Life, Animated

Year 11, Day 194 - 7/13/19 - Movie #3,291

BEFORE: This Oscar-nominated documentary got my attention a couple of years ago, so it spent some time on the back-up watch list (the one for films where I don't have a copy myself, but I could probably get access to it via streaming services or, in this case, an Academy screener).  However, the lack of a large cast of well-known actors prevented me from working it in, until now, with Gilbert Gottfried carrying over from "The Last Laugh".

THE PLOT: A coming-of-age story about a boy and his family who overcame great challenges by turning Disney animated movies into a language to express love, loss, kinship and brotherhood.

AFTER: Surprisingly, Gilbert makes a full appearance in this film, and not just in animation as the voice of Iago from the movie "Aladdin".  We meet Owen Suskind, the young man overcoming autism as he is getting ready to make the transition from living with his parents and attending classes designed to prepare him to live and work on his own, and we learn that he'd established a "Disney Movie Club", a regular screening where he and other people with special needs could get together and watch and discuss these animated classics.  Jonathan Freeman, the voice of "Jafar", was a special guest at one screening, where he read lines from the classic film, and Mr. Gottfried also appeared as a surprise.  (One suspects the documentary filmmakers may have intervened here to create a "moment" for their film.)  But it was exciting to see the wonder that his unannounced arrival caused in the film's subject.

This is a story about a boy who developed autism at a young age, and for several years spoke only gibberish, who was basically living in a world of his own.  But one day his father was able to communicate with him by using a puppet of the Iago character, and they discovered that they could reach him through the Disney films, as the young boy had watched them all, memorized them and internalized them.  And much like Peter Pan, Owen was resisting all efforts to make him grow up (who can blame him, it's great to be a kid...) but eventually, by using lessons from the Disney films, he was able to express his feelings, attend high school and get a job (in a movie theater, no less).

I might be bringing too much personal knowledge to the table on this one, because I watched all the Disney films when I was a kid (though there weren't as many of them then), even, God help me, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks".  They were, in fact the only films that I was allowed to see, up until the age of 8, when my grandfather took me to see the 1976 version of "King Kong", which my mother was sure would corrupt me. (She was sort of right, "Star Wars" came along the next year, and I sort of never looked back...).  Also, I used to work in movie theaters, before I got hired by animation studios, though the cartoons I've worked on are definitely not Disney material. And I've got a nephew who's probably somewhere on the spectrum, though in recent years I've had engaging conversations with him about "Star Wars", since in some ways he knows just as much about those movies as I do.

I don't fully understand autism (who does?) but I was a kid once, and if I loved something, I wanted to know all about it, memorize it and internalize it, whether it was a Star Wars movie or a funny Monty Python sketch or a "choose your own adventure" book.  I took apart my toys and put them back together again, and agonized over jigsaw puzzles that were missing a piece.  I was fairly anti-social and also endured bullying, and probably had a lot of trouble expressing my emotions and dealing with things, so I may have checked off many of the boxes associated with the condition - but I excelled at schoolwork, read puzzle magazines in my spare time, and I don't know, kept aware and learned some social skills - still, I won't say I'm "normal" (because who is?).  On my last trip to visit my parents, I encountered my cousin's daughter, who was shy and told me that she has trouble meeting new people, so I told her that I'm just loud, but not mean.  And when she found out I worked in animation, she started reciting a lot of points that she'd obviously learned from watching the "making of" segments on some animated DVD, which sounded like they came straight from a production meeting, like "Make sure you have a strong female character" and "Have several turning points in your story".  Holy crap, I thought, in 30 years she'll be a successful studio executive.

So, with this background knowledge of both Disney films and child development, tonight I introduce a new feature to the Movie Year.  Now that my NITPICK POINTS are practically a household name (they are, right?) it's time to bring on the Hastily Drawn Conclusion.

HASTILY DRAWN CONCLUSION #1 - Disney animated films cause autism.

(DISCLAIMER: Hastily Drawn Conclusions are not intended to be taken seriously.  They are meant to make a larger point, often based on an ironic or comical view of the world, and are intended for entertainment purposes only.  No malice or liability shall result from use of the HDC and please discontinue using if you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or overly litigious.  Ignore the HDC if you are pregnant, trying to conceive, or are an overprotective parent.)

I'm being facetious, of course, but think about it - Owen was a normal kid and seemed to interact well with his parents, and then they watched all the Disney films together and boom, autism.  This is, more or less, the same argument used by the anti-vaxxers that's putting kids at risk of getting measles right now. "My son was doing fine, then he got vaccinated, and now he's moody and withdrawn..."  Well, at least he won't get measles now.  Seriously, though, I don't have all the answers here, in most cases I don't even know what the questions are.  Is the cause of autism physical, chemical or emotional?  Has the rise of the condition been caused by some recent environmental development or has it always been there, and we've just gotten better at diagnosing it?  Air pollution, PCBs, smoking, drinking - you'd think that if there were a common cause factor we would have landed on it by now, but instead it's one of those problems like climate change that seems too big for us to prevent or even process.

But think about this - why does the Disney corporations keep their classic films in "The Disney Vault"?  Why wouldn't they release all of their films on VHS or DVD at the same time for so many years, what were they afraid of?  What would have happened to society if all of those classic films were on the market at the SAME TIME?  I think they know more than they're letting on, it couldn't possibly be that they didn't want those films competing with each other, or that by limiting their availability they were creating an artificial demand for their own product, that's too horrible to contemplate.  "Available for a limited time only, during which we'll sell millions of copies before putting that classic film back in the vault, to be replaced by another classic film that will sell millions of copies during this same limited time-frame next year."  OR, maybe they're worried about wide-spread autism right after they release all of the films, and then we'd all figure it out and the jig would be up.  Which brings me to:

HASTILY DRAWN CONCLUSION #2 - Disney animated films cause arrested development.

This one's got some legs, I think, because in this documentary they point out that Owen is not ready for an adult relationship because his main influence is Disney films, where the lead characters kiss at the end and live "happily ever after" which bears little resemblance to what occurs in the real world.  Owen doesn't much about French kissing or sex, merely because those things don't happen in Disney films.  When his girlfriend breaks up with him, he's devastated, because it doesn't match what Disney films have told him over and over about relationships - that there's one true love for each person, and when they meet there may be trials to go through, but once the villain is defeated, it's smooth sailing. But in real life there's no "one true love" for anyone, you can meet someone and form a workable pairing that can last decades, but it's not a guarantee, you've got to keep constantly working on it and maintaining it, or it could wither and dissolve.  And if it does, you can meet someone new and form another workable pairing, same deal.  There's just no divorce or irreconcilable differences in a Disney film, and very little illness, death or Electoral College upsets, either, it's a magical place that lulls people into a false sense of security.  Children who believe in this world are ill-prepared to handle the struggles and challenges of the adult world.

The Disney world is sort of like a vacation, perhaps to Disneyland.  You can have a great time there for a week, but you also have to acknowledge that your parents have to work hard the other 51 weeks of the year in order to have some extra money to pay for that week.  Sorry, that's reality, and the quicker kids learn that, the better off they'll be.  Then maybe they'll be ready to work hard when they're adults, instead we have a society of twenty-somethings who want to be on vacation all the time, so they have jobs like "social media influencer" and "party consultant" or "Head of the EPA" where they don't really DO anything and wouldn't even know where to begin if they had to.  Let's call those "Disney jobs", for lack of a better term.

Look, I know what I'm talking about, I got off the Disney movie carousel when I was 9, and I didn't really come back until I was an adult, and could see things more clearly.  Many adults also come back to Disney films when they have kids, and I believe they have a responsibility to put these films into perspective, give their kids a proper background so they realize the films don't reflect reality, that they are all fairy tales in the end.  But they don't do that, they just plop the kids down in front of the TV, and then they've got 90 minutes of peace, they can have a coffee or an alcoholic beverage, read the newspaper or have sex or just be alone with their thoughts without catering to a screaming child.  I get that, but really, context is everything, and these films need to be placed into the proper context.

HASTILY DRAWN CONCLUSION #3: Disney films are an addictive substance.

This one works on several levels, because Disney somehow cracked the code over what kids want to see in films, by taking parts of fairy tales, or novels like "Tarzan" or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and clearing out all the parts they felt kids shouldn't learn about or wouldn't be able to understand, and then dressed them up with bright colors and silly voices.  This is the "Spoonful of Sugar" mentality that makes the medicine go down, but a spoonful of sugar also brings on juvenile diabetes, if you think about it.  In high school kids might learn what the REAL ending of Victor Hugo's novel is, and be very shocked, saying, "Hey, that's not the way the Disney movie ends!"  Yeah, but it's more realistic in the novel, isn't it?  Everybody dies, so welcome back to the world, kids.

They used to come closer in the old days - like, what happened to Bambi's mother?  But since then, it's been mostly sweetness and light, constantly reinforcing that little part of everyone's brain that leads them, falsely, to believe that everything's going to work out in the end.  It's basically porn for kids, that same hit of endorphins that will require larger and larger doses after continual use, and I think the sooner that they go cold turkey and kick the habit, the better off they'll be in the long run. If you keep feeding the Beast within, he's only going to keep growing bigger and stronger.

I don't have children, but if I did, I would try to find the right time to transition them to other forms of movies (like, I don't know, maybe independently animated features?) - stories that could better prepare them for the harsh realities of life.  The idea of taking two or more kids out into the world to see a movie in a theater that's full of other kids and their parents is my own personal nightmare - I want to see "Toy Story 4" in a couple weeks, but I'm going to pick a day and time when there won't be so many kids there, like on a Monday or Wednesday night.  I have very little need to see the remakes of "Dumbo", "Aladdin" or "The Lion King" when there are already animated versions of these movies - Disney's double-dipping by remaking their own films, so I think that proves that creatively, the company is already at a dead-end.  They're forced to rip THEMSELVES off now, because they've already been strip-mining all of Western literature for the last 8 decades.  They've become the snake eating its own tail, and then what happens after that?  And I ask this as a Disney stockholder, mind you.

I recognized a couple of names in the credits of "Life, Animated" related to the animated section here, there's a film-within-a-film based on Owen Suskind's stories that's sort of a team-up featuring sidekicks from various Disney films.  Between that and all the clips used from Disney films, it's really a miracle that this film got made and released the way it is.  But I suppose suing an autistic teen for copyright infringement would reflect back negatively on DisneyCorp in the end.  Very shrewd.

Also starring Owen Suskind, Ron Suskind, Cornelia Suskind, Walter Suskind, Alan Rosenblatt, Emily Jathas, Jonathan Freeman, and the voices of Matthew Broderick (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), James Earl Jones (last seen in "The Comedians").

RATING: 5 out of 10 corporate lawyers (remember, guys, free speech is protected...)

The Last Laugh (2016)

Year 11, Day 193 - 7/12/19 - Movie #3,290

BEFORE: This is a documentary that I spotted on Netflix some time last year - so OF COURSE it took me so long to link to it, that by the time I got here, it's no longer available on that service, and I had to spend 3 or 4 bucks to watch it on YouTube.  What else can I do?  The chain is set, and now that I know it's likely to lead me to a perfect year, I need this to make my connection to more films with Gilbert Gottfried, and one of those gets me a link to my final four documentaries in this section. Tomorrow's doc may not have many famous people EXCEPT for Gilbert (according to the IMDB, at least), so that film had to be scheduled between two other films with him.

There's another movie on Netflix now that's titled "The Last Laugh", which stars Chevy Chase and Richard Dreyfuss, and that's also on my list, but it's not a documentary, and it came out three years later.  I guess Netflix had to dump this one so there wouldn't be any confusion between the two?

Joan Rivers carries over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work".  The big debate I had was over whether she appears in this film - the IMDB said no, but Wikipedia said yes.  It turns out that she died a few months before she was supposed to film an interview for this film, so they used some archive footage from her routines instead.  In my book, that counts, and I've updated the credits on the IMDB as best as I could.

THE PLOT: World-famous comedians including Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman and Gilbert Gottfried pitch in with their own views on the boundaries of comedy.

AFTER: The poster points out the similarity of the silhouettes of Chaplin and Hitler, but didn't we all know this already?  Chaplin rocked the same kind of shortened mustache (I think his was fake, though, right?) and he starred in a comedy called "The Great Dictator" which totally spoofed Hitler. Something that thinly veiled can barely even be called a parody or a spoof, at that point you might as well just make a film about Hitler, right?  Like, have some balls.  Also, the two men were born just four days apart in the same year, 1889.

The main question asked by this film concerns the boundaries of comedy - what can comedians not make fun of?  Supposedly they were going to tackle topics like 9/11 and AIDS, but this ended up being about 90% about the Holocaust.  The general consensus is that it's OK to make jokes about Hitler, Mel Brooks made sure of that with "The Producers", and anything that makes Nazis look stupid or ignorant is a lock, but when it comes to the genocide of European Jews, that's still fairly taboo.  A couple of comedians attempt to take it on here, but they still have to do it a somewhat roundabout way.  Joan Rivers maybe came the closest with a remark she made on "Fashion Police" about Heidi Klum (the last time a German woman looked that hot...etc.).  I honestly can't tell if that was a compliment aimed at Ms. Klum, or a dig against most German women.

Many of the comedians interviewed here won't do Holocaust jokes, even Mel Brooks.  OK, so why is he being interviewed for this documentary again?  Oh, right, "The Producers".  But that itself is a great example about how humor can change over time.  Nobody was really doing Hitler jokes before that, not in movies, anyway, and then after that, making fun of Der Führer became fair game.  Also, the first movie version of "The Producers" made fun of gay Broadway actors, and also used a hippie character for the actor starring in "Springtime for Hitler".  By the time they made the stage version in 2001(and the remake movie in 2005), hippies were no longer a cultural touchstone, so they doubled down on the gay stuff, which became even more relevant in the interim.  Sure, you can still make fun of hippies, but what's the point?  They all either died or got jobs and became Republicans, they're scarcer than hen's teeth now.

They also interview a fair number of concentration camp survivors in this film, and it's fair to say they have differing opinions about what constitutes funny.  It's not as simple as "tragedy plus comedy equals time", because for some of them, nothing about the Nazis was or ever will be funny.  Funny, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it seems.  They interview Robert Clary, who I didn't recognize at first, but he was the only cast member of "Hogan's Heroes" to have survived a real German concentration camp.  If you don't remember "Hogan's Heroes", it was a TV show in the 1960's about a German P.O.W. camp, which never really detailed the Nazi atrocities, because it was written as a comedy.  (Yep, that's right.). I never knew this when I watched the show, because his character was French, not necessarily Jewish, and the Americans and Brits in the camp spent their time outwitting the stupid Germans who never found the intricate tunnel system under Stalag 13 that enabled our heroes to leave whenever they wanted, smuggle Allied spies in and out, and I think they also had a rec room and a pool somewhere under the camp.

This film also examines the famous film "Life Is Beautiful", in which Roberto Benigni's character is sent to a concentration camp with his wife and son, and to keep his son's spirits up he pretends that the daily activities are all a giant game, with the Nazis awarding points for completing tasks, and all the Jews were competing for some big prize.  It won a ton of awards, but depending on your point of view, this film is either intensely heartwarming, or completely nauseating.  (Guess which P.O.V. the concentration camp survivors have....). And there are also some clips here from the infamous unreleased 1972 Jerry Lewis film, "The Day the Clown Cried", which riffed on the same theme, only it was released too soon, or way ahead of its time.  Audiences wouldn't be ready for the "clown in a concentration camp" theme for another 25 years.

The survivors also take umbrage with the clip from "Borat" where he sings about "throwing the Jews down the well", but now I have to wonder if those people understand humor at all.  He sang that song to make a point, because some of the people in the crowd were joining in and cheering, so he sang that to draw out the racism of other people.  But it seems that point was lost on people who were too focused on the surface message, and not the result.  My boss even made a comedy called "Hitler's Folly" with faked "found footage" that suggested Hitler was not just a failed artist, but a failed animator, and his plans to take over Europe were misunderstood, he was just trying to find land for his Disney-like theme park.  (Surprisingly, this film played well at a film festival in Israel...)

I would have liked to see more clips focusing on racial humor (the clip from Chappelle's Show with the black, blind Klansman just wasn't enough) because even though black comics can do racial humor now, there's still a big boundary up when it comes to humor about Muslims or Arabics.  Way too touchy, and too many possible repercussions, it seems.  And the only 9/11-related humor here came in the form of the clip from "Saturday Night Live" when it came back on the air after the tragedy, and Lorne Michaels asked Rudy Giuliani if it was OK to be funny.  "Why start now?" was the brilliant response from the NYC mayor, though I really doubt he came up with that himself.

We're in a brand-new age now, this film was JUST a bit too early to be relevant, because it was filmed prior to the 2016 election (but released after) and hey, Nazis are back, but they're called "alt-right" now.  I correctly predicted in 2016 that Trump's election would be terrible for the world, but great for the world of comedy.  How many talk-shows have spent the last three years making fun of him?  He's a complete one-man comedy factory, a walking mishap with terrible spelling.  The Democratic Party has become the default party of Presidential parody, and it's a booming business.  Climate change isn't funny, deporting immigrants and putting kids in cages isn't funny, and the sad state of our crumbling infrastructure and attempts to criminalize abortion aren't funny, but at least there's plenty of other material to work with.  But honestly, it's all just a bit too fresh, the scabs haven't healed yet.

Also starring Shalom Auslander, Aaron Breitbart, Mel Brooks (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Larry Charles, Robert Clary, David Cross (last seen in "The Post"), Jake Ehrenreich, Susie Essman (last seen in "The Man"), Deb Filler, Renee Firestone, Abraham Foxman, Judy Gold, Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "The Comedian"), Etgar Keret, Lisa Lampanelli, Carl Reiner (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), David Steinberg (ditto), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Jeffrey Ross (also carrying over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Hanala Sagal, Harry Shearer (last seen in "Life Itself"), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Roz Weinman, Alan Zweibel, with archive footage of Jason Alexander (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), John Banner, Roberto Benigni (last seen in "To Rome With Love"), Jack Benny, Nicoletta Braschi, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin (also carrying over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Jon Stewart (ditto), Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "The Great Dictator"), Dave Chappelle (also last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Louis C.K. (last seen in "Trumbo"), Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Robert Crane, Russell Crowe (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Larry David (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Warwick Davis (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Colby Donaldson, Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Larry Fine, Ricky Gervais (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Rudy Giuliani (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Barry Gordon, David Hasselhoff (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Wilson"), Curly Howard, Moe Howard, Jay Johnston, Leslie Jones (last seen in "Masterminds"), Colin Jost (last seen in "RBG"), Werner Klemperer, Jerry Lewis (also last seen in "Life Itself"), Kenneth Mars (last heard in "Thumbelina"), Barney Martin, Groucho Marx (last seen in "The Cocoanuts"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Movie 43"), Lorne Michaels, Zero Mostel (last seen in "The Front"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Carroll O'Connor (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (last seen in "Night School"), Chris Rock (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Amy Schumer (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Liz Sheridan, Laura Silverman, Jean Stapleton (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Sally Struthers (last seen in "Five Easy Pieces"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Larry Thomas, Gene Wilder (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), and the voice of Terry Gross (last seen in "The Beaver").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Anne Frank jokes (my personal favorite: That actress's performance in "The Diary of Anne Frank" was so bad that audience members were shouting at the Nazis, "She's in the attic!")

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Year 11, Day 192 - 7/11/19 - Movie #3,289

BEFORE: Another way that I've been trying to combat documentary fatique is by watching more fictional episodic TV for the duration - I started watching "Good Omens" on Amazon Prime a couple nights ago, two episodes per night, so I should be done with that this weekend, or Monday at the latest.  Then maybe I'll move on to "Stranger Things" season 3, and then I still have a couple episodes of "Law & Order: SVU left from May, that should see me through the last week of documentaries, and I'll be back on to fiction movies before too long.

Joan Rivers carries over from "Serial Mom", where she played Joan Rivers.

THE PLOT: A documentary on the life and career of Joan Rivers, made as the comedienne turns 75 years old.

AFTER: I know it feels like Joan Rivers just passed away a year or two ago, but come September, it will really be five years since she died.  But it was in 2008 that a documentary filmmaker decided to follow her around for a year, and it turned out that they picked a really good year - that was the year that she won "The Celebrity Apprentice", though those episodes of the show aired in 2009, and then she later came back as a boardroom advisor in the 2013 season.  So this film covers some of the drama that took place behind the scenes after Joan's daughter Melissa got "fired" from the show by Donald Trump, and Joan had to keep working with/competing against Annie Duke, the famous poker player who had apparently engineered Melissa's demise.  Hey, living well is the best revenge, but winning a reality TV show could be a close second.

Outside of "The Celebrity Apprentice", this documentary has a lot of footage of Joan Rivers hustling, saying that she "needs money" as she travels across the country, doing stand-up gigs in various casinos, also arranging book signings in nearby towns, and bouncing between appearances on home shopping channels, the event that awarded George Carlin (posthumously) with the Mark Twain Prize for humor, and the Comedy Central Roast in her honor.  The fact that she constantly had to keep working to "feed the beast" really reminded me of those rock music docs I watched last year, where bands like the Grateful Dead or the Rolling Stones could simply never take a year off, because they had hired so many friends and family to work for them, and so if they didn't go out on tour every summer, it meant that all those people would be out of work or forced to take other jobs.  So it seems that Joan Rivers and Keith Richards had a lot in common, they might love still working in their 70's, but the truth is that financially, they're unable to retire, even if they wanted to.  You'd think that there would be some way off the entertainment roller coaster, but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Of course, there's also a rundown of her career, dating back to the early days of TV with Jack Paar and "Candid Camera", but she didn't really break through until an appearance on "The Tonight Show" hosted by Johnny Carson in 1965.  This led to many more appearances on Carson's show, her being named the "permanent guest host" for any time that Carson was sick or busy, and then later of course there was a notable falling out with Carson and NBC when she took an offer to host her own talk show on Fox Network.  Even though that show failed, the friendship with Carson was ruined and Joan didn't appear on any NBC shows for decades, not until "Celebrity Apprentice", anyway.

There's so much of her career that they had to skip over, though - narrating segments for "The Electric Company" on PBS probably didn't need mentioning, but what about the fact that she directed a film called "The Rabbit Test", in which Billy Crystal played a pregnant man?  This was years before Schwarzenegger did the same thing with "Junior"...  And what about "Spaceballs"?  "Hollywood Squares"?  "Fashion Police"?  Even her daytime talk show barely gets a mention here...

But I get it, the focus here was supposed to be on this one year in her life.  After the closing credits, they showed Joan joking with ABC news anchor John Muir, and she claims that the documentary crew is secretly hoping that she'd die during the year-long filming period, that they'd get "lucky".  Well, no, that didn't happen, but they were only off by five or six years.  In the meantime, we get to see her here after so much plastic surgery that she really resembles the "Madame" marionette that used to perform on TV in the 1970's.  It's kind of sad that she just wasn't able to grow old gracefully, I wish they could have digged a little deeper here to really get into why she leaned so hard into the botox and the facelifts, was it just because of vanity or was she afraid to appear as old as she was?

Seeing her apartment was fascinating, though, same goes for her drawers full of index cards with all of her jokes on them.  I wonder what happened to her obsessively catalogued joke collection, did she will it to someone?  For that matter, who's going to deliver meals on Thanksgiving by limousine to a select few homebound patients?

Also starring Melissa Rivers (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Kathy Griffin (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Don Rickles (last heard in "Zookeeper"), Bill Sammeth, Jocelyn Pickett, Larry A. Thompson, Graham Reed, Dr. Joy Brown, Sean Foley, with archive footage of Richard Belzer (last seen in "The Comedian"), George Burns (last seen in "The Polka King"), George Carlin (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Jack Paar (ditto), Garry Shandling (ditto), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Lily Tomlin (ditto), Phyllis Diller, Annie Duke, Brad Garrett (last heard in "Christopher Robin"), Greg Giraldo, Denis Leary (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Bill Maher (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Donald Trump (ditto), David Muir (last seen in "Life"), Edgar Rosenberg, Jeffrey Ross (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Ed Sullivan.

RATING: 5 out of 10 filled-up datebook pages

Serial Mom

Year 11, Day 191 - 7/10/19 - Movie #3,288

BEFORE: I kind of need a break from documentaries, this is a bit like how I felt last year after watching SO many rock music docs, most of which followed nearly the same career arc - get famous, get rich, get burned out, get dead - and while my topics have been more varied this year, it's a lot of downer material that stretches across war, politics, climate change, pedophilia and economic scandal. That all ends up taking its toll, and landing on the moon and Fred Rogers entertaining children just isn't enough to counter-balance it.

So, I'm going to drop in this comedy, which has eluded all efforts so far to link to it.  Of course, now I could link it to other films like "The Virgin Suicides", or "The Perfect Score", but I'm choosing to drop it in here, it makes my numbers work out better for the year, and it's been on my list for a very long time.  Plus, my BFF just met John Waters a few weeks ago in Boston, and there's enough impetus for me to follow through with this film.

Sam Waterston appeared in yesterday's documentary about Jane Fonda, and there's some more motivation - I'd planned to use the Joan Rivers link, but another connection just gives me the option to flip two films around, if I feel like it.  Maybe I'll regret this next year when I can't find a link between two films, but I'll have to just take that chance.

THE PLOT: A sweet mother finds herself participating in homicidal activities when she sees the occasion calls for it.

AFTER: OK, so maybe using a film about a murdering suburban mother wasn't the BEST way to take a break from all the death and scandal seen in documentaries, but it was a way to mix things up, at least.

This is a strange film, no matter how you slice it - sometimes it's all about tone, and this one just has a weird tone.  Well, of course, every John Waters film has a weird tone, because it comes from a weird place, because he's a bit of a weird guy.  I don't mean that as a dig, it's just a fact, he's a weird guy who seems to enjoy being a weird guy.  But as a result, or maybe a by-product, his weird films have weird characters in them, and again, I (sort of) mean that as a compliment.

But I couldn't help but notice that there were so many actions taken in this film that seemed out of place, or rather they were IN place because they were in a John Waters movie, but they'd be out of place anywhere else.  And there's so many weird things being done by weird people that it almost seems like the people who AREN'T acting weird don't belong, like the normal people (if there are any) are the weird ones.  Does that make sense?  This trait is highlighted to the point where some characters are so blown up, so grandiose that they're basically cartoon characters, in that their actions have no basis in reality.

I'll give you an example, the daughter character - with everything that we know about her, like she's got bad luck with men, she's overweight so she's got body issues, and then her mother ends up killing the guy who dumped her, or wouldn't date her (it's a bit unclear).  Wow, there's a lot to unpack there.  But then during her mother's trial, after making a connection with a reporter who's also written a book about her mother, she's making out with that reporter DURING THE TRIAL.  I can't, in a million billion years, imagine a situation where my mother is on trial for murder, I'm present in the courtroom and I'm making out with someone.  That's like some weird dream I'm going to have now, thanks, John Waters.  But somehow it fits with this character, because she's been built up to this weird situation, or maybe it's just that her character needed something to do, instead of just sitting there.

This is just one character, of course, but they're ALL like this in some way.  The teen son likes gory horror movies, his friend likes nudie magazines, and there's a guy who writes things on bathroom stalls, but in a way that makes me question whether the director understands why men write things on bathroom stalls.  The character is just some kind of perv and that's his "thing", but I don't see how that's something that turns anyone on, right?  It's just usually a random act of vandalism, or a way to convey information about the looseness of women in that area.  You know, like "for a good time, call Jenny at 867...well, you know the number.

The weirdest character of all, of course, is the title character, the serial-killing mom, so let's get to her.  I don't pretend to understand real serial killers like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy, among others, and maybe nobody can - but we can try to understand sociopaths, people who have no regard for other people.  The prevailing thought is that a sociopath could easily become a serial killer, because other people simply don't MATTER to him (or her) - it's a short leap from "nobody else matters" to "it doesn't matter if I kill them".  But does anyone really know this for sure, or is it impossible to truly understand the insane?  You always hear people talk about the killer who lived next door, saying he was "a quiet guy, kept to himself, didn't cause any trouble..."  Well, it's no wonder that nobody spotted him, because that also sounds like the description of a few million people who AREN'T serial killers.  How do tell someone who's bottling up their rage and anger, and hiding it from the world, apart from the people who don't have any rage or anger at all?  And you never hear the neighbor who says, "Yeah, that guy was wound way too tight, he really had a screw loose.  We always figured he'd kill somebody one of these days, so we just tried to stay out of his way..."

My point is, everybody's got triggers, even normal people.  Everyone gets annoyed or frustrated by different things, though most people don't end up killing people to vent their frustration.  Maybe for you it's people in the grocery store who use the express line, even though they've got too many items, or people who cut in front of you in line at the coffee shop, or people who bring their screaming kids with them to a restaurant and you're in the next booth trying to enjoy a quiet meal.  And don't even get me started with people on the subway, or traveling with you on the same plane.  For me it's the people across the street who shovel their snow in the winter from their sidewalks right into the street, and they do this early in the morning, before the plow comes by, so the plow pushes it over to MY side of the street, and my wife's car is snowed in until April.  I've lost my temper to the point where I dash across the street and shovel snow from the street BACK into their driveways, and then they think I've lost my mind.  But it's what I feel I have to do to make my point.

When we meet this character (generically called only "Mom" in the cast list) one of the first things we learn about her is that she's been making vulgar prank calls to a friend, and this is where we start to see how deep her insanity runs.  But a later flashback reveals that at some time in the past, this woman took the best parking spot in the supermarket lot, one that she was patiently waiting for.  So there you go, there's a trigger.  But as the movie progresses, her triggers get more and more ridiculous  - she wants to kill her son's friend for not wearing his seat-belt (well, it is against the law), she wants to kill her neighbor for not recycling her trash, and she wants to kill a woman who returned a VHS tape to the video-store without rewinding it.  Eventually you start to realize that with this many triggers, Mom is either certifiably insane, or she's looking for excuses, and just enjoys killing.  Again, more research is needed to determine if this is really the way serial killers work, or if they're bound by the rules of their manifestos, or if it's all just random in the end.

But maybe I'm over-thinking it.  Probably, I'm over-thinking it.  Waters just probably wanted to make a light comedy about serial killing, and explore the dichotomy between a suburban Mom who appears to be all sweetness and light, but is full of pent-up rage on the inside.  Maybe it's hard being the "perfect" mom with the "perfect" life, and maintaining that illusion for so long broke something inside.  Or maybe when she swatted that fly in the first scene, that was a gateway action.  I know I often find myself swatting at a fly or a mosquito, but I have difficulty killing anything alive that's bigger than that.  We had a huge spider living on our front porch a year or two ago, and I couldn't bring myself to kill it, even though my wife asked me to - she'd just started smoking out on the porch instead of inside the house, and she hates spiders and bugs.  We ended up knocking the spider off our porch light (where it had learned how to turn the light on and off, no kidding) and catching it in a jar, then I walked it three blocks away to a cemetery, where I let it go to make some nice giant decorations for Halloween.  Because if there's even a CHANCE that spiders can somehow communicate with each other and spread the word about me killing one of their brethren, I just don't need any repercussions from that in my life.  Or let's just say I didn't want any bad karma coming back to me.

But how do we get from killing a fly to killing another human - that's a huge leap, right?  Does reading about serial killers somehow turn you into one?  Being fascinated with killing via horror movies or violent video-games?  I'm not prepared to say there's a direct link, because I disagree with most forms of censorship, but I'm also not willing to posit that there's no connection at all.  In many ways watching a horror movie could be seen as a non-violent way to scratch that same itch - if you watch the movie or play that video-game you could be LESS likely to kill someone in the real world, then.  In much the same way that watching a porno movie can make you less likely to have sex in the real world, if you know what I mean.

But perhaps there's no larger message here about killing, it's just designed as a fun romp through suburban America, with a high body count.  Or maybe it's about the cult of fascination that's developed around killers, though in a sense we've maybe come a little TOO far in this regard.  Charles Manson and his followers killed what, five people?  Ted Bundy killed a dozen, maybe?  And they're cult figures.  But a teen shoots up a school and kills 50 kids, or a sniper takes down 100 people at an outdoor concert, and they're absolute monsters, and we try to forget their names and not give them the notoriety that they might have been looking for.  Maybe we look at them because we see a bit of ourselves, a part that we don't want to acknowledge, and maybe we look at this movie and see what we want to see.  If we killed someone, or had someone close to us murdered, would we wonder who would play us in the TV movie about the crime?

Another thing that didn't really work, so NITPICK POINT (#2 out of, I don't know, 20?) would be the "Basic Instinct" parody in the courtroom, where that guy who writes on bathroom stalls is on the stand, and "Mom" tries to distract him by opening her legs and lifting up her skirt to turn him on.  It's a weird bit for several reasons, but my problem is the fact that the table she's sitting at is open on all sides, so everyone in the courtroom, including the jury, would be able to see what she's doing very clearly.  And wouldn't somebody object to this taking place?  Leading the witness, at the very least?

For this, and many other reasons, I'm forced to conclude that I'm not supposed to take any bit of this film seriously.  Which, of course, is fairly standard for a John Waters movie.  But if nothing is serious here, than what are we doing?  It's just some kind of bizarre social commentary, but I'd still like to try to figure out what the point of this little exercise was.

My other thought is that we live in a changing world.  "Mom" eventually gets triggered by the fact that one of the jurors is wearing white shoes, and it's "after Labor Day".  Which I never really understood, like isn't it always "after" one Labor Day or another?  Why can't you just say, "don't wear white in the fall or winter"?  Or "not in October, November and December"?  Plus, as that juror pointed out, the rules of fashion are different now, nobody cares if you wear white in the fall any more.  Times change, opinions change.  It used to be "OK" for one person to own a bunch of other people, and profit from their labor.  But then times changed - slowly, but they changed.  It used to be that two men or two women couldn't express love for each other out in public, or hold hands when walking down the street.  Times change, opinions change.  It used to be scandalous for a President to have sex with a woman who wasn't his wife - impeachable, even - and now I guess the bar has been set so low that we don't even care about our leaders having affairs any more, it barely registers any more.

But we've got a whole new list of offenses that justify homicide, it seems.  When I was young, McDonald's was still serving burgers in styrofoam containers, even though we all knew that was bad for the environment, somehow.  They eventually caved and wrapped everything in paper, but they're still using (gasp!) plastic straws!  It's like they don't care about sea turtles at all!  Honestly, the whole ocean's filling up with plastic and other garbage, that should be the lead story, but everyone seems to be focusing on the MONSTERS who can't use some other kind of straw, because one dumb sea turtle inhaled one.  Which makes me wonder how real that viral video was, and also whether the people who manufacture plastic straws closed their companies the day that video appeared on the scene, or if they tried to stay in business for another week.

Meanwhile, many of the same people who can't bear to think of a sea turtle with a straw up its nose are still eating burgers and chicken sandwiches, because who cares about cows and chickens?  It's a weird place to draw the line, that's all I'm saying.  I eat meat all the time, of course, but I still try to feel guilty about it - somehow when you're not the one doing the killing it's much easier to justify, but I realize I'm still part of the society that mass-produces meat, so almost all of us have blood on our hands, but we choose to not think about it most of the time.  Anyway, the methane produced by cows is supposedly one of the big causes of climate change, so it's very confusing - should be we eating less beef, so there will be less cows killed, or should we be eating MORE cows so there will be fewer of them farting and making more methane?  

I don't know the answer to so many questions - like why did everyone in the church panic just because "Mom" sneezed?  That was weird.  Why didn't anyone at the concert try to help the teen who was on fire?  Also weird.  There are a lot of things here that just didn't add up, or feel like they were supposed to connect with the plot somehow, only somebody couldn't figure out how to tie it all together.  Then what you get is really just a bunch of random, interconnected events, almost.

Also starring Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Dumb & Dumber To"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Trouble With the Curve"), Ricki Lake (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Scott Wesley Morgan (ditto), Mink Stole (ditto), Tim Caggiano (ditto), Doug Roberts (ditto), Patsy Grady Abrams (ditto), Walt MacPherson (last seen in "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing"), Justin Whalin (last seen in "The Dead Pool"), Patricia Dunnock (last seen in "Money Monster"), Lonnie Horsey, Mary Jo Catlett (last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Suzanne Somers (last seen in "Magnum Force"), Kathy Fannon, John Badila, Traci Lords, Jeff Mandon, Colgate Salsbury, Beau James, Kim Swann, John Calvin Doyle, with cameos from Joan Rivers (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Patricia Hearst (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Bess Armstrong (last seen in "The Four Seasons"), the band L7 and the voice of John Waters (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip").

RATING: 4 out of 10 starlings at the bird feeder

Jane Fonda in Five Acts

Year 11, Day 190 - 7/9/19 - Movie #3,287

BEFORE: Sticking with the biographical documentaries about actors, though I think tomorrow there could be a little break.  (I discovered I could flip the next two films, watch them in either order, so we'll have to see how I feel tomorrow...it's kind of weird for me to have any choice at all...)  I think tonight there will probably be some Vietnam stuff, so I'm back on Nixon and all that, this might be the antithetical film to "The Fog of War", if my suspicions are correct.

Thank God for talk show hosts - without them, this week's linking just wouldn't be possible.  David Letterman carries over again from "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind", and so do two other talk-show hosts, one news anchor and two actors.  That's right, SIX people in total carry over from yesterday's film - and I thought linking my documentaries together might be hard, it's very easy once I know the entire cast lists!

THE PLOT: A look at the life, work, activism and controversies of actress and fitness tycoon Jane Fonda.

AFTER: I'm a little late in getting to this one, because I snuck out to see "Spider-Man: Far From Home" on Monday night - then appeared on a podcast about it right after, to capture the impressions of the film right away.  I'll be posting my review here in just about under two weeks, I've got to finish the documentary chain first, and re-connect to the fiction chain via a Jake Gyllenhaal film - all part of the plan...

This documentary on Jane Fonda follows sort of the same path as the last two on Robin Williams and Roger Ebert, there's a bit about what the subject was like as a child, some cursory information about going to school and such, and then they all sort of divide their careers into sections.  This one's a bit more defined than the others, with 5 chapter headings: Henry, Roger, Tom, Ted and Jane.  It's maybe a bit too neat to separate out Jane's life in terms of her relationships with her father (Henry Fonda), her three husbands (Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, Ted Turner) and finally herself as an individual.  She even makes reference to it being a problem for her throughout her life - a feminist woman allowing herself to be defined by the men in her life.  So - just putting this out there - if that was such a problem, why make the problem worse by maintaining that in this documentary?  Aren't we STILL defining her through these men if we carve up her life in this fashion?  That seems a bit of a shame.

Also, this suggests that the documentary is going to work chronologically, more or less, and that's not what ends up happening.  Her whole relationship with her mother, who died when Jane was 12, doesn't really get explored until the second section ("Roger"), because that's when Jane had her first child, and supposedly that's when all the memories of her mother came back, and she really started thinking about what her mother was like, and saw things in a whole new light.  That's all well and good, but chronologically it seems weird to jump back to explore these childhood events after Jane's an adult with a child of her own.  Why couldn't this information have been presented in the first section?  Her mother was Henry's wife, after all, so information about her mother's time in an asylum and how she died now seems out of place. Why create an overarching structure for the film and then not stick to it?

There's still plenty of fascinating information, if you can overlook the awkward time-jumping, I suppose.  The "Henry" section ends with her father re-marrying and Jane and her brother Peter being shipped off to boarding school, so they'd be out of the way and her father wouldn't have to deal with them in his new life.  Ouch.  Later she dropped out of Vassar, studied art in Paris for six months, and then came back to the U.S. and fell into acting almost by default, because Lee Strasberg had a beach house not far from her father's.  Well, great, we wouldn't want for someone to walk a LONG distance to find an acting teacher, after all.  God forbid someone should have to WORK a bit to figure out what they want to do with their life...this doesn't really help to dispel the "poor little rich girl" stereotype, that's all I'm saying.

But this does lead to her acting career taking off in the 1960's, with "Tall Story", "Period of Adjustment" and "Walk on the Wild Side" (all of which I haven't seen) and then "Cat Ballou", "The Chase" and "Barefoot in the Park" (all of which I have seen).  Returning to France to make some films there put her in the orbit of Roger Vadim, so that's Act 2 of this doc, where she starred in "Barbarella", married Roger Vadim, and won an Oscar for "Klute". (This is where the doc takes that big leap backwards to really get into her non-relationship with her mother, though...)

Part 3 of the doc concerns her marriage to Tom Hayden and her second career as an activist, and since this involved trying to prevent the war in Vietnam, some people still haven't forgiven her for her actions while visiting North Vietnam.  Activist issues took up much of her time in the early 1970's, and it seems like Nixon and his hit squads were going out of their way to discredit her - but wasn't she RIGHT about Vietnam in the end, knowing what we know from watching "The Fog of War"?  So many veterans ended up disillusioned about that war anyway, wasn't she just out ahead of the curve on that one?  People just thought that since she was against the war, she was therefore anti-American - but later people in the 2000's figured out that you had to say that you support the troops, even if you don't support the war.

During Part 3, Fonda comes back to acting, but only on "issue-oriented" films, like "Coming Home" (ah, more Vietnam veteran stuff) and "The China Syndrome", which had the good fortune of opening 3 weeks before a REAL nuclear disaster, at Three Mile Island.  You can't buy that kind of publicity, it seems - and then this was followed with "9 to 5", which was all about sexual harassment and unfair payment for women in the workplace.  Again, she was way out ahead of everybody else, considering that these issues are still unresolved and are more important in society now than ever.  But the relationship with fellow activist and eventual California Senator Tom Hayden seemed strained when her third career as a workout celebrity took off.  Her videos sold even better than her movies, and her workout book (what's a workout book?) was a best-seller, while Hayden's political books were snore-fests, apparently.

The film seems to forget to mention that Fonda retired in 1991, from making films, at least.  This is part of Act 4, which is sort of about her courtship and marriage to Ted Turner, who owns I think about half of Montana.  I'd honestly love to hear more about why THAT marriage failed, but the documentary can't seem to find the time.  Because we're on to Act 5, where Jane un-retires to make more movies like "Monster-in-Law", "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding", "The Butler" and "This Is Where I Leave You".  Of course there's time to interview Lily Tomlin and promote the Netflix series they co-star in...

I don't know, it's all about choices with these documentaries, over what to leave in and what to leave out, because you just can't include everything that happened in an 8-decade life-span.  I probably would have made some different choices and put things in a different order, but it's not my film, so it's not up to me.  It was probably going to be an organizational nightmare no matter what, which is too bad.  I've got a couple of newer films with her on my list now, one which I'll get to this year, and another which I'll have to save for next February.

Also starring Jane Fonda (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Troy Garity (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Tom Hayden, Dick Cavett (also carrying over from "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Robert Redford (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Ted Turner, Sam Waterston (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Paula Weinstein, Mary Luana Williams, with archive footage of Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "The Age of Adeline"), Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), John Chancellor (ditto), Michael Douglas (ditto), Forest Whitaker (ditto), Bennett Cerf, Jill Clayburgh (last seen in "Starting Over"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "White Boy Rick"), Phil Donahue (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), Henry Fonda (last seen in "Midway"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "Life Itself", Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), David Hemmings (last seen in "Spy Game"), Katharine Hepburn (last seen in "Holiday"), Abbie Hoffman, Elia Kazan, Harvey Keitel (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Ron Kovic, Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Grumpier Old Men"), Jennifer Lopez (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Walter Matthau (last seen in "I.Q."), Country Joe McDonald (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Geraldine Page (last seen in "Interiors"), Alan J. Pakula, Dolly Parton (last seen in "Koch"), Sydney Pollack, Harry Reasoner (last seen in "The Fog of War"), Michael Sarrazin, Dinah Shore (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Simone Signoret, Lesley Stahl (last seen in "RBG"), Gloria Steinem (ditto), Lee Strasberg, Roger Vadim, Jon Voight (last seen in "Holes"), Debra Winger (last seen in "Shadowlands").

RATING: 5 out of 10 protest signs

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

Year 11, Day 189 - 7/8/19 - Movie #3,286

BEFORE: Yeah, there's a bit of a theme here, but not all of the people featured in this week's tribute docs are deceased, just most of them.  I'm going to work in the documentaries on Jane Fonda and Gilbert Gottfried, too.  Docs on Joan Rivers and Richard Pryor are going to round out the week, and by the time I'm done, I'll only have a few films left before Documentary Month is over - it's going by so fast!

Several people carry over from "Life Itself", the original plan was to use Martin Scorsese, who spoke at length about Roger Ebert in yesterday's film, but I think he's only in today's film for a second or two - so I'll list everyone below, but here I'll note that David Letterman carries over, he was in archive footage yesterday, but is interviewed here about his friendship with Robin Williams.

THE PLOT: An intimate look into the life and work of the revered master comedian and actor, Robin Williams.

AFTER: It's a formidable challenge to sum up a man's life in a two-hour documentary, that's for sure. Especially someone who was 70 years old, like Roger Ebert, or 63 like Robin Williams, and both men went through different phases in their lives, so how do you work it all in?  Most of the time that means glossing over big chunks of their careers, or trying to hit just the highlights, or finding some other method to truncate all of the important information.  

With Ebert it was divided neatly into his time before working as a movie critic, then working at the Sun-Times, working on TV, then working on his blog.  Obviously there was much more to his life than that, but for a rough framework, that did the job.  With Robin Williams there's a similar breakdown - time growing up and going to college, time working in comedy clubs, working on TV and then working in movies.  And if you think it's hard for a filmmaker to work his personal life into all of that, just think about how hard that was for Robin Williams, too.  Successful people are busy people, and busy people tend to have a tough time achieving balance between their professional lives and personal ones.

So, I wasn't shocked to hear Robin's kids talk about only seeing him for about half of the year, or sometimes even less often than that.  That's the gig, either being off on a movie set in some other city country, or doing a press tour for the last movie, or just getting out and doing some comedy club gigs around the country to try out new material, that all means time away from the family, because kids need a stable place to live and go to school and they can't come everywhere with their comedian dad. So it's also not shocking to learn that two marriages eventually buckled under similar pressures, but at least we do find out that the press got it wrong, Robin didn't leave his first wife and run off with his son's nanny, it turns out that the marriage was already dissolved by both parties, at least in spirit, it's just that his wife didn't enjoy talking to the press, so she never set the record straight, until now (Unless she changed her story after the fact to save face, I suppose that's possible.)

What's fascinating here is that several other comics who hit the scene around the same time that Robin did say the same thing, that they were just telling jokes, but Robin was doing something completely different in front of club audiences, some new type of free-form comedy, very energetic, nearly manic, which he might have been mostly making up on the spot.  So where did all these ideas, this frantic energy come from?  Well, cocaine in the early years, for sure, but after Belushi's death he supposedly got himself clean.  Yet he still maintained that early 80's coked-up energy for a while, that was still on display in films like "Good Morning Vietnam" and even "Aladdin", where his mind was allowed to run free, at least to some extent.  Even in the later years, like when making "One Hour Photo", that film's director mentioned giving Williams a lot of leeway, to let him get the jokes out, even if it ruined a take, because the comedy HAD to come out, and then the next take would be a lot better, he'd be more at peace and have a certain aura about him after the release.

Transitions in life are never easy, whether you're a single man trying to become a married man, or a married man forced to adjust to life as a single man.  By the same token, it's a struggle if you're a drinker or a drug-user and you need to transition to being a sober person, because you see yourself a certain way, and to get where you need to be, you sort of need to become someone else.  On top of all that, it used to be if you were a TV actor then you couldn't also be a movie actor, and the reverse was also true - if you were a movie actor, why on earth would you want to be on a TV show?  In the end I think maybe Robin Williams went through too many transitions, his situation changed every few years, and a great sense of humor is very important to help one through the transitions, but it can only go so far.  Everyone was looking for answers when he committed suicide, and the best theory is that he no longer felt like himself, maybe he looked back and didn't understand his own journey any more, having gone through so many changes that he didn't recognize himself any more.  The only other person I can think of who went through so many phases was David Bowie, but as I saw in the documentary about his last days last year, he tended to embrace all the changes and the phases, and toward the end he even headed back to the places he felt most comfortable when he was younger, and that brought him some sense of peace, a connection with his former self, or selves.

For Robin Williams that place was the San Francisco area, where his family moved when he was a teenager, and he first experienced a social freedom that he had not encountered in Chicago and Detroit.  (His father worked for Ford Motors, which reminded me of Robert McNamara from "The Fog of War".)  Robin later met and connected with his two half-brothers, one from his father's first marriage and another from his mother's first marriage.  Though they all later enjoyed spending time together, it's worth noting that they all grew up as only children, and that led to Robin's habit of entertaining himself, so if he'd grown up with a brother or two, he might not have been the comedian that he was.

There are too-brief stories about the Comic Relief telethons, a bout with alcoholism years after getting off drugs, and clips and outtakes from many of his most notable movies, like "Awakenings", "Good Will Hunting", "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Fisher King".  But he was so prolific, it's a wonder that this documentary wasn't twice the length.  And yes, there's even a clip from "Popeye", his first movie that was such a disaster it almost prevented other comic-book movies from being made, basically the trend didn't start rolling until "Dick Tracy" in 1990, but "Popeye" wasn't just made 10 years too early, it probably shouldn't have been made at all.  It nearly killed the genre before the trend even started.

Bottom line, I think this could have been a mini-series, or at least a two-parter like "Leaving Neverland" or that documentary about Elvis Presley last year.  But then, people would probably start complaining about how it was too long, you never can tell.  My other main complaint is the title, because it suggests that the documentary is going to detail the inner workings of his comedy brain, and then it never really gets there.  But I suppose that's impossible, and that's the point - but then maybe use a different title?   I've got to cut this review short myself, because I'm sneaking out after work to see "Spider-Man: Far From Home", which I'll review a few days after I finish the documentary chain.  I've only got 9 docs left, then I'm back on fictional films for a long while.

Also starring Robin Williams (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Lewis Black (last seen in "Inside Out"), Elayne Boosler (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Pam Dawber, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Bobcat Goldthwait (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Eric Idle (last seen in "Concert for George"), Scott Marshall, Steve Martin (last seen in "The Kids Are Alright"), Mark Rasmussen, Mark Romanek, Stu Smiley, Howard Storm, Bennett Tramer, Valerie Velardi, Zak Williams, Stanley Wilson, with archive footage of Steve Allen (last seen in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words"), Robert Altman, Roseanne Barr (also last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), John Belushi (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Jerry Brown (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Linda Ronstadt (ditto), Kate Capshaw (last seen in "How to Make an American Quilt"), Drew Carey, George Carlin (last heard in "Happily N'Ever After"), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor"), Johnny Carson (also last seen in "Life Itself"), Robert De Niro (ditto), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Martin Scorsese (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), John Chancellor (ditto), Dave Chappelle (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Matt Damon (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Tony Danza (last seen in "Don Jon"), Daniel Day-Lewis (last seen in "Gandhi"), Michael Douglas (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Shelley Duvall (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Craig Ferguson (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon 2"), Sally Field (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Dexter Gordon, Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Venom"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Salma Hayek (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "God's Pocket"), John Houseman (last seen in "Ghost Story"), Ron Howard, Holly Hunter (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Conrad Janis, Andy Kaufman, Julie Kavner (last heard in "Someone Like You..."), Elizabeth Kerr, Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Jay Leno (also last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Laura Linney (last seen in "The Dinner"), James Lipton (last seen in "Adam"), Ed McMahon (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Garry Marshall (last seen in "Overboard"), Don Most, Edward Norton (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Jack Paar, Tom Poston, Richard Pryor (last seen in "Lost Highway"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Carl Reiner (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Christopher Reeve (last seen in "Deathtrap"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Joan Rivers (last seen in "Iron Man 3"), Joe Rogan (last seen in "Bright"), Garry Shandling (last seen in "Town & Country"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), David Steinberg, Michael Vartan (last seen in "Never Been Kissed"), Lyle Waggoner, Andy Warhol (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Raquel Welch (last seen in "100 Rifles"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Black Panther"), Anson Williams, Marsha Garces Williams, Henry Winkler (last seen in "Holes"), Jonathan Winters (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Renee Zellweger (last seen in "One True Thing"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "No Reservations") and the voice of Kevin Clash (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey").

RATING: 6 out of 10 talk-show appearances

Life Itself

Year 11, Day 188 - 7/7/19 - Movie #3,285

BEFORE: Now I'm transitioning into sort of a "Tribute Week", this started with a couple of biographical docs about comics like Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, and it kind of grew from there.  I never got to meet Roger Ebert, but my BFF Andy knew him, both online and in IRL, and frequently attended that Conference for World Affairs in Colorado where Roger was an annual host and guest.  So I guess I was two degrees away from him for a while - I've heard it said that if you pick any two people at random, there's a very good chance that Person A knows someone who knows someone who knows Person B, I guess that's three degrees of separation.

Errol Morris carries over again (apparently, let's hope...) from "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley".

THE PLOT: The life and career of the renowned film critic and social commentator, Roger Ebert.

AFTER: Yes, Errol Morris appears here, as hoped, so the chain is still complete. It turns out that both Siskel AND Ebert really loved his first major documentary, "Gates of Heaven", which I mentioned the other day, and they promoted it several times, and Morris feels he became very successful shortly after that. Now, I still don't have a back-up plan in place in case there's a break in the chain in five days, I might have to scramble.  I think I could tear things apart once again and use the Jerry Lewis archive footage seen in today's film to connect to "The Last Laugh", but that connection seems so tenuous that I'd rather not go that way.  Almost every film in the last week (except for "The Thin Blue Line" and "The Fog of War") ends up having 40 or 50 unexpected appearances in it, so my chances are really good of having several paths open up that I didn't even expect.  The original plan was to go from "Life Itself" to "Trespassing Bergman" through Martin Scorsese (and also Isabella Rossellini, it turns out) and then follow the chain to connect with "October Sky" - only I was wrong, that path was never going to connect.  Now I'm going to follow the same link out of this film, Scorsese, because I learned he also appears in that doc about Robin Williams.  So that will be for tomorrow -

Anyway - when I was a kid, 9 or 10 years old, home video was just becoming popular, and a video rental store opened up in my home town.  I'd seen movies, mostly Disney ones, and I liked them, but I hadn't really committed to them as a major part of my life and as a possible career.  But I did love "Star Wars: Episode IV", which was the only episode we had at the time.  I could rent it from the store, but the man who ran the video store had been in some kind of accident, so his face was badly burned and I think he had two prosthetic hands.  Now, when you're 9 or 10 years old, and you don't have much experience with people who have been disfigured, it can be scary at first to interact - I think I'd go there to browse through the movies and hope that I wouldn't see him.  But my interest in movies won out, I faced my fears and also learned a bit about dealing with other people who might look different and be differently abled, but still just normal people on the inside.

So I understand why Roger Ebert appeared in this film, and made public appearances after his surgery that removed most of his jaw - it might have been jarring at first for people to see him, but staying out of sight would send the wrong message, that people with injuries or aren't physically perfect shouldn't be seen.  Anyway, it's another case where the love of movies trumps everything else, he'd connected with so many people and shared so many opinions about movies over the years, that it didn't make any sense to stop.  There was a strong community of support for him, family and friends, co-workers and rivals, all willing to put aside any potential discomfort over his appearance, and continue on with their friendship, as if everything was perfectly normal.  This is a grace that may not come easy to some, but if it comes it has the potential to lift the spirits of all parties involved.  Besides, everyone's body is going to fail or break down at some point, so when we see it happen to someone else, we also try to understand that it could happen to us.

The film goes back to Ebert's beginnings, of course, growing up in Chicago and being a young newspaper worker who lucked into the film critic job at the Sun-Times when the old one retired.  Hey, sometimes people strive for greatness, and sometimes people are just in the right place at the right time.  Sometimes the universe has a plan for us, and it may seem like we're just along for the ride.  It also seems that he sort of stumbled into screenwriting via a chance meeting with exploitation film director Russ Meyer.  He was given a tall order, to write "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and make it funny, sexy, relevant, an action film and a subversive parody all at once.

Then things really got rolling when he was paired up with Gene Siskel, despite being crosstown rival critics at two very different newspapers.  Each critic would most likely have preferred to be paired with anyone else - but hey, at least they frequently were able to present two very different points of view on their PBS show, which later moved over to the syndication market.  For years their show then aired in every market EXCEPT New York and L.A., where critics were a dime a dozen, it seems.  But eventually these two frenemies were nationwide, arguing over what it meant to give a thumbs up to films like "Benji: The Hunted".  Ebert gave a "thumbs down" on the same show to "Full Metal Jacket", and Siskel called him out on it - did that mean that "Benji" was a BETTER film than the Kubrick masterpiece?  I've had this exact same problem with my blog - people have taken me to task for rating one film they LOVE lower than one that everybody seems to hate, but as Ebert said, everything is relative.  The "thumbs-up" means that the dog film did what it set out to do, or it came into the reviewer's life on the right day, or spoke to him in some positive way.  But a "thumbs-down" on a sweeping war saga could mean that the reviewer was expecting more, or had some technical or plot-related problems that he couldn't reconcile, or that the reviewer was having a bad day, or maybe one time Stanley Kubrick cut him off in traffic.  Who knows?

It's the conversation that's important at the end, we talk about movies because we care about movies, because something in them matters to us, and with any luck, that's something which feels universal that everyone can access and understand.  But then, often it's not, one movie speaks to THAT person and they connect with it and enjoy it, and over time it becomes their favorite film.  But that movie may not speak to that OTHER person over there, for any of a hundred reasons.  I love the film "Brazil" and I couldn't wait to show it to the woman I was dating, who I later married, and we went to see it at Film Forum, and then I couldn't wait to talk to her about it, but the first thing she said was, "What a terrible film!" and that really cut my conversation off at the knees.  Two people don't have to love all the same things to be in a relationship, but they have to at least hate some of the same things.  We go to see the "X-Men" movies together, but she fell behind with the "Avengers" and other Marvel movies and then had no interest in catching up - so I go to see them alone or with a geek friend.

Thankfully, movies unite us more often than they drive us apart.  Especially if we like the same ones, but arguing about them when we don't is almost as good.  So there's a big section of this film about Ebert and Siskel becoming friends, despite their tendencies to argue while recording promos.  But you can't share seats across the aisle for so many years and not become at least tolerant of each other, and then friends by default.  And you just know Ebert kept pulling out that "Well, I've got a Pulitzer" info whenever he tried to get the show renamed "Ebert & Siskel" instead of "Siskel & Ebert".

After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert kept hosting movie-review shows with other co-hosts, but then withdrew from TV after his second (?) cancer diagnosis.  But he transitioned to the internet around the same time, creating a platform that would host all of his many past reviews, showcase his new ones, and also feature reviews from a group of guest critics that he selected. And even when he couldn't speak any more, he could still communicate via a speech computer and by writing his blog.  So any way you slice it, he was a poster child for the concept of endurance.   If you're unable to do something, find another way to do it, or something else to do.

I liked the segment that showed Ebert on his annual trips to the Cannes Film Festival - he didn't speak much French, but enough to order his daily coffee.  He always ate at the same places and stayed at the same hotel, even if it wasn't the finest one in town.  This reminded me of the 15 (or so) years I went to run a booth at the San Diego Comic-Con, I always went to the same sandwich shop when I hit town, and (more or less) the same restaurants for dinner, and I stayed at this converted YMCA for maybe 8 years in a row, it was also far from the finest hotel, but I didn't need much.  I only stopped going there when it closed down, but finding a new hotel I could afford was close to impossible, so I used Air B&B for my last three trips.  Maybe I'm just thinking about that because it's July and my body's sense memory feels like this trip should be coming up soon, only I don't do that any more.

I thought that I had read that Ebert's voice-synthesizer computer was created from his own voice, like some company had gone back through his many TV appearances and duplicated enough words that he'd said over the years to create some kind of library that would make the computer sound like him, but after hearing it in this film, I didn't think that it sounded like him at all.  They hired someone with a very similar voice, or an impressionist, to narrate his written words for this film, and I thought that guy sounded more like Ebert than the computer did.  I don't know, maybe he was using a different computer here...

But once again, I found myself watching a documentary film that started with a certain intent, and then ended up being a very different film from what was originally intended.  Here the director wanted to document how Roger maintained such an active schedule despite his illness, but instead Ebert had to go into rehab for a hip fracture, and then got another cancer diagnosis, so it ended up being a chronicle of his final months, which is therefore heartbreaking - but this is balanced by chronicling his achievements, too, so it's heartwarming at the same time.  It's got all the feels, as the kids would say.

Also starring Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, Ramin Bahrani, Richard Corliss, Nancy De Los Santos, Ava DuVernay, Bruce Elliot, Thea Flaum, Josh Golden, Werner Herzog, Marlene Iglitzen, Steve James, Rick Kogan, John McHugh, William Nack, Gregory Nava, Jonathan Rosenbaum, A.O. Scott, Roger Simon, with archive footage of Gene Siskel, Adam Baldwin (last seen in "Serenity"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Saul Bellow, Ben Bradlee, Marlon Brando (last heard in "Listen To Me Marlon"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Jessica Chastain (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Tony Curtis (last seen in "Who Was That Lady?"), Catherine Deneuve, Robert De Niro (last seen in "The Comedian"), Gerard Depardieu (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Keir Dullea (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451 (2018)"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Champ"), Clint Eastwood (last seen in "The Mule"), Mia Farrow (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Henry Gibson (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), Christopher Guest (last seen in "Mascots"), Barbara Harris (last seen in "Nashville"), Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Long Strange Trip"), Charlton Heston (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), John Huston, Al Jolson, Pauline Kael, Martin Luther King (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Elias Koteas (last seen in "Gattaca"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Elmer Gantry"), David Letterman (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Peter Lorre, David Lynch (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Michael McKean (last seen in "The Meddler"), Burgess Meredith (last seen in "Second Chorus"), Russ Meyer, Michael Moore (also last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Rupert Murdoch (also carrying over from "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Frankie & Johnny"), Joe Pesci (last seen in "Betsy's Wedding"), Isabella Rossellini (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (also last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Harry Shearer (last heard in "Goosebumps"), Charlie Sheen (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), James Spader (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Studs Terkel, Marisa Tomei (also last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Deborah Kara Unger (last seen in "White Noise"), Orson Welles (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Mae West (last seen in "I'm No Angel"), Oprah Winfrey (also last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone").

RATING: 7 out of 10 family vacation photos