parents looking to juice up their kids’ performance on the school team to some very high-profile names in professional sports.

Bosch’s clinic had a shaky start. From a 2013 Miami New Times expose by Tim Elfrink:

Biogenesis’s history really begins in 2009, when Bosch started a firm, called Colonial Services, based in Key Biscayne.

That same year, on May 7, Major League Baseball suspended L.A. Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez after he tested positive for HCG — a women’s fertility drug often used at the end of a steroid cycle to restart testosterone production. Ramirez, who lives in Weston, issued a statement that a “personal doctor” had prescribed a medication he didn’t realize would violate the drug code.

Reporters at ESPN quickly identified that doctor: Pedro Bosch, whose son, Anthony, was “well known in Latin American baseball circles,” the network reported. “His relationships with players date at least from the earlier part of the decade, when he was seen attending parties with players and known to procure tickets to big-league ballparks, especially in Boston and New York,” ESPN wrote.

The DEA was “probing” both Bosches for their role in getting Ramirez the medication, ESPN reported. MLB President Bob DuPuy also confirmed he was “aware” of the investigation and cooperating.

Tony Bosch never responded to the allegations, but in a letter to ESPN, Pedro lashed back two weeks later, claiming that Ramirez was never his patient, that he’d “never prescribed” anyone HCG, and that there was no federal investigation. No charges were ever filed.

(Pedro Bosch was a defendant in an unrelated federal civil case that same year. The U.S. attorney accused him, along with more than two dozen other doctors and a similar number of lab owners, of running a kickback scheme to inflate drug costs. The government withdrew the claims two months later.)

While father and son both dodged a bullet in 2009, it’s a telling prequel to where Corben picks up the story; it also gives you an idea of what types of characters are involved. It is quite the tale, told by Anthony Bosch himself (along with some of his former associates).

Corben employs an interesting variation on the usual docudrama tropes. He uses child “reenactors” throughout the film. At first, it was distracting; it felt “gimmicky” and borderline precious. However, as the story gets wilder, the reenactments accrue more entertainment value (it’s the same quotient that makes Drunk History so funny). Bosch is quite the entertaining raconteur himself (as most bullshit artists and con men tend to be).

In fact, I was so entertained I nearly forgot how little I care about sports. Joking aside, the film is not so much “about” sports, as it is about the business of sports. It’s also about that peculiar obsession homo sapiens have with “winning”. In my 2013 review of Rush, I wrote this:

I’ll admit up front that I don’t know from the sport of Formula One racing. In fact, I’ve never held any particular fascination for loud, fast cars (or any kind of sports, for that matter). If that makes me less than a manly man, well, I’ll just have to live with that fact.

However, I am fascinated by other people’s fascination with competitive sport; after all, (paraphrasing one of my favorite lines from Harold and Maude) they’re my species. There’s certainly an impressive amount of time, effort and money poured into this peculiarly human compulsion to be the “champion” or securing the best seats for cheering one on; even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean shit to a tree.

There is an interesting political sidebar to the story. Turns out, Anthony Bosch is related to Orlando Bosch. From my 2007 review of the documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro:

The most chilling revelation concerns the downing of a commercial Cuban airliner off Barbados in 1976 (73 people were killed, none with any known direct associations with the Castro regime). One of the alleged masterminds was an anti-Castro Cuban exile living in Florida, named Orlando Bosch, who had participated in numerous CIA-backed actions in the past.

When Bosch was threatened with deportation in the late 80’s, a number of Republicans rallied to have him pardoned, including Florida congresswoman Ileana Ross, who used her involvement with the “Free Orlando Bosch” campaign as part of her running platform. Her campaign manager was a young up and coming politician named…Jeb Bush. Long story short? Then-president George Bush Sr. ended up granting Bosch a pardon in 1990. BTW, Bosch had once been publicly referred to as an “unrepentant terrorist” by the Attorney General. (Don’t get me started.)

Oh, what a tangled web you weave, Florida Man.

Documentary, Historical drama, War

In plain sight: The Invisibles (***)

February 18, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 16, 2019)

There has certainly been no shortage of historical dramas and documentaries about The Holocaust and the horror that was Nazi Germany from 1933-1945 (on television, stage, and screen). It’s even possible that “WW2 fatigue” is a thing at this point (particularly among post-boomers). But you know, there’s this funny thing about history. It’s cyclical.

You may remember this little item? From an August 30, 2018 Washington Post article:

Ian M. Smith, a Department of Homeland Security analyst who resigned this week after he was confronted about his ties to white nationalist groups, attended multiple immigration policy meetings at the White House, according to government officials familiar with his work.

Smith quit his job Tuesday after being questioned about personal emails he sent and received between 2014 and 2016, before he joined the Trump administration. The messages, obtained by The Atlantic and detailed in a report published Tuesday, depict Smith engaging in friendly, casual conversations with prominent white supremacists and racists.

In one email from 2015, Smith responded to a group dinner invitation whose host said his home would be “judenfrei,” a German word used by the Nazis during World War II to describe territory that had been “cleansed” of Jews during the Holocaust.

“They don’t call it Freitag for nothing,” Smith replied, using the German word for “Friday,” according to the Atlantic. “I was planning to hit the bar during the dinner hours and talk to people like Matt Parrot, etc.,” Smith added, a reference to the former spokesman for the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party.

Hot funk, cool punk, even if its old junk…it’s still Reich and roll to me. Cyclical.

With Mr. Smith’s sophomoric wordplay associating “judenfrei” with “Freitag” being a given, there is nothing inherently amusing and everything troubling regarding his friend’s casual resurrection of the word “judenfrei”. It’s a word best relegated to its historical context; I can otherwise think of no reason it should otherwise pop up while shooting the breeze with friends.

One could surmise that the lessons of history haven’t quite sunk in with everyone (especially those who may be condemned to repeat it). So perhaps there cannot be enough historical dramas and documentaries reminding people about The Holocaust and the horror that was Nazi Germany from 1933-1945, nu? Or am I overreacting and being judgmental about Mr. Smith and his friend? After all, I don’t know these guys personally.

Perhaps the email exchange was an anomaly. Okay-so it’s documented that at least one of the people Mr. Smith pals around with is “a former spokesman for the Neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party.” Still-should I give them the benefit of the doubt?

Could it be true what President Trump said when asked why he never condemned the Neo-Nazis who incited the violence in Charlottesville in 2017 (resulting in the death of peaceful counter-protestor Heather Heyer) -that there were/are “…very fine people on both sides”?

After carefully weighing all the historical evidence put before me, I can only conclude that…there were no fine Nazis in 1920 (the year the party was founded), no fine Nazis since 1920, nor are there likely to be any fine Nazis from now until the end of recorded time.

That said, every German citizen who remained in-country throughout the 12-year Nazi regime was not necessarily a card-carrying party member. There were Germans who were quite appalled by Hitler’s strident (and eventually murderous) anti-Semitic policies from day one.

In fact, some Germans were so sympathetic to the plight of the Jews to the point of assisting them to remain “hidden in plain sight” for the duration of the war, at great personal risk to themselves and their families. In that context, you could say that these particular Germans were (in a manner of speaking) “very fine people” (with Oskar Schindler being the most well-known example).

In 1943, following a mass roundup and arrest of the city’s remaining 30,000 Jews (who were already suffering forced labor) Berlin was officially declared “judenfrei” (last time I’ll use that ugly word in this piece…I promise). Or so the Nazis thought. 7,000 Jews managed to evade arrest and go into hiding; out of that number, 1,700 survived the war.

For his 2017 docu-drama, The Invisibles (currently making its U.S. debut in limited engagements) director Claus Räfle was able to track down four of those 1,700 persevering souls and convince them to get in front of his camera to share their stories for posterity (and none too soon; two of the four have since passed away as of this writing).

Räfle inter-cuts the contemporary witness interviews with dramatic reenactments (a la the films of documentarian Eroll Morris), voice-over narration, and archival footage of wartime Berlin to a (mostly) good effect (the acting vignettes do fall a little flat at times).

Still, as previously evidenced in Claude Lanzmann’s shattering 1984 Holocaust documentary Shoah (recommended, if you’ve never seen it), there is no amount of skilled writing, acting, or historical recreation that matches the power of a simple close-up as someone shares their story. And each of these witnesses (Hanni Levy, Cioma Schonhaus, Ruth Gumpel, and Eugen Friede) offers a survival tale you couldn’t make up.

There is not only considerable drama and suspense in their stories, but a certain amount of irony and dark humor. For example, one of the women recalls how she dyed her hair blonde, to pass as a “regular” German on the street. While this cosmetic revision undoubtedly saved her life from the Nazis, it nearly got her killed when Russian troops reached Berlin (the soldiers didn’t initially believe her when she insisted, “Please don’t shoot me! I’m Jewish!”).

It saddens me to think that within the next 25 years, all the voices of the Shoah will be forever silenced by the inescapable scourges of time and human biology; as I pointed out earlier, only two of the survivors profiled in Räfle’s film are still with us (Levy and Friede). A cynic might say the stories of these two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but I for one am grateful for the privilege of hearing them told.

As for those who still insist there is no harm in casually co-opting the tenets of an evil ideology that would foist such a horror upon humanity, I won’t pretend to “pray for you” (while I lost many relatives in the Holocaust, I’m not “Jewish” in the religious sense, so I doubt my prayers would even “take”), but this old Hasidic proverb gives me hope:

“The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Humanity’s flaw is that we can deteriorate; but our virtue is that we can improve.”

Amen.

Documentary, True Crime

Born with the safety off: The Ted Bundy Tapes (***)

January 28, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 26, 2019)

https://media.bizarrepedia.com/images/ted-bundy-victims.jpg

“Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself, please. It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I’ve experienced in this courtroom. You’re a bright young man. You would have made a good lawyer and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don’t feel any animosity toward you. I just want you to know that. Once again, take care of yourself.”

— Judge Edward Cowart to Ted Bundy after sentencing him to the electric chair for the Chi Omega murders.

“For everything he did to the girls–the bludgeoning, the strangulation, humiliating their bodies, torturing them–I feel that the electric chair is too good for him.”

— Eleanor Rose, mother of victim Denise Naslund.

I have avoided pasting a photo of serial killer Theodore “Ted” Bundy at the top of my review of the Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes for a couple of reasons. Foremost, in such sensationalized killing sprees there’s a tendency to bury the victims in a figurative sense; i.e. regardless how many they number (Bundy confessed to snuffing out the lives of 36 young women), they are lumped together and enshrined as “the victims”, which is dehumanizing (no one aspires to be a “victim”). The women he murdered had names. They had people who cared about them. They had lives.

Secondly, the late Mr. Bundy requires no help from me to assure that his cult of celebrity remain steadfast. I admit being a “true crime” buff, but I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” of his. Or Henry Lee Lucas, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgway, David Berkowitz, or Richard Ramirez for that matter. The fact remains that many such monsters do have a fan base—for reasons yet to be adequately explained to me via logic or science.

This likely explains the interest surrounding Joe Berlinger’s 4-hour documentary (which premiered on Netflix this past Thursday) as well as festival buzz regarding Berlinger’s upcoming companion piece, the narrative film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (starring Zac Efron as Bundy). 2019 also marks the 30^th anniversary of his execution.

The fitful sleep I suffered after binge-watching all 4 episodes the other night confirmed my suspicions going in that Mr. Bundy’s grave will never be cold enough for those of us “of a certain age” who couldn’t escape ubiquitous media coverage of his 1978 Miami murder trial (which holds distinction as the first nationally televised court proceedings).

His 1978 arrest (initially on a completely unrelated charge) signaled the end to a horrific orgy of violence that began in Seattle in 1974 (possibly earlier) and ended with the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City, Florida.

Bundy had already been on the radar of investigators in Washington State, Utah, and Colorado for a few years but was so wily and slippery that no single law enforcement agency had enough evidence to directly connect him with any specific missing person or murder case (it wasn’t as common then for police departments in different states to share information).

Berlinger had a trove of archival interview footage at his disposal; Bundy (a classic narcissist) not only loved to parade in front of cameras at every opportunity afforded him but also left behind 100 hours of audio interviews, granted exclusively by the condemned killer to journalists Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth as he sat on Death Row.

In Bundy’s twisted, egocentric view, the interviews were for his “biography”, but what co-authors Michaud and Aynesworth were after was a peek inside the psyche of a serial killer. Keep in mind that Bundy had only been legally proven responsible for the deaths of two Florida coeds and Kimberly Leach; at the time he’d yet to confess to any criminal acts, period (and he still held firm to his “not guilty” plea regarding the Florida murders).

It didn’t take long for it to dawn on the journalists that they were being played by Bundy, who was doing a lot of talking about sunny childhood memories and such but really saying nothing regarding culpability in any of the crimes he had been convicted and/or suspected of committing. Confronting him directly that this obfuscation nullified their original deal only made Bundy dig his heels in deeper, threatening to clam up altogether.

The impasse was broken by a brainstorm. What if they stroked Bundy’s ego, asking him to lend his third person “insight” on helping them build a psychological profile of this “person” who did commit all these heinous crimes (they knew Bundy had taken psychology courses in college and fancied himself quite the expert). It worked like a charm-Bundy was more than happy to put his two cents in (and a couple of extra nickels).

Berlinger’s strategic interjections of Bundy’s “observations” adds an extra degree of creepiness to the proceedings. While this is a clever device, it does beg a question: was it necessary to double down on the already creepy nature of Bundy’s deeds (which are of a particularly repellent and diabolical nature, even when judged by serial killer standards)?

The overall vibe is more horror show than historical documentation. Otherwise, it’s engrossing enough to hold the interest of true crime aficionados, although it doesn’t offer any new insights or revelations that haven’t already been parsed through the decades. As for the Big Questions like “Why?” or “Nature or Nurture”? don’t hold your breath. Perhaps it’s as one interviewee says; some humans are simply “born with the safety off.”

Documentary, Drama, Romantic Comedy

Blu-ray reissue: Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema [box set] ****

December 16, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 15, 2018)

Image result for ingmar bergman summer with monika

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema – Criterion Collection Blu-ray (Box Set)

One of my favorite exchanges from Barry Levinson’s infinitely quotable 1981 film Diner occurs between two friends sitting in a theater watching the Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal:

Edward ‘Eddie’ Simmons: Who’s that?

William ‘Billy’ Howard: That’s ‘Death’ walking on the beach.

.Edward ‘Eddie’ Simmons: I’ve been to Atlantic City a hundred times. I never saw Death walking on the beach.

Speaking for myself, I saw Death walking on the beach just the other day, in a restored 4K print. It’s one of the 39 films included in Criterion’s exhaustive, bicep-building box set. I have previously seen approximately half of the films in this collection; several I have never even heard of (18 of these titles have never before been released by Criterion).

My plan of attack is to watch the films in chronological order of original release dates. OK, full disclosure: I watched the first two (neither of which I had previously seen, from the late 1940s) but then cheated by skipping ahead to The Seventh Seal (couldn’t wait to see the restored version). So…36 to go (is mid-winter a bad time of year to plow through a box full of Bergman films? Discuss). From what I’ve seen so far, the prints are gorgeous.

Extras. Where to start? There are 5 hours of interviews with Bergman and some key collaborators. There are 2 rare documentary shorts by the director, extensive programs about Bergman’s work, “making of” featurettes, video essays by critics and film scholars, a 248-page hardbound book…everything short of a collectable Death action figure. Discs are mounted in numbered slots on cardboard flip-through “pages” (kind of like an oversized coin collection) and curated as a “film festival”. Of course, you can watch them in any order that you wish (especially at this price). A treasure trove for art house fans!

Adventure, Documentary

Don’t look down: Free Solo (***½)

October 15, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 13, 2018)

In my 2011 review of the film Drive, I wrote:

If there is one thing I’ve learned from the movies, it’s that a man…a real man…has gotta adhere to a Code. Preferably a “warrior” code of some sort. […] Steve McQueen…there was a guy who specialized in playing characters who lived by a code; he also brought a sense of Zen cool to the screen. There were others, like Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lee Marvin, Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood.

It seemed inevitable that at some point in E. Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary Free Solo, it would be revealed that its “star”, free-soloist climber Alex Honnold, lives by such a code.

“For [my girlfriend] the point of life is like, happiness,” the soft-spoken, seemingly unflappable Honnold confides at one juncture, “To be with people that make you feel fulfilled; to have a good time. For me, it’s all about performance. Anybody can be happy and cozy. […] Nobody achieves anything great because they are happy and cozy. It’s about being a warrior. It doesn’t matter about the cause, necessarily. This is your path and you will pursue it with excellence. You face your fear, because your goal demands it. That is the goddamned warrior spirit. I think the free-soloing mentality is pretty close to warrior culture; where you give something 100% focus, because your life depends on it.”

I’m taking his word for it. When it comes to heights…I get a nosebleed from thick socks.

It’s not that the Spock-like Honnold never experiences fear; he just processes it differently from most humans. Literally. In one scene, a bemused Honnold gets a brain MRI. The results? “You have no activation in your amygdala,” the neurologist marvels, “Things that are typically stimulating for the rest of us just aren’t doing it for you.” Hmm.

Honnold (now 33) dropped out of UC Berkeley at 19, scrapping his original plan to study engineering so he could free-climb full time. He’s become a rock star in the climbing world over the years, striving to outdo himself with each ascent. In June of 2017 Honnold went for his ultimate personal best by aiming to be the first person to do a free solo ascent of the 3,200-foot face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Vasarhelyi re-teamed with her husband, photographer/mountaineer Jimmy Chin (the couple co-directed the 2014 film Meru) to document Honnold’s meticulous preparation and the attempt itself.

The deliberate pacing of the film’s first two thirds, which gives only fitful peeks at what makes the taciturn, borderline hermetic Honnold tick, belies the genuine excitement of the final third, which rewards the viewer’s patience in spades. There are glimpses at his personal life with his devoted girlfriend, who seems to have resigned herself to accepting his eccentricities as par for the course. Well, you know what they say- “whatever works”.

You may already know whether Honnold achieved his goal; I had no clue before watching the film (I haven’t gone out of my way to follow the world of free climbing). I also purposely did not Google his name beforehand, because I figured it would ratchet up the suspense. Boy, did it ever-especially in the film’s climactic climbing sequence, which was the most harrowing, white-knuckled, yet ultimately exhilarating and life-affirming 20 minutes I’ve experienced at the movies in ages (I had a lot of activation in my amygdala).

The photography is stunning (as you would expect from a National Geographic film…they do have a rep to uphold), and the editing in that final sequence is Oscar-worthy. I watched my preview copy on a 40-inch flat screen; but I easily visualize this film as a spectacular big-screen experience. Granted, it will likely end up airing on Nat Geo Channel (with 153 commercials) but go see it at a theater if you get the opportunity.

Documentary, Politics, Show Biz

Here come the nice: Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (***½)

October 8, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 6, 2018)

Oh, Mr. Rogers, you sly son-of-a-gun. As it turns out, you get to have the last laugh, even though you were not alive to defend yourself. From a 2007 Wall Street Journal piece:

Don Chance, a finance professor at Louisiana State University, says it dawned on him last spring. The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A’s.

“They felt so entitled,” he recalls, “and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers.”

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were “special” just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

[…] Some are calling for a recalibration of the mind-sets and catch-phrases that have taken hold in recent decades. Among the expressions now being challenged:

“You’re special.” On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: “Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. … Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice.”

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can’t be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, “he’s representative of a culture of excessive doting.”

And of course, it’s no secret that the Fox news crowd has been gleefully vilifying the beloved children’s television host for quite some time now; holding him accountable as a chief enabler of the “participation trophy” culture they so vociferously mock and despise.

But here’s the funny thing. Several of the more interesting tidbits I picked up about Fred Rogers in Morgan Neville’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (currently available on PPV) were: (1) He was a lifelong registered Republican, (2) He studied to be a minister, and (3) He came from a well-moneyed family. I wonder if his fire-breathing conservative critics were aware this radical hippie commie cuck-creator was one of them!

In his affable portrait of this publicly sweet, gentle, compassionate man, Neville serves up a mélange of archival footage and present-day comments by friends, family, and colleagues to reveal (wait for it) a privately sweet, gentle, compassionate man. In other words, don’t expect revelations about drunken rages, aberrant behavior, or rap sheets (sorry to disappoint anyone who feels life’s greatest pleasure is speaking ill of the dead). That is not to deny that Rogers did have a few…eccentricities; some are mentioned, and others are implied. It goes without saying that he was an unusual and unique individual.

The bulk of the film focuses on the long-running PBS children’s show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which debuted in 1968. Neville demonstrates how Rogers sparked children’s imaginations with the pleasant escapism of “Neighborhood of Make-Believe”, while gently schooling them about some of life’s unfortunate realities. Right out of the gate, Rogers intuited how to address the most pervasive fears and uncertainties stoked by current events in a way that (literally) a child could understand and process (a clip showing how Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination was handled is poignant beyond words).

If anything lurked beneath Rogers’ genteel countenance, it was his surprisingly steely resolve when it came to certain matters-and you could file these under “eccentricities”. For example, there was the significance of “143” in Rogers’ personal numerology. He used that number as shorthand for “I love you” (“I” is 1 letter, “love” is 4 letters, and “you” is 3 letters). “143” was also the consistent weight he strove to maintain all his adult life; helped by diligently swimming the equivalent of 1 mile in the pool nearly every day.

That same resolve is evidenced in an extraordinary bit of footage I’d never previously seen. The Republican Nixon administration (not unlike the current one) devoted a good portion of its first year vindictively hamstringing various achievements by the previous Democratic president. Lyndon Johnson’s Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created and earmarked funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was an early target.

When Congressional hearings commenced in 1969 to address the White House’s requested 50% budget cuts for CPB, Rogers appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, to speak on behalf of Public Television. Armed with little more than a few notes, some song lyrics, and his unique brand of friendly persuasion, you watch in amazement as Rogers turns the (initially) comically gruff and hostile committee chairman into a puddle of mush in just under 7 minutes, prompting the senator to chuckle and quip “Looks like you’ve just earned 20 million dollars.” Straight out of a Frank Capra movie.

Granted, there is virtually nothing to shock or surprise most viewers, especially if you are one of Fred Rogers’ “kids” who spent your formative years riding Trolley Trolley (and you “entitled” so-and-sos know who you are). And yes, expect the waterworks, especially if you’re sentimental. That said, anybody with a heart should go in with a box of Kleenex on standby. I was 12 in 1968, so I was already too hip for the room back in the day…but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t peeling onions every 10 minutes or so while watching this film.

With apologies to Howard Beale, I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows things are bad. There is so much vitriol, spitefulness, division, and ill will floating on the wind that it’s an achievement to make it to bedtime without having to ingest vast quantities of pills and powders just to get through this passion play (with apologies to Joni Mitchell). I think this documentary may be what the doctor ordered, just as a reminder people like Fred Rogers once strode the Earth (and hopefully still do). I wasn’t one of your kids, Mr. Rogers, but (pardon my French) we sure as shit could use you now.

Documentary, Politics

Through the looking glass: Fahrenheit 11/9 (***½)

September 24, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 22, 2018)

On occasion, like any self-respecting lefty cuck, I will “hate-watch” Fox or “hate-read” Breitbart. Today Breitbart has a post entitled “MICHAEL MOORE’S 11/9 TANKS AT BOX OFFICE” (barely 24 hours after the film opened wide…but whatevs). As I skimmed through, risking a bout of vertigo from eye-rolling, this bit caught my attention:

We go to the movies to see what we cannot see at home; so, what can Moore possibly offer in a world where a Jake Tapper is topping him daily, a world where Moore’s dishonest and shameless leftism runs wild 24/7… and is just a click away?

Dismissing the predictable tribalism, the OP raises a legit concern; one I admit consumed me yesterday, even as I forked over my hard-earned $13 (and an additional $7.50 for a goddam SMALL popcorn). Now I loves me some Michael Moore, and I feel duty-bound to cover this film, which could well be our final beacon of hope in these dark, dark times.

But I fear that Trump Fatigue threatens to overtake me. In my private despair (which I labored to hide beneath a brave face, for the sake of my fellow dedicated graying Seattle libs scattered throughout the sparsely attended 3pm matinee showing) I indeed pondered what insight Moore could possibly offer at this point, in a world where anybody who still gives two shits about our Democracy is on 24-hour Trump watch…and just a click away?

Was I in for 2 hours of Trump-bashing? I would nod in agreement, while thoughtfully stroking my chin. But to what end? The credits would come up, I’d go home, turn on the news, and…he’d still be in office. That’s the bad news (he’s still in office). The good news is that Moore’s film is not necessarily all about President Donald J. Trump himself.

It’s about us. According to Moore, we all had a hand in this (consciously or not).

In my 2011 review of the documentary Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, I wrote:

“Crimes against humanity” are still perpetrated every day-so why haven’t we had any more Nurembergs? If it can’t be caught via cell phone camera and posted five minutes later on YouTube like Saddam Hussein’s execution, so we can take a quick peek, go “Yay! Justice is served!” and then get back to our busy schedule of eating stuffed-crust pizza and watching the Superbowl, I guess we just can’t be bothered. Besides, who wants to follow some boring 11-month long trial, anyway (unless, of course, an ex-football player is involved).

Or maybe it’s just that the perpetrators have become savvier since 1945; many of those who commit crimes against humanity these days wear nice suits and have corporate expense accounts, nu? Or maybe it’s too hard to tell who the (figurative) Nazis are today, because in the current political climate, everyone and anyone, at some point, is destined to be compared to one.

Let’s dispense with this first. Yes, Michael Moore goes “there” in his latest documentary Fahrenheit 11/9…at one point in the film, he deigns to compare Trump’s America to Nazi Germany. However, he’s not engaging in merit-less trolling. Rather (as Moore slyly implies), don’t take his word for it-listen to what one of his interviewees has to say here:

“Taking [immigrant] babies away from their mother [at the U.S. border] and locking up one or the other and separating them because they did no harm to anybody…they just didn’t comply with the stupid regulations…that’s a crime against humanity in my judgement.”

OK, so that’s one man’s opinion. You would be perfectly within your rights as a healthy skeptic to counter with “and what makes this guy such an expert on what constitutes a “crime against humanity”? Unless the gentleman in question happened to be the last surviving Nuremberg trials prosecutor…which he is. 99-year-old Ben Ferencz’s appearance recalls the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen “just happens to have” Marshall McLuhan on hand to call out an insufferable blowhard waiting in a movie line.

So how did we get here? It’s complicated. Following a brief (and painful to relive) recap of what “happened” on 11/9/16, Moore’s film accordingly speeds off in multiple directions As he has always managed to do in the past, he connects the dots and pulls it together by the end. In a nutshell, Moore’s central thesis is that Trump is a symptom, not the cause. And the “cause” here is complacency-which Moore equates with complicity.

Specific to 2016, it is the complacency of the nearly 42% of eligible American voters who sat out the election. But Moore does not lay the blame squarely on disenfranchised voters, many of whom have valid reasons to be disillusioned and fed up with politicians in general. He cites a number of examples, and he spares no one. In fact, he lays into a few sacred cows of the Left; the DNC, President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.

The most dangerous kind of complacency is what happened in Michigan, and enabled Governor Rick Snyder to essentially seize despotic control of the state under the guise of “emergency powers”. Moore traces the political machinations that led to the water crisis in his home town of Flint, and it’s chilling. Using comparisons with how a democratic, liberal Germany handed power to the Nazis in the 1930s, Moore envisions how easily Trump could take a page from Snyder’s playbook and implement it on a national scale.

If this is all beginning to sound dark and despairing…well, it is. However, this is Michael Moore. He knows exactly when to interject levity and hope into an otherwise sobering treatise (e.g. he drives a truck full of Flint water up to the gates of Governor Snyder’s mansion and proceeds to water his lawn with a high-pressure hose).

He reminds us that there is a grassroots movement afoot that hopefully continues to catch fire; from the nationwide teacher strikes that began in West Virginia to the blue wave of progressive candidates in this year’s midterm primaries. He spotlights the passion and determination of the student activist groups that organized in the wake of the Parkland school shootings.

If you’re a Michael Moore fan, you will not be disappointed. If you’re a Michael Moore hater, this film likely won’t change your opinion (although I am flattered that you’ve chosen this post as your daily “hate read”). The rest of you can play among yourselves; but do me (and the country, and our Democracy) one favor? Please, please vote this time.

Documentary, Show Biz

Take a kiss without regret: Scotty & the Secret History of Hollywood (***)

August 27, 2018 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 25, 2018)

I’m stiff on my legend,
The films that I made
Forget that I’m fifty
‘Cause you just got paid

-David Bowie, from “Cracked Actor”

Marilyn Monroe once famously said “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.” Of course, she was specifically referring to the craft of acting, and the difficulty of maintaining integrity while toiling in the skin-deep recesses of the Dream Factory. Indeed, there are myriad stories of those who got off the bus in Tinseltown with stars in their eyes, determined to “make it” at any cost-only to get chewed up and spit out; dreams shattered, souls crushed.

Then you have people like Scotty Bowers, the subject of Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. When recently discharged Marine combat veteran Bowers came to Hollywood in 1946, he had no illusions about becoming a “star” …in fact he had virtually no expectations at all. He had no acting aspirations. What he did have was a knack for fixing cars, a winning personality, and strapping good looks. He was perfectly happy to land his job working at a service station on Hollywood Boulevard.

As recounted by the now 90-something Bowers, what happened to him soon thereafter almost parallels Dirk Diggler’s journey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights; a sort of pilgrim’s progress story for hedonists…the difference being that Bowers’ story is real.

What begins as a chance encounter at the pump with actor Walter Pidgeon, who immediately senses something “special” about Scotty and invites him over to his house for a “dip in the pool” ends up as a decades-long dip in Hollywood decadence for the affable ex-serviceman. Bowers became (to use the polite term) a “procurer to the stars”, arranging trysts for many of Hollywood’s closeted elites. He does name names; Bowers certainly shows no coyness in that department (they’re all dead now anyway, he figures).

Bowers also developed quite a rep for his own, erm, “servicing” prowess, with both men and women. Yet, there is no braggadocio on his part; this is a person so straightforward, charming, and refreshingly devoid of sexual hang-ups that by the time he matter-of-factually recalls engaging in “a three-way” with Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, you’ll find yourself thinking, “Yeah, okay. I can totally see how that could happen. Why not?”

But it’s not all about the sex and the salaciousness (OK, mostly…but not all). Some of the “secrets” divulged in the film have been public knowledge for years (in particular, anyone who has leafed through Kenneth Anger’s “Hollywood Babylon” will be shocked, shocked at a number of these revelations). And some of this ground was already covered in the excellent 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet. Still, Tyrnauer does a good job at contextualizing the historical reasons Bowers’ clients had to keep this all so hush-hush.

There is also a Grey Gardens vibe conjured up by the footage of Bowers at home with his wife. In addition to a rather obvious hoarding issue, Bowers doesn’t flinch when the odd skunk or coyote wanders into his garage to feed on the treats he leaves out for them.

There are brief glimpses into darker parts of Bowers’ psyche; there are hints of PTSD symptoms going back to his WW2 experiences, and he speaks at one point of being molested as a child (oddly, as if sensing how it might be perceived, he goes out of his way to give it a sex-positive spin-but it’s an unconvincing coverup of denial).

But the real fun is in the dishing; and you’ll find yourself leaning forward as Bower chats and charms his way into your guilty pleasure center (you may even start to see what Walter Pidgeon saw all those years ago). Speaking for myself, I’ll never again be able to look at Bringing Up Baby or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? without certain…subtexts.