(YouTube) A pointed documentary on the gangs of the South Bronx in the 70s by Gary Weis (who at the time was working with Albert Brooks on filmed SNL bits), inspired by the Esquire feature SAVAGE SKULLS.
While Weis often uncomfortably inserts his privileged white, outsider self into the interview room with his subjects, he doesn’t edit out the folks that call him out on his motives, and he does make an effort to dig into the personalities of those embroiled in gang life. The end result is a number of strange profile pieces and re-enactments that feel like an ill-fitting but important portrait of 70s New York City.
Sadly, the doc has only had the barest of releases — it was shot to fill time during a SNL summer hiatus only to be scrapped by NBC execs, then used as an educational film for a bit, then had a limited DVD print run over ten years ago — but you can view it (albeit with abrupt commercial interruptions) here:
(Criterion/HBO MAX/VOD) It’s undeniable that Orson Welles — the man who faked an alien invasion via a radio play — is a trickster, but his ‘cinematic essay’ F FOR FAKE is perhaps the apex of his trickster skills. It’s not just an examination of art forger Elmyr de Hory, not just a profile of Clifford Irving’s illicit and fabricated Howard Hughes biography, but also a deep dive into the nature of authorship, authenticity, intent, and narrators. Despite how heavy that sounds, the film’s extraordinarily playful, staying true to Welles’ trickster self.
(kanopy/VOD) FEELS GOOD MAN is a deep dive into the re-appropriation of artist Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog, and the steps Furie takes to try to get the character back.
Most of the doc focuses on Furie recounting his history and struggles with the laidback frog, but director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini bring in artists (including BOJACK HORSEMAN’s Lisa Hanawalt) and comedians/writers (such as BARRY’s Emily Heller) and academics to flesh out the online world of trolls and memes. Even if you believe you know the story of Pepe — and I certainly thought I did — you’ll still find new and surprising bits.
If FEELS GOOD MAN was just a collection of talking head interviews, it’d still be worth a watch, but Arthur Jones leans on his animation background to liven up the doc with vivid, kinetic animated sequences depicting Pepe and his friends as they react to the events as they unfold. It’s a welcome respite from the traditional motion graphics interstitials that pepper most modern documentaries, and is so expertly done that I was left wishing that a BOYS CLUB animated show existed.
(VOD) THE ATOMIC CAFE is an expertly crafted pastiche documentary that maps the nuclear age and Cold War via interviews, archival footage, and U.S. propaganda. It may be because of current times, age, selective memory or whatnot, but I recall it feeling far more irreverent when I first watched it in the 90s. Rewatching it in this day and age, it feels like the pendulum has swung back, becoming a cautionary work again.
Arguably the new 4K restoration looks a bit too clean, has too much of a sheen to it — film grain shouldn’t be scrubbed out of existence! — but it’s worth it to get the film back out there again.
(archive.org / DVD) THE MOVIE ORGY is a mesmerizing, epic camp pastiche of media footage and materials from the 50s and 60s that subversive film auteur Joe Dante (GREMLINS, THE ‘BURBS) assembled as a film student.
It originally ran seven hours long and was a mutating roadshow film, toured around college campuses and, every time it was screened, they’d edit new bits in, snip out other sections and otherwise re-assemble the film. As you might expect of a film that is seven hours long, has no real narrative so speak of, and was screened on college campuses in the late sixties and seventies, this isn’t a film you sit and watch sober, but a film you experience with others, where it provides part of the color of the communal experience.
THE MOVIE ORGY has been since been edited down to four and a half hours and, as it consists solely of stolen content, and the only way to properly see it is in a museum or makeshift underground theater (which is how I caught it, as Dante briefly came to Chicago to screen GREMLINS 2 and HOLES at the gorgeous Music Box Theatre, then screened THE MOVIE ORGY at a tiny little art space on the opposite side of town). However, there is a bootleg DVD out there, and it’s also available to stream via https://archive.org/details/the-movie-orgy. It’s perfect background material for however you’re managing to entertain yourself in this cold, dark, withdrawn wintertime.
(hoopla/VOD) I’m an easy laugher, and I also tear up easily. (Often both at the same time.) Really, I’m an emotional person in general, but that’s okay because alternative comedian Eugene Mirman is too.
The first half of IT STARTED AS A JOKE is a ’behind the curtain’ comedy documentary, showcasing the end of an era as Eugene Mirman wraps the 10th and last Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. This last festival is a star-studded affair, but all of the prior ones were too (just a lot of folks didn’t know it at the time, including some of the performers). We’re talking about Janeane Garofalo, Reggie Watts, Kumail Nanjiani, both Michaels: Ian Black and Showalter, Wyatt Cenac, Kristen Schaal, the list goes on. There’s a lot of great footage of older fests, interviews and bits you’d never have seen otherwise.
The second half deals with how he and his wife Katie (who has also been heavily involved with the comedy scene) deal with her cancer and how they, and comedians in general, deal with finality.
It’s a very sincere and heartfelt tribute from seasoned news and doc producers but first-time directors, Julie Smith Clem and Ken Druckerman celebrate the groundwork Eugene and Katie have created.
(kanopy/Apple TV/Blu-Ray) Cinerama was a widescreen shooting and projection process that, at its time, was the closest you could get to a wholly immersive filmgoing experience. The way it worked was primitive and troublesome, as it not only shot three negatives at the same time (similar to early Technicolor films), but it did so through three cameras, positioned so the footage could be (mostly) seamlessly projected by three projectors.
The end result is spectacularly overwhelming. While the primary allure is the all-encompassing visuals, you’re also bombarded by seven-channel directional surround sound. It truly is a unique experience when it works, but projecting films like this is a hairy process, one that requires constant monitoring for -each- projector. (You can read more about the projection process here.)
If memory serves, the process broke down and had to be re-synced when I saw THIS IS CINERAMA at Los Angeles’ Cinerama theater during TCM Fest, a time when you have your top projectionists on the job. (The LA Cinerama is one of the few existing Cinerama theaters; the other two are in Seattle and Bradford, England.)
Cinerama as a shooting process didn’t last long, thanks to the unwieldy cameras and the introduction of single-strip widescreen lenses like the Ultra Panavision 70, but the theaters survived as many widescreen spectacles were converted to their three-strip projection setup, not unlike how many 35mm films are blown up for IMAX screens.
“So,” you might ask, “if it’s about the experience of being in a high-end theater, why should I watch this on my laptop? Also, isn’t the film mostly a travelogue with some choreographed water skiing?” Well, yes, you certainly aren’t watching for the story. However, while the current restoration allows you to watch it like any widescreen film, it also allows you to view it in the shape you’d see it in at the theater. In a time when we can’t — or at least shouldn’t — be attending theaters, it’s a similarly unique home viewing experience.
(Hulu) Liza Mandelup’s debut documentary about wanna-be influencer Austyn Tester has been stuck in my mind since I saw it last year. Austen is the very definition of a pretty, unthreatening teen boy who is so earnest and straight-forward, but simply doesn’t have the skills to play the influencer game. Watching Mandelup capture his attempt in real-time is depressing but encapsulates what many folks — not just teens — are chasing: the need for social capital to further yourself.
(Netflix) You may have heard of LA bookstore -Circus of Books- recently as there were a number of articles about their closure after operating for roughly 40 years. If not, while they were a proper bookstore, they were known for producing and selling gay adult material. The capper was that the store was run by conventional-looking couple Karen and Barry Mason, neither of whom you’d suspect as prolific quality smut peddlers.
In order to preserve the bookstore’s history, daughter Rachel Mason decided to interview her parents, take them down memory lane, research the full history of the store, and question her siblings about their memories growing up with -Circus of Books-.
It’s not only a fascinating profile of a culturally important store, but also of a family that kept their eyes low to the ground, and the repercussions of doing so.
(kanopy/MUBI) A doc from legendary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman that details the human infrastructure that allows a city to operate, primarily through Boston mayor Marty Walsh (who happens to be Biden’s pick for Labor Secretary).
I don’t know enough about Boston politics to properly judge the players in the doc’s spotlight, but I don’t think you need to. CIYT HALL pulls back the curtain to allow you to spend time — a lot of time, as the doc runs over four and a half hours — to see how the municipal sausage is made. You’ll watch politicians discuss agendas, but you’ll also be a fly-on-the-wall in parking ticket disputes, observe a community meeting concerning a cannabis shop, find yourself mesmerized by the mechanical power of a garbage truck, eavesdrop on 311 calls, and more.
While most filmmakers would focus solely on the impassioned bits — of which there are many — Wiseman showcases full twenty minute meetings and exchanges where, more than once, you can feel the boredom radiating from the room. CITY HALL lets you sit with the procedure and banal back-and-forth that it takes to help people, to try and make sure that Boston is operating as smoothly as humanly possible.
There’s a moment near the end of the film where you’re simply slowly shown a number of quiet spots throughout Boston, and the pacing and range of imagery instills the feeling that the city itself is breathing, fueled by the efforts of everyone and everything Wiseman has shown us over the past four hours.
