BEFORE: This is another documentary I spotted on Netflix last year, and thankfully it's still available there. Funny how the "Netflix originals" seem to hang around longer than the films they source from other companies. Hmmm.....
I've got another disaster to report today, it seems my DVR crashed, and it needed to reboot several times late last week. Today I noticed there was suddenly about 10% more space available, so the system somehow deleted a bunch of movies. Which would only be a problem if I was working on a perfect year, and needed to watch certain documentaries to maintain my chain. I had to scramble last night, first to figure out what was now missing, then to make sure that I could still access the missing films, either by re-recording them or accessing them on demand when needed. I think that the documentary chain will be un-affected - it's possible I might have lost some films I had already seen but couldn't burn to DVD and was saving for some reason, but I'll have to deal with that later. The main focus right now is getting to the end of this year's docs chain without an interruption.
At the end of it all, there was one film on my list that vanished (again, this is not supposed to HAPPEN with the DVR...) that I hadn't seen yet, but it wasn't scheduled for viewing in 2018, so I'm going to try not to worry about it. I've learned to at least TRY to take these things in stride, like maybe they're some kind of karmic message from the organization lords of the universe. I recorded this boxing (?) movie "Warrior" at one point, and the DVR decided to record only HALF of it without telling me - that was going to be part of my chain in March, but then I worked the chain around it and moved on, and look at me now - I'm more than halfway to a perfect year. "Warrior" goes back on the "someday" list, and I soldier on as best I can, keeping my eyes on the prize. (There is a prize for this, right?). Same thing happened last year with "Call Me By Your Name", the Academy screener wouldn't play for me at home, so I scrapped my plan and moved on. Then the film later aired on premium cable, but it was also one of the films that just vanished. I've set it to re-record, but maybe just something in the universe does not want me to watch that film - now I have to decide if I'm going to listen to that karmic force, or rise up and rebel against it.
Ed Koch carries over again from "Koch" for another appearance in archive footage.
THE PLOT: Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne.
AFTER: As America ramps up for Election Year 2020, I've got my own Presidential race going on - which current or former U.S. President will appear in the most documentaries this year? I've got more political material coming up this week and next, it's really anybody's game at this point. It's hard to predict the outcome because of that IMDB problem I mentioned, when films don't report all of the people who appear in archive footage. But I can tell you that right now Barack Obama is in the lead, after appearing in 7 films so far. Hot on his heels is Richard Nixon with 6 appearances, covering topics like the moon landing and Watergate really helped him out. Next is a three-way tie between JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush with 5, Bill Clinton with 4, Trump with 3, another 3-way tie between Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush with 2. You see how easy it for the documentary appearances to take over - just a few more and Obama or Nixon could surpass James Franco and win the year, and I watched NINE films with James Franco.
Among First Ladies, there's a tie right now between Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama with 3 appearances, then Pat Nixon and Nancy Reagan with 2, and Jackie Kennedy and Barbara Bush with 1. Hillary also leads the contenders who ran for President and lost, followed by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani with 2 each, and then a big pack of also-rans: John McCain, John Kerry, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Al Sharpton and Bernie Sanders with 1 each. Joe Biden's got 1, but he doesn't really fit into any category yet - but I'm pulling for you, Joe. Umm, I guess if you can poll better than Trump, I'm pulling for you. Just stop talking to women all creepy-like.
Other than that, I didn't really find much that held my attention with this film. It's probably on me, I'm not that familiar with the work of Joan Didion, either her books or her magazine articles, and I think that might be a prerequisite, given the way this film is set up. In addition to telling stories about her life and career, she reads particular passages from her books, and sometimes I couldn't tell the difference. I kind of made the same mistake I did with "The End of the Tour" about a month ago - since I never read "Infinite Jest" or any other work from David Foster Wallace, I was missing out. I mean, I could take the events of the film as they were, but there was no context. I could assume that this book of his was brilliant and well-loved, and sort of extrapolate from there, but that has a limited effect.
So, in a way a documentary can be educational, but there's a limiting effect and not bringing some background to the table myself can then seem counter-productive. Like when I watched "Apollo 11", of course I'm bringing in the background information that these three guys MADE IT to the moon and back, it's just sort of a given and then we're all tuning in for the specific details. I already knew that Ed Koch was a three-term mayor, but not a four-term one, now I'm just tuning in to see exactly how it all went down. When I'm starting from scratch, and I don't have any background reference going in, that's a very different situation - I have to hope that the film's going to fill in all the details, and this just isn't that kind of film today.
I mean, there are details about her life, her marriage to John Dunne, the fact that they adopted a daughter, they held parties in their Malibu home attended by the filmmaking elite, Harrison Ford spent months working on their home as a carpenter, and so on. But I'm just missing the details about why her writing was important, and I'm not sure if that's because the director (her nephew) didn't provide them, or focused too much on personal anecdotes, or what. He also appeared in that "Bright Lights" documentary about Carrie Fisher, and that doc had more impact for me because I knew more about Carrie Fisher, I met Carrie Fisher and I was personally invested in learning more about her. So again, I'm willing to take the blame today and say that maybe I'm the problem here, in that I didn't know enough about Joan Didion going in.
What's universal about her story, though, is that she suffered great losses, and then went on to write about them in a way that took her personal story and made it universal. Her daughter got very sick and then her husband died, and she wrote about it. Later her daughter's health seemed to improve, but then she fell and hurt her head while getting off of a plane, causing a hematoma that required brain surgery - and after that she died from pancreatitis. Joan was in the middle of a book tour, promoting her book "The Year of Magical Thinking" (about her husband's death) when her daughter died, and then wrote about the next wave of personal tragedy in another book, "Blue Nights". She's also survived MS and a nervous breakdown in 1968, and who knows what else.
But this too, points out not only the fragile nature of life but the double-edged nature of our own existence. We all say we want to stay healthy and live for a very long time, but really, what are the odds? And what happens when you do live for a very long time, that probably means you're going to watch a lot of family members and friends pass away, and that's going to take its toll on you, too. Unless you live like a hermit and avoid all human contact, then tragedy's going to find you, one way or the other. It's a little fascinating that Didion had close ties to news events like the Manson murders and the Patty Hearst kidnapping, but many people have written about those stories over the years, so I'm not really seeing why her accounts should be lauded over others.
There's just not much more for me here, so I'm going to move on. I can't always tell that a film's not going to speak to me much until I watch it - it's a bit like biting in to your sandwich and then noticing that there's a bite-mark in the paper, and you realize you were so anxious to get the food in your mouth that you've swallowed a small amount of the wrapping, but there's nothing really you can do about it now.
Also starring Joan Didion, Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Vanessa Redgrave (last seen in "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool"), Harrison Ford (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Hilton Als, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Vice"), Jim Didion, David Hare, Susanna Moore, Lynn Nesbit, Phyllis Rifield, Amy Robinson, Robert Silvers, Susan Traylor, Calvin Trillin, Shelley Wanger, with archive footage of John Gregory Dunne, Dominick Dunne (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), Quintana Roo Dunne, Tony Dunne, Dick Cheney (last seen in "Fair Game"), Patricia Hearst, Charles Manson, Richard Nixon (last seen in "13th"), Donald Trump (ditto), George H.W. Bush (ditto), Barack Obama (also carrying over from "Koch"), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Anna Wintour (also last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Barbara Bush (last seen in "Gaga: Five Foot Two"), Lynne Cheney, Michael Dukakis, Janis Joplin (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Jim Morrison (ditto), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Apollo 11"), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "How the Beatles Change the World"), Pat Nixon (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Oliver North, Michelle Obama (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Around the World in 80 Days"), Roman Polanski, Linda Kasabian, Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Quincy"), Martin Scorsese (last heard in "The Grifters"), Brian De Palma, Warren Beatty (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), Lillian Gish, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood (last seen in "The Great Race"), John Wayne (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence").
RATING: 4 out of 10 co-written screenplays
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