BEFORE: Regis Philbin carries over from "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project" and I'm having flashbacks to one year ago, when Regis Philbin carried over from "Zappa" (Movie #3,901) to "I Am Divine" (Movie #3,902). It wasn't exactly one year ago, because last year it took me longer to get to 200 films, I must have taken a break, but it was one year minus two weeks. Back then I felt like I was in limbo because I was waiting to hear about a new movie theater job, better than the one I was working at - and now I feel like I'm in limbo again because I got that job, only the theater's basically closed for the summer for roof repairs. I'm working tomorrow night, though, for a special one-off screening, then back into limbo, probably.
This film was a big deal almost a year ago, it hit Netflix last August and everybody was talking about it at the time - I think everybody was just desperate for stuff to watch while still stuck at home or working from home, you could have put a test pattern on Netflix and called it "arty" and people would have watched it. But it took me 11 months to find a place to schedule it....
THE PLOT: Bob Ross brought joy to millions as the world's most famous art instructor, but a battle for his business empire cast a shadow over his happy trees.
AFTER: My life changed when I was in junior high, I lived much closer to my secondary schools than I did to my grade schools, so I was able to walk home, and if I had a study hall at the end of the day, I tended to leave early and head home. I also started working a job nights and weekends during high school, and it was a very physical job in a warehouse, so between that and schoolwork, I was sometimes tired in the afternoons. My grandmother lived with us at the time, and sometimes I'd come home from school and lay on the couch while she was watching TV - after her soap operas she'd switch over to PBS, and I would often fall asleep to the relaxing images and soothing voice of a painter on a show called "The Magic of Oil Painting" - that artist was not Bob Ross, it was Bill Alexander.
Yes, the burly German guy with the loud voice, that used to relax me in the afternoons after a day at school. That should tell you something about me, the fact that I'm of German descent and was partially raised by German grandparents meant that listening to a German man screaming at his in-progress oil painting helped me relax. Therefore I could probably take a nap at a Nazi rally, which is a bit concerning. But that's how I learned about Prussian blue and Alizarin crimson, Cadmium yellow - though with his thick accent, it took a while for me to really understand the names. Bill Alexander pioneered this technique of painting, wet-on-wet, where he'd add a layer of "Magic White" to the canvas first, and then he taught the technique to Bob Ross, who really made it famous.
I'm still Team Alexander and not Team Ross, but the German guy's show ended in 1982 and Bob Ross's show "The Joy of Painting" started in 1983. At the time I thought one guy replaced the other on the same show, but that's not what happened, Bill Alexander's show was taped in Huntington Beach, CA and Bob Ross's show came out of Muncie, Indiana. Bill Alexander had another show that ran from 1984 to 1992, and I guess it was up to each PBS station around the country to decide which one they wanted to run - but clearly it's a case where the student drove the teacher out of business, by putting out a quieter, gentler, more American and less German product that caught on with the public. The Bob Ross show ran for 11 years, or 31 "seasons" and the weird thing here is that Bob Ross was younger than Bill Alexander, but died three years before him after becoming more successful.
A whole enterprise sprung up around Bob Ross, because what else is there to do in Muncie, Indiana besides learn to paint? The show format was always the same (copied from Bill Alexander) - sometimes the canvas would be pre-treated with the Magic White, and then Ross would start blending in the sky colors or denote his horizon line, and within a half-hour an oil painting would form - and the audience didn't get to see the sketch off to the side, where the painter had already planned out the design, so the creation did appear to be made with "magic", There must have been some money generated by syndicating the show to the various PBS stations, but apparently that's chicken feed compared with the real money-maker, which was getting Bob Ross to tour the country and hold oil painting workshops, during which budding artists would be sold blank canvases, brushes, paints and so on. And then each show generated three paintings for Bob Ross Inc. - the rough painting prepared before the show that he used as a guide, the one he painted during the show, and usually a more detailed one that he made later, which would appear in his instruction books (also for sale).
I get it, I work for an animator and we also sell his art to collectors - we'll charge top dollar for a drawing or a cel that was included in a film, but I try to always make sure not to sell anyone a rough sketch or a drawing from a scene that got cut, not unless they specifically are made aware of that. Most people only want the finished art anyway - but the cels are tricky because for a while we were photocopying the pencil art on to acetates, and then the customer's not getting something drawn by the artist's hand, it's really a copy. But sometimes we can also include the pencil drawing, and an explanation about what, exactly, they're buying. And while I might sign my boss's name on a letter, I would NEVER sign a piece of art with his name and try to pass that off as an autographed drawing. Based on what some insiders say in this documentary, though, the handlers of Bob Ross drew that line in a different place.
Many people refused to be interviewed for this documentary, because the producers of "Joy of Oil Painting" are quite litigious, and suggesting that the whole operation was a scam to sell paint, or that works created by others were sold as authentic Bob Ross paintings would just be an open invitation to get sued. So the doc has to dance around a few things here, or suggest certain things without saying them directly. The couple that ran Bob Ross Inc. is therefore portrayed as being a bit shady, supposedly the husband worked for the CIA or something, and maybe Bob Ross had an affair with the wife, it's all a bit nebulous. Bob and his life lived in the same house with the other couple, who's to say really what was going on? As another artist couple testifies here, "It was the 1970's and 1980's, everybody was sleeping around!" Umm, OK, sure, it sounds like you guys have some stories to tell, also.
Before becoming the darling oil painter of the PBS world, Bob Ross was in the military, he served in the Air Force as a medical records technician at a base in Alaska, and years spent in Alaska may have influenced his appreciation for the beauty of nature, and also his love for animals. An art class at the Anchorage USO club inspired him to start painting, and then while working as a part-time bartender he found that Bill Alexander show, "Magic of Oil Painting". He studied the technique and then painted Alaskan landscapes on novelty gold pans, soon he was making more money from the paintings than he got from his military salary. So he tracked down Bill Alexander in Florida, and became a traveling tutor and salesman for his program before branching out on his own. That's just capitalism, American enterprise triumphs over German stubbornness.
What happened in the months before and after Bob Ross's death created a legal and financial nightmare, but this documentary only tells one side of that story. Yes, Bob Ross made a will that left the rights to his own image to his son, Steve Ross. However, whether he could do that or not, the validity of that will would depend on the agreement he had with the Kowalskis, who were his business partners in Bob Ross Inc. If the terms of that agreement stated that upon the death of a company partner, that person's stock would be equally divided among the remaining partners, then Bob's interest and likeness weren't his to bequeath. The courts seemed to agree with the Kowalskis, who argued that everything Ross had painted was legally done as a work-for-hire, so after death his heirs had no rights to income from his paintings or the products he endorsed. The fact that Bob Ross got married two months before his death also had no bearing, because the incorporation agreements didn't account for his interests to be transferred to a spouse, either. It sucks but that's how business works sometimes, the party with the better contracts and the most lawyers wins.
This is probably a lesson that my boss needs to learn, he absolutely HATES paying for lawyers and avoids hiring them - but he still signs contracts, sometimes without reading them thoroughly. So there are sometimes questions about who "owns" the art that he makes, or whether he has the right to sell it later - he's pretty lucky that he's never been sued or never had to sue anyone, because one lawsuit could put an independent filmmaker with no legal representation right out of business. I'm kind of on the fence here about who to root for, because you can't really copyright a painting technique, any more than you can copyright a recipe for a dish served in a restaurant. And chefs, even famous ones, work at this restaurant or that one, move around a lot and probably carry a lot of recipes with them in their heads, and you never hear about a chef being sued because they stole a dish from another place they worked, it's all kind of fair game.
NITPICK POINT: One of Ross' artist friends proposes that his lymphoma might have been caused by prolonged exposure to paint thinner, Ross was known for cleaning the thinner out of his brush by "beating the devil out of it" (another technique and phrase he stole from Bill Alexander) but there's no mention of the fact that he was also a cigarette smoker for most of his adult life.
Also starring Andrea Baxter, Doug Blandy, Ian Bourland, Bert Effing, Julia Friedman, Gary Jenkins, Kathwren Jenkins, Dana Jester, Laurence Kapp, Steve Ross, Vicky Ross, Sally Schenck, John Thamm
with archive footage of Bob Ross, Bill Alexander, Stephen Colbert (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), James Corden (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Jimmie Cox, Phil Donahue (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Kathie Lee Gifford (last seen in "Zappa"), Dennis Kapp, Taylor Kinney (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Annette Kowalski, Walter Kowalski, Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Joan Rivers (also carrying over from "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Sarah Silverman (ditto), Jane Ross, Sarah Strohl, Alicia Vikander (last seen in "Tulip Fever").
RATING: 6 out of 10 motivational affirmations
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