20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)

According to the opening titles, 20 Feet from Stardom will focus on background singers and session vocalists Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill. Love and Clayton started in the sixties, Fischer in the eighties, Hill in the aughts. If they’re the main cast, the supporting are Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. The principals providing additional commentary and context are The Waters (Oren, Julia, and Maxine Waters), Gloria Jones, and Patti Austin. There are many mega-stars–Sting and Mick Jagger offer very different takes (Sting’s blue-eyed soulful while Jagger drools over Lennear memories), and then Bruce Springsteen’s the de facto narrator for the first half. Stevie Wonder’s around a bit, too, especially in the second half.

Though even though Sting and Wonder get more in the second half when Springsteen disappears too much, his absence spotlights Stardom’s big problem. It doesn’t know where it wants to go. It knows where it doesn’t want to go. When the film’s covering these entirely BIPOC women’s attempts at being solo artists in the late seventies, it doesn’t want to talk about disco. When talking about their experiences in general, it rarely wants to talk about race. Some interviews discuss it towards the beginning, but in the “it was another time” way.

And it was another time, and while all interviewees who talk about the sixties to seventies musical changes directly refer to race, director Neville hurries through it. There’s no dwelling, no exploring, which is Stardom’s other problem. Neville doesn’t know what to do with divas, which Clayton tells him straight up when the film crew—in the first few minutes and the only time they’re really present—wants her to turn off the music in her car, and she says something to the effect of, “You can’t tell a diva to turn off her music.”

Because there is no great recording session with all these amazing vocalists. There’s one, with many of the amazing vocalists, but not all of them. And not necessarily the ones you want to be teamed up. Well… it’s strange, actually. It’s a number for Love, and she so entirely captivates it doesn’t matter who’s backing her up. It’s also not an ensemble number.

Now, obviously, Stardom’s on a budget. One interviewee tells Neville they certainly wouldn’t be giving him an interview if they became a star. But while Neville does understand the potential for filming these women singing, he doesn’t fulfill it. Giving Stardom a strange parallel to the conventionally agreed upon reasons for some of these women not becoming solo superstars—they didn’t have the best writers or producers; they didn’t have anyone who knew what they could do with their music.

Since the film’s about celebrities, it’s also got some poorly aged elements. Hill got her first big break singing at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. Stardom’s from before further allegations and substantiations. What would Neville have done? Well, given the villain in Love’s career was very much Phil Spector, and the film did drop after those allegations, substantiations, and incarcerations, it certainly seems like Neville wouldn’t have wanted to go there. And it just makes Hill’s inclusion seem strange.

Especially since she just shows up in the second half (despite being around for a couple sessions in the first), like the film’s going to focus on her and her interactions with these other background singers. And… nope. Neville gets them together and does nothing with it. It’s an incredible miss.

But it’s also still an incredible show because every few minutes, there’s one great performance clip or another—presumably for budgetary reasons, there’s not an accompanying twenty-disc soundtrack. The snippets are often frustratingly short.

Fischer’s eventually the star of the film, getting lovely music videos of her singing because she was the one who made it—a background singer who went solo and won a Grammy—only walk back the twenty feet again afterward. It’s a good section of the film, but Neville doesn’t have any way to weave it back into the rest, so the very distinctly delineated third act often swings in out of nowhere. But it still works out, thanks to the subject matter and the interviewees.

There’s probably enough story for twenty hours, but another ten or fifteen minutes would’ve been nice, too. Besides Fischer and Hill’s music videos, Neville’s always in a hurry.

20 Feet from Stardom is a fine documentary and a fantastic time. It just ought to be better; even with budgetary constraints, Neville misses (and avoids) too much.

Also, get Bruce Springsteen to narrate everything.

Wild Life (2023, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin)

Wild Life has a “what if Douglas Sirk did an epic filmed over multiple years” feel to it. And Wild Life, though the film never acknowledges it, was filmed over multiple years. And not by directors Vasarhelyi and Chin. The subject of the film—Douglas Tompkins (the lead is his widow, Kris Tompkins, but it’s all about him)—made a movie about being a mountaineering adventurer. So they use a bunch of the footage in Life, but never mention Tompkins’s interest in being the Carl Denham of extreme sports.

It’s a strange omission, though, as maybe not because Wild Life’s filmmakers are so disinterested in filmmaking they use an oil painting filter on Tompkins’s death scene recreation to make it look classy. But all of Life has some weird omissions.

First, it’s a single-sided commercial for Tompkins’s work, which is really easy because they seem pretty great for rich people? They’re conservationists who protected a bunch of land; they did do it in Chile, which might complicate things. But these are likable—albeit exceptionally wealthy—folks.

So, when Douglas Tompkins got divorced, he had a bunch of money because he co-founded Espirit with his ex-wife—the film sets him up like the fashion Steve Jobs for ten minutes, then completely forgets it. It’s a Sirk melodrama, just a really upbeat one about good-looking blue-blood boomers saving South America from the South Americans through their love of skiing, hiking, and surfing. It’s privileged (and knows it enough it avoid mentioning high school dropout Douglas Tompkins was dropping out from prep schools) and colonial. But since the people are right, does it matter?

I mean, it doesn’t matter to Vasarhelyi and Chin. They obfuscate the entire movie, opening with Douglas Tompkins’s death but waiting until the end to reveal its dramatic potential. They also do these really cheesy diary-writing sequences with Kris Tompkins. For all the Wild, the film always feels controlled, like there’s a thumb always holding it in place.

It also does a bad job balancing the movie adaptation-ready relationship between the Tompkins with Kris Tompkins continuing the work after her husband’s death. They’d been partners, but buying up Chilean wilderness to donate to the country (as protected national parkland), was Douglas Tompkins’s idea. The movie’s got this frame about Kris Tompkins climbing the highest mountain in their parks, which her husband named after her, but it’s completely unimportant. Except to show how white saviors boomers still get it done. But for the film? Nothing. Good shots of everyone pensive on peaks.

Because Wild Life’s a commercial. Just say it, though.

It’s an incredibly manipulative commercial too. I’m fascinated with how they edited footage. They’ve got someone weeping but then someone else sitting in front of the person consoling that person, making the consoling person anonymous. Did Vasarhelyi and Chin film a funeral making sure to block out the people who didn’t sign waivers? Did they do an Eyes Wide Shut composite? Wild Life’s a lionizing bit of propaganda, arguably less impressive than a Wikipedia article, but the construction’s intriguing.

Great editing from Bob Eisenhardt and Adam Kurnitz. The cutting is so good—and the integration of the uncredited footage is so impressive—they get a pass on the silly filters the film uses at times–even oil-painted tragedies.

Director Chin’s also got a photography credit—he’s also a character in the picture, never mentioning he was making the movie at the time—along with Clair Popkin, and the footage is absolutely stunning. There’s nowhere near enough of it, but it is gorgeous.

When in Chile, visit the Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park. There, saved you ninety minutes.

Wait, wait, wait. I’m not forgetting these bits. Sorry.

The film’s real bad at portraying how Chileans feel about the Tompkins’s work. Everyone in the film is pro—one guy says the way they acted before was nationally embarrassing—and the ex-president, Michelle Bachelet, might be the only time the movie passes Bechdel (emphasis on the might; everyone else definitely fails). But then Life keeps subtitling Chileans speaking English because their accents are… too accent-y? It’s condescending. Then when Kris Tompkins dedicates something to all the Chilean staff, she mentions her husband (deceased) and someone else. The someone else gets all the cheers from the audience.

So, little weird.

But, depending on the cast, I’d probably watch the mini-series. Douglas and Kris Tompkins are absurdly photogenic, which Douglas seems to have leveraged his entire careers, so it’ll be a difficult casting.

Actually, no, wait. Sam Rockwell and Sarah Paulson.

George Carlin’s American Dream (2022, Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio)

The first half of George Carlin’s American Dream is a history lesson. Big history and little history; it’s the history of comedy in the second half of the twentieth century; it’s the story of Carlin and his family. It’s the story of his career and how success changed his life; how some things got better, then new things got worse. It’s fascinating and humanizing.

The second half is about directors Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio trying to figure out how they can work in sensational footage from twelve years after Carlin died. They try to tie it in with interviewee Paul Provenza talking about how people wished Carlin were around to comment on the dumpster fire the world’s become since he’s left. But it was always that dumpster fire; we just didn’t have it on video. Carlin in the smartphone era would have been more interesting than a poorly cut montage—Joe Beshenkovsky does a fine job throughout the three-and-a-half-hour documentary, but when they ask him to ape The Parallax View, Beshenkovsky flops.

It’s not all his fault; I’m sure he didn’t pick the Carlin material to accompany the visuals, but the cutting’s not good. The material selection and the piece in general—only a few years after Spike Lee did it earnestly and sincerely in BlacKkKlansman—is a lousy finish for American Dream. The second half is rocky overall; the landing is bad; if it weren’t for interviewee (and daughter) Kelly Carlin, they’d have sunk it. It’s a bad idea, drawn-out, coming at the end of a half-assed conclusion.

Because the second half of American Dream starts with the promise of Ronald Reagan’s presidency fucking with Carlin’s mojo just when he was determined to prove everyone wrong. According to the doc, nothing worked out for Carlin during the Reagan years. He was too busy working to pay off the IRS. So, creatively, he kept hitting snooze.

Except… he didn’t. He started his HBO specials, did “Comic Relief,” and apparently changed his entire professional perspective because of Sam Kinison (or so Dream tries to imply). The first half gets Carlin through high school dropout, radio DJ, traditional stand-up comic, mainstream TV guy, seventies counter-culture sensation, pseudo-has been, coke fiend, wife’s alcoholism, fatherhood, comeback precipice.

Only nope, the comeback would take fourteen years. Per Dream, even though in between Carlin was in Bill and Ted, for example. The movie’s something the documentary doesn’t address until—it’s got a linear structure, which is problematic anyway—but it doesn’t address his casting until it’s covering years later.

It also buries some ledes later when it presents Dogma as being about Carlin, the ex-Catholic; though the doc does not use much of that footage—and never points out Carlin was right about the priests raping kids, probably because it’d piss off useless, pearl-clutching interviewee Stephen Colbert. Then it talks about Dogma as Carlin’s mourning picture; his wife died just before filming. But then it reveals it’s actually about Carlin meeting his second wife. After spending the almost two-hour first half showing its subject’s facets and collisions… the second half goes for easy manipulation. Apatow and Bonfiglio half-ass the finish, but there’s probably no way not to half-ass it since they’re covering thirty years in less time. Plus they need their five-minute “America sucks, subscribe to HBO Max and rebel” commercial.

Carlin, of course, deserves better. American Dream does an all right job showcasing old material, though nowhere near as much as you’d think. It doesn’t discuss the popularity of the HBO specials after the first one, doesn’t discuss his wife producing them (after making a big deal out of her feeling left out during the events in the first half, it leaves her out of the second). The second half feels like parts two and three, and the epilogue abridged. It’s a shame.

Hopefully, it’ll get more people to watch more George Carlin. But not, oddly enough, on HBO Max.

Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic (2021, Jack Rampling)

If its aloof and earnest host is to be believed, Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic was totally going to be about said host, Louis Theroux, journeying to Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic to do a new documentary about Joe Exotic. Exotic appeared on one of Theroux’s documentary specials ten years ago and, since being convicted of multiple crimes and then becoming a folk hero for people who don’t think Covid is real, actually, thanks to the Netflix series “Tiger King,” wrote to have Theroux come and tell his side of the story.

Only Exotic—and many other people—all signed contracts with the hacks behind “Tiger King” and can’t talk to anyone but them for season two or whatever. Theroux gets to the United States and basically can’t interview anyone he thought he’d be able to interview. So instead, he talks to Carole Baskin (who “Tiger King” directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin implied murdered someone to make for compelling Netflix), some relatives of Exotic’s who aren’t getting Netflix money, and the lawyers trying to get Exotic pardoned. And lots of Theroux watching old footage of him and Exotic and musing on what he was or wasn’t thinking. And lots of Theroux reading correspondence aloud.

It’s never as interesting as it should be, partially because Theroux doesn’t really want to interrogate his past behavior, like when he eggs Exotic on about Baskin in the footage from ten years ago. Exotic’s in prison for trying to hire someone to kill Baskin (in addition to killing a bunch of animals at his zoo). Theroux just didn’t take Exotic’s rants about hiring someone to kill Baskin seriously. Seems like Theroux should do a Google search on his former interviewees to see what else he’s missed, especially given his track record with other past subjects.

There’s not much structure to Shooting. We find out whether or not Exotic gets pardoned, but not really any fallout from it because who’s Theroux going to talk to about it. Anyone not glad he’s still in prison—other than the lawyers who make you wonder why there are even bar associations—is under contract with Netflix. Shooting doesn’t use much footage from “Tiger King,” but there are enough reminders of some of that series’s worst people, and there’s a bit of catch-up with what’s going on with them. It just reminds it was actually all about terrible people doing terrible things, and thanks to the old footage, it turns out Theroux was encouraging of it for television’s sake.

Theroux doesn’t comment on the “Tiger King” phenomenon other than to mention the series dropping at the right time of lockdown. He presents reaction to the show as universal, not addressing viewers who realized the manipulative hackwork Goode and Chaiklin were doing; everyone fell in love with Joe Exotic. Only they actually didn’t, which doesn’t help Theroux’s “who could’ve known” take on all of it.

Theroux’s a fine host and ages really well—it’s hard to tell the historical footage from the modern—but Shooting didn’t need to be ninety minutes. It didn’t need to be, but it certainly didn’t need to be so long for so little. It’s rubbernecking a rubbernecking of a rubbernecking.

But Team Carole, obviously.

Room 237 (2012, Rodney Ascher)

If you told me Room 237 exists because someone wanted to test out how far the “Fair Use” part of copyright exception went… well, okay, I wouldn’t believe it because obviously there’s the other terrible stuff going on and you’d do it better if you were just trying to bring “Fair Use” to the Supreme Court or something. It’s amazing Warner Bros. didn’t sue (or wasn’t able to sue). It’s also amazing Tom Cruise didn’t sue for the film using him as an avatar for one of the interviewees.

Room 237 is probably a bit more of a trip since we’ve learned—in the mainstream culture—more about conspiracy theorists and how the conspiracy takes off and what not. So it’s identifiable in all of the interviewees, whose bad ideas about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining accompany the uninspired montage of shots from various films (mostly The Shining, obviously, but also the TV version). Director, uncredited writer, and (of course, naturally) uncredited editor Ascher doesn’t push back or have any presence in the interviews until the very end and then only for (tepid) effect. Otherwise, he just lets the various people monologue, leaving one to worry about the historian’s work in that field, ditto the reporter, who’s got some of the silliest “legit” takes. There’s a moon landing was fake guy (but, wait, the science existed to get us there, it’s just Kubrick shot the landing stuff because matte painting or something). There’s one interviewee who talks a lot about compulsively drawing maps, who doesn’t mention her profession, which is nice. It’s worse to realize these people could be promoting all their bad movie watching epistemologies, their fails in critical thinking, understanding of confirmation bias, and, I don’t know, just general bad taste. The only potentially good take is from the cartographer about the maze and the minotaur and Theseus. But it’s got a silly opener on it so it never actually resonates as an observation.

Ascher’s not interested in whether or not these people’s ideas are accurate. One of the interviewees talks about countless examples and his best one is profoundly bad. Ascher’s got the technology to examine the film and, outside occasionally highlights to showcase the interviewee’s iffy (at way best) take, never does it. You learn more from one five minute Kogonada video essay about Kubrick’s filmmaking than you do from the entirety of Room 237, which raises another question. Is Ascher just trying to embarrass all these people for the sake of attention? If so, he could’ve edited them more amusingly.

Technically, the best thing about Room 237 is the high definition original footage Ascher presumably ripped from his Blu-ray since Warner Bros. didn’t give it to him. You can still see the quality in that restoration work, something the interviewees wouldn’t have had for most of their studies of the film Seriously, Room 237 is an argument against home video. Actually, more an argument against film in general.

What else… the music from William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes could be a lot worse and the superimposition stuff (running Shining forward and backward in a composite shot) is kind of neat because you see how Kubrick shot the film. Though it’d work with all sorts of superimpositions, not just the front and back.

I get it takes a lot to work up a defense of The Shining but Room 237 isn’t just disingenuous, it even manages to do a disservice to the crackpot ideas it showcases.

Stick around for the end credits though—teaser: Ascher was able to get real clips from one copyright holder and it’s a very unexpected one.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020, Frank Marshall)

The Bee Gees deserve a more comprehensive documentary thanHow Can You Mend a Broken Heart. The film skips over a lot of specifics in the early years, then ends its main narrative in the late 1970s with the Disco Demolition, which could have been a major turning point in the film as they’re talking about the racist and homophobic undercurrents to the anti-disco movement. Forty years later and disco (and The Bee Gees) are still entertaining and I’m not looking up Steve Dahl because I don’t want to know if he’s an anti-masker.

It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise given how he comes off in the contemporary news footage. Shame he didn’t do any interviews for Heart, sort of a serious statement, sort of not. I’ve got no confidence in director Marshall or writer Mark Monroe to do with anything even slightly argumentative. But given how little the Disco Demolition stuff figures into the actual narrative–sure, there’s a little about the immediate post-disco stuff for the group, but it’s a rush to the finish. Story’s over. No one cares, apparently, about the Staying Alive soundtrack. Though everyone has noticed there’s no mention of The Bee Gees’ movie, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band either.

Broken Heart’s one of those documentaries where it’s not only successful because of its subject, it’s successful because of its subject’s content. There’s a bunch of old home movie footage, including stuff with the band—for some reason Marshall and Monroe avoid the band subplot (whether or not The Bee Gees are a band or a, what, pop group?), even though it’s clearly important to Barry Gibb, the only one of the brothers still alive and able to participate. There’s archive footage of brothers Maurice and Robin from the late 1990s, but the film treats it like a big constraint, which is strange because they do get a bunch of good material from other band members. We just don’t ever find out what really happens with the music—why people left and so on. The little narratives the interviewees introduce go nowhere.

The modern interviewees—Eric Clapton because he was involved with the same labels in the seventies, Noel Gallagher and Justin Timberlake because they like The Bee Gees, Chris Martin because he knows about being really popular and then no one liking you, and Nick Jonas because brothers—are hit and miss. Some of them are amusing and know their Bee Gees. Some of them get lost. Even when they have something relevant to say. Meaning Chris Martin.

Anyway.

Given the film’s focus on the disco era for the narrative conclusion, they probably should’ve just done a better job talking about the disco stuff. I’d heard it cut off before the movie with brother Andy Gibb’s… well, not death, because it sort of ignores it fades out on Andy Gibb in 1979 and he died in 1988. But I knew not to expect anything post-seventies. Given the hundred minute runtime, I figured it would be a two-parter. Nope.

They really do a rush finish over the last couple decades of The Bee Gees, so Broken Heart isn’t really interested in the band as people or artists and whatnot, it’s just a quick, amiable survey of the rise to the glory days, the glory days, and then scene. Because the glory days are awesome, based on the footage—they were great at working the camera—and we don’t get much of it. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart isn’t interested in the available subject today, it isn’t interest in showcasing the music, and it’s not interested in the subjects as they developed as anything but celebrities.

There’s some really interesting stuff about the music. The best interviewees are the ex-drummers, ex-guitarists, ex-producers. The stories of how they all came together to create these mega-hits, all thanks to these seemingly amiable—still unproblematic (enough if not entirely) after sixty years of celebrity—basic but sincere British brothers who could fucking sing. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart initially does a pretty good job showcasing the ability then loses interest; Marshall just plays it all wrong. It gets over a lot. And mostly because the music’s good. Like. Forty years later… Bee Gees good, sometimes better. Yes, it’s a trip to see them performing the folk stuff looking like the boys too square for Marcia Brady but then Robin sings and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter it’s square and obvious.

It’s a fun, entertaining hundred minutes. But it should be a lot better. Just for itself, it should be better; shouldn’t have ignored subplots and so on. Marshall’s entirely absent as director and it’s a mistake. The film need some personality. Marshall and Monroe bring none.

So it’s a testament to The Bee Gees how much Broken Heart succeeds.

Vampira and Me (2012, Ray Greene)

For its protracted 106 minute runtime, Vampira and Me is a combination of tragic, frustrating, annoying, and enthralling. The problem with the whole project is writer, producer, editor, director, and narrator Greene. Well, okay, the problem with any project about Vampira (Maila Nurmi) is the lack of extant footage of her television show, “The Vampira Show,” which ran in the mid-fifties. Nurmi was an immediate hit—the first glamour ghoul—but broadcasts were live and no recordings were made. Watching Me, there’s just enough remaining footage to show Nurmi as an excellent early television comedian, who kept up and outpaced her costars, and it’s an exceptional bummer the footage just isn’t here.

Much of Vampira and Me is an at least hour-long interview Nurmi recorded with Greene when he was working on another project. Greene, as narrator, says Me is going to be all about how Nurmi isn’t “just” Vampira, so the Vampira in the title is a little weird… ditto the Me, actually, because Greene barely has any anecdotes about his friendship with Nurmi. Except one where he emphases her emotional problems. It’s a weird choice. But Vampira and Me is full of weird choices, like Greene using a bunch of unrelated but contemporary footage because none exists of Nurmi. So you’re watching some commercial from the fifties and supposed to pretend it’s Nurmi or something. Plus he then goes on to add sound effects to actual recordings of Nurmi monologuing. And there are sound effects all the time.

It’s annoying. Like I said, frustrating, tragic, enthralling, annoying.

Nurmi herself—based on the filmed interview material—is a natural raconteur. She knew Orson Welles back in the day and you can imagine they’d have done great banter if given the opportunity. She was also good friends with James Dean during his meteoric rise, which gets a lot of coverage in the film but very little insight. Nurmi was into New Age woo and Greene’s not a good enough interviewer to get through that murky pool to actual insight. The biggest bummer of the film itself is the interview, which a better filmmaker could’ve incorporated into a far better project. The lack of other interviewees is a big problem.

But then there’s Greene’s narrative construction. He jumps ahead to the sixties at one point, then pulls back to the fifties. The timeline wouldn’t be muddled if Greene just did a better job presenting it. He also doesn’t get anything out of the jump ahead and fall back. It also contributes greatly to the slog of the second half.

Then there’s Greene “killing off” his subject; at the beginning of the film, he implies this rare, exclusive interview is going to be the emphasis and everything else will serve to annotate it. Nope. Greene doesn’t cover a lot of Nurmi’s rougher days—she spent almost fifty years in abject poverty, screwed out of continuing popularity because of a dispute with the TV station (they wanted to syndicate with other Vampiras in local markets, she apparently wanted to be Vmapira in all of them—not clear because Greene didn’t think to ask, apparently). He’s got some line about how she went on to a somewhat happy ending at the end and then doesn’t show it or talk about it… she just dies and it’s funeral footage, which is weird.

Also weird is the clips of a dancing fifties girl who looks a lot like Carolyn Jones, who played Morticia Addams on “The Addams Family” TV show. Nurmi got her idea for the Vampira costume from the Addams Family cartoon strip. She was trying to get noticed by producers to do an Addams Family adaptation, not “The Vampira Show.” And given the Elvira vs. Vampira stuff, which barely gets covered—and Greene at one point makes it sound like Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) was a reluctant nemesis… you’d think he’d clarify. Nope.

But then it turns out Greene’s not a very honest documentarian.

He implies Nurmi’s “Vampira” show was up against “I Love Lucy” in the 1955 Emmy’s when Nurmi was actually nominated for a local Emmy. What makes that deception so galling is the James Dean friendship, which was in contention for years because of a Hedda Hopper book and Nurmi had to fight to be believed. Documentation backs Nurmi up, but it took decades.

Greene’s got a great chance to look at fifties Hollywood and the ephemera of television–the first viral sensations—and he has a handful of good observations, they just don’t go anywhere. And they’re really early in the film.

It’s a testament to Nurmi as a storyteller and personality she’s able to surmount this wanting “homage” just in the single camera interview and a few surviving clips.

Overnight (2003, Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana)

Overnight is occasionally amusing, often mortifying, never contextualized enough to be interesting, and always compelling. But it’s compelling only if you’re somewhat familiar with the subject of the film, Troy Duffy. Specifically, Duffy’s directorial debut, The Boondock Saints. In 1997, Harvey Weinstein bought the script for Duffy to direct at Miramax and less than a year later put the project in turnaround. Why? It’s unclear. But apparently Duffy pissed off Miramax exec Meryl Poster so much, Weinstein dropped it. How did Duffy pissed off Poster? Unclear. There’s no interviews with anyone like Poster in the film, much less Weinstein. The one person besides Duffy who badmouths him does so with a pixelated face and the producer who actually worked for Miramax on the project has voice distortion.

The documentary, made by Duffy’s band’s co-managers—oh, yeah, Duffy also had a band, which is apparently shitty. There’s none of their music in Overnight (and no clips from Boondock). So if you haven’t heard the music, if you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not going to get the full effect of the documentary because directors Smith and Montona just don’t have the right material to tell the story. It’s also not compelling unless you want to see jackass Duffy show the full shallowness of his humanity. It’s like a puddle with some old dog poop in it.

And Overnight is eighty minutes of it.

The first people Duffy turns on—so his band and ostensibly the documentary makers are all part of his crew. They’re going to take Hollywood by storm. There are multiple scenes where Duffy talks about leading the greatest group of creatives in history because he’s got his younger brother and the two guys in the band and the documentary makers slash band managers. Only once the band signs a deal, they fire the managers. There’s a long scene of Duffy and his brother berating the band mangers (you know, the guys who made Overnight) and telling them they will never get paid. Ever.

Then the movie keeps going. The movie they’re making. So even though there was this falling out, they didn’t fall out. There’s maybe less footage going forward but there’s also less story, just Duffy self-destructing more and their album sucking. Eventually Duffy will fall out with everyone and the movie ends on an upbeat note about how he didn’t get any money from the movie’s eventual video success because his agency screwed up his contracted.

Duffy’s got this conspiracy theory about how Harvey Weinstein is influencing his agency to give him bad deals when really it seems like the agency (William Morris) put an absolute tool (Jim Crabbe) in charge of Duffy’s account. Like, no one comes out of Overnight looking good. At best you’re just a dope. Even co-director Montana, who eventually contributes a lot of onscreen interviews, looks bad. Smith, the other one, he’s somewhat sympathetic still. But the guys in the band are dicks. Jake Busey is a pig. But it really does seem like, from the movie, Crabbe screwed everything up somehow.

Except what really happened was Duffy went out drinking with obviously Miramax would’ve used it as an Ewan McGregor vehicle Ewan McGregor and got in a fight about how Duffy supported the death penalty and people who don’t suck. Like McGregor. Not in the movie. At all. But apparently it’s directly responsible for Miramax dumping the project.

Anyway.

Overnight is adequately executed rubbernecking and nothing else. Kind of good music though—from Jack Livesey and Peter Nashel. It’s better than it needs to be.

Free Solo (2018, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin)

Free Solo is ostensibly about rock climber Alex Honnold’s obsession to free solo (climbing alone without ropes, maybe falling to a gruesome death) Yosemite’s El Capitan mountain. You know, from Star Trek V. Does Honnold beat Captain Kirk’s time? You could watch and find out. Or Google.

Only it’s not about Honnold’s obsession because the film takes a year off from the story. So is it about making a movie about Honnold’s preparation to climb El Cap? No. So is it a movie about Honnold? No, not at all. At some point the movie seems to realize Honnold’s not sympathetic at all, even when he’s doing good works (which don’t really figure into his psyche, which would be far more of an interesting subject—how did this affectless person get the idea to start a charity). That discovery of the lack of sympathetic nature comes before Honnold’s girlfriend shows up—but after Honnold says he doesn’t want a serious relationship because it might screw up his climbing—and Free Solo does try to investigate some of his lack of affect. Is it because his amygdala doesn’t register danger? Don’t know, he gets medically questionable MRI and then it’s over. Is it because his mom only spoke French to him as a child? Don’t know, Mom disappears real quick after she shows up (she only speaks English in the movie so Honnold telling the French anecdotes sound specious). Because Honnold’s not a reliable narrator. He’s always lying to his girlfriend, whose interview segments initially seem like they’d be good training for a couples’ counselor but once they buy a house together it becomes the girlfriend’s craven middle class ambitions and Honnold’s utter disinterest. Presumably he’s fixating on his El Cap obsession but we never find out because the film doesn’t get deep with its subject.

Its subject who apparently set up the film project himself for himself. But there’s no ego. Honnold treats the film as an inconvenience, which makes sense. There are a number of rather inauthentic devices directors Vasarhelyi (who’s never in the film) and Chin (who’s in it a bunch) use.

In theory, Free Solo could just be about using amazing camera technology to film this guy free climbing El Capitan for the first time in history but… it’s not. The film’s very shady about how they actually shoot the climb. After eighty minutes of the camera crew being omnipresent, they disappear for the climb itself, even though the cameras are obviously there (and Chin talked to his camera crew all about their placement). But there are lots of cameras. And some really good microphones. At least, there had better have been really good microphones because if they added the sound of Honnold grunting through his climb into the movie? It’d be bigger bullshit than the scenes with the camera crew fretting over possibly recording Honnold fall to his death. They’re not just camera guys, they’re rock climbers and they’re Honnold’s friends. At least as close as he seems to get to friends. They’re going to be really sad if he dies and they’re filming it for this movie.

So the movie ends up being about the camera guys worrying Honnold’s going to fall and die. It’s not about his girlfriend worrying, it’s not about his challenge and achievement, it’s the camera guys feeling like if he dies, they’re partially responsible for turning it into a movie.

But Vasarhelyi and Chin already know if Honnold falls to his death. They know before the movie starts. They present the last third, featuring the footage of his climb, like an exploitative thriller, even hiding where they’ve got cameras and cameramen in the resolution. Wouldn’t it make more sense to showcase Honnold’s ability?

He’s the only guy who’s ever done this climb. This climb, captured on “film,” has never happened before. And they treat it like a chance to terrify instead of champion.

And given Honnold’s really questionable take on reality—he blathers about being a warrior and is a possibly obnoxious vegetarian (but not vegan, so it’s like, what are you bragging about). He’s also an emotionally absent boyfriend, but, hey, his girlfriend likes him… for reasons.

Is there a great movie in Free Solo? With better editors, a more earnest, more authentic narrative distance, not to mention better music… probably. But the filmmakers sit on some amazing climbing footage, which they tease out, set to iffy music by Marco Beltrami and Brandon Roberts and lackluster cutting from Bob Eisenhardt. It’s a bummer.

Especially since Honnold’s probably best observed through a telephoto lens.

My Scientology Movie (2015, John Dower)

My Scientology Movie almost ought to be called Our Scientology Movie as much of the film plays like a buddy movie between documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux and ex-Scientology chief enforcer Marty Rathbun. Theroux doesn’t want to make a buddy movie with Rathbun, he wants to go and tour the Scientology campus and interview Scientology head man David Miscavige. Who’s also Tom Cruise’s BFF. But more on Tom Cruise later.

Only Miscavige doesn’t give interviews and Theroux can’t tour the campus. So then he starts talking to the only people he can—ex-Scientologists. He meets up with an actor, Steven Mango, who used to be a member and gives Theroux some of the scoop. Rathbun comes in once Theroux comes up with a plan to make the documentary without interviews of any active Scientologists. He’s going to take existing interview footage of Miscavige (along with leaked, wacky, kind of scary really promotional videos from inside the Church) and hire actors to do scenes as Miscavige. Rathbun’s going to be there to help cast the part, since he was that aforementioned chief enforcer. He got things done for Miscavige. Like hiring private investigators to stalk people. After Rathbun fell out with Miscavige, he left the Church and wrote some tell-alls and pissed them off for years. Including during the filming of this movie. They show up to harass him, which gets to be one of the wackier ways the Church responds to the documentary. On one hand, whenever they’re dealing with Theroux without Rathbun, they threaten Theroux with made-up laws and promises to drop a dime so the cops can come out, read Theroux’s permit, leave the scene. Watching Theroux address the never-identified as Church employees Church employees is fairly disquieting, as the Church employees come off like they’re Bond henchmen. Only Blofeld never shows up. Oddjob never even shows up. Theroux’s biggest back and forth is with a woman hired to pretend to be producing a documentary about “people” and film Rathbun and Theroux from across the street.

Most of the interactions Theroux has with the Scientologists come off like candid camera moments. Not the ones Rathbun has with them—like I said, they’re chill with Theroux with Rathbun, but when Rathbun’s all alone, they go wild. Theroux’s got a reserved take on Rathbun—it’s not a functional buddies buddy flick—but Rathbun comes off really sincere. All of the ex-Scientologists do, especially when they’re trying to show Theroux how stoic they can appear (thanks to all their Church trainings).

So Theroux and Rathbun first do a casting call for Miscavige, eventually going with the utterly fantastic Andrew Perez. Theroux runs a pretty chill in-movie movie production where the actors don’t really seem to worry about much except having a good time; only Perez is always on. He’s always intense. You get to watch him prepare for this performance and then give it. His brief Miscavige “moments” are the tapioca balls in the film’s boba. They’re just so good. It’s immaterial to the film whether or not Perez nails not just “the scene” but his process leading up to it, but he always does. So good.

But even though Theroux’s getting the Church’s attention, it’s not getting him anywhere getting on campus much less an interview with Miscavige. He and Rathbun are just going to have to keep going with their reenactment production. They want a Tom Cruise, because there’s this disturbing promotional video Cruise did for the Church and it’s like couch-jumping then stopping to rip the couch apart with your bare hands and maybe bite a cushion just to be sure. Rob Alter is the Tom Cruise. He’s good too.

And Theroux’s interviewing other ex-Scientologists. One (Marc Headley) takes Theroux (and Movie) on some road trips, which then become a regular occurrence because Theroux really pisses them off whenever he shows up at the movie production company compound.

Like, it’s a Roger Moore James Bond movie. It’s like if they’d done Diamonds Are Forever with Moore. It’s goofy. Then you remember it’s real and it starts getting really scary. Because the Scientologists aren’t out to destroy the world or turn it into a giant diamond or whatever, they’re trying to save it from itself. Movie knows it has to frequently remind it’s real life. It’s not fantasy. At all.

Lawyers get involved, sending Theroux what amounts to a high school trash talk note about his new friend Rathbun. So Theroux tries to respond to the letter and can’t get anyone to take it. So the Church’s lawyers want to send trash talk notes but not receive presumably lawyerly responses?

So maybe it’s like a conspiracy movie spoof and a seventies James Bond movie.

And Theroux—despite having a lot of dry laughs—isn’t out to do a hit piece. Not an exceptional one. He doesn’t get into any rumors, any conspiracy theories, blackmail theories. There’s nothing about how Battlefield Earth is just a thin fictionalization of Church history. Theroux’s really interested in how Church founder L. Ron Hubbard saw himself as a big-time movie director because he directed the Church’s inspirational movies. Theroux’s looking for a Hollywood connection, especially since the “clearing” procedures the film shows (advised by Rathbun) often seem like acting class exercises. Theroux can’t quite get there, but when he can’t make it, it’s not like he falls back to easy targets. He does it straight and… ahem… clear. He tried to make this movie, he couldn’t for these reasons, here’s what he did.

My Scientology Movie raises a whole lot of questions and provides very few answers. Theroux, director (and co-writer) Dower, editor Paul Carlin, cinematographer Will Pugh, they make a great picture. Awesome music from Dan Jones too. Jones never takes anything too seriously and the “sci-fi movie” motif he brings back time and again is more endearing than a dig.

It’s superb.

4/4 ★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by John Dower; written by Dower and Louis Theroux; director of photography, Will Pugh; edited by Paul Carlin; music by Dan Jones; production designer, Alessandro Marvelli; produced by Simon Chinn; released by Altitude Film Distribution.

Starring Andrew Perez (David Miscavige) and Rob Alter (Tom Cruise); presented by Louis Theroux.

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