Running with Beto

Year 14, Day 225 - 8/13/22 - Movie #4,223

BEFORE: Here we go, film #45 out of 46 films in the Summer Rock & Doc Block. This is right where I planned to be, if not exactly WHEN I planned to be there.  It's been a long road, but the docs have seen me through a tough time, an unplanned period of inactivity that's been wearing on me mentally.  Films can be a great distraction when you've got some excess time on your hands, but I think what's going to help me more is going back to my very weird work schedule and at least feeling like I'm accomplishing something, while also earning a bit more money.  BUT I still have 12 days before the school starts up its orientation programs for the fall semester, and my shifts start up again.  I don't know how other people work from home, I know it's really trendy right now and everything, but come on, the pandemic is OVER, the CDC just changed their guidelines and I'm going a bit nuts with so much down time. I did make a list of things to do at home, and I've crossed off about half of them, but I'm not motivated to do more, so I end up just playing games on my phone, and that's not productive.  As Meat Loaf sang, "If you're only killing time, it will kill you right back."

Beto O'Rourke carries over from "Mayor Pete", he appeared in archive footage as one of the other Democrats running for President in 2020.  That was unexpected, because he wasn't listed in the cast on IMDB (I fixed that, though) - I had another linking plan, of course, but it turns out SIX other people, politicians and talk-show hosts, carry over, so I shouldn't have worried. 

THE PLOT: A behind-the-scenes documentary following Beto O'Rourke's breakaway campaign to unseat Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate.  

AFTER: Yeah, it's midterm elections time again, or it will be soon enough - perhaps if I watch a few political documentaries I can mentally prepare myself, like acclimating myself to the temperature of the pool. I'm planning to be busy in October, between the New York Comic Con and then a vacation later in the month, so perhaps I can be distracted from most of the news.  

But speaking of vacations, this film is set during Beto O'Rourke's U.S. Senate race against Ted Cruz in 2018, and my wife and I happened to be on vacation in Texas during the last week of October in that year, so we were right in the middle of it. (This was BBQ Crawl #2, from Dallas to San Antonio to Houston to New Orleans - yeah, that was a lot of mileage.). I do remember seeing a bunch of Beto signs, but mostly in the cities, and then once we got out on the highway we could sort of tell that we were back out in Trump country - so there was no disputing that Texas is a battleground state, there are two different ideologies going on down there, and the state is just as divided as our nation is, if not more so.  

Think back on all the terrible news stories from the last six years, and who's at the center of most of them?  OK, Trump, but in most of the bad news coming out of Texas, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott are usually at the epicenters. Remember that winter power outage and Ted Cruz took off for Cancun, but came back when he realized how bad the optics were?  Then there was all that immigration backlash in the state when families were being separated and kids were held in cages in camps. Then Texas was the first state to make abortion illegal again, the second they had the opportunity to do so, and then the state's record on gun control is just abysmal, and Cruz and Abbott are really at their worst right after a school shooting when they start talking about arming teachers and locking entry doors, as if anything could possibly work better than passing more rules requiring background checks and banning assault rifles. If you really wanted to reduce the number of kids being killed, you'd try anything and everything, not this random finger-pointing and circular non-sensical blame game. 

Anyway, as we saw yesterday with "Mayor Pete", a documentary crew is likely to form around anyone running for office, and those filmmakers are taking a chance that this candidate is going to pull off an unlikely win, in which case, their time and effort won't be wasted.  But no director wants to make a film about a shoo-in candidate, or even one who's ahead in the polls, because where's the drama in that?  You know they pick their subjects because they're looking for that underdog, come-from-behind, "Rocky"-like story where even if the candidate doesn't win, at least they go the distance.  

Beto went the distance, in the sense that he visited every single county in Texas at least once, and that's a big freakin' state.  Texas has 254 counties, and over 28 million citizens - there's no way to meet all of those people, but he tried to meet as many face-to-face as he could. Look, we drove to four big Texas cities and that took us almost a week, I can't even imagine how long it took Beto to visit 254 counties, and he did that without taking any money from Political Action Committees during that campaign.  For the record, it took him 15 months, during which he held hundreds of town hall meeting, and drove tens of thousands of miles. Just like a band on tour, I'd love to see the logistics of working out that route. Most Texas politicians go campaigning in Houston, Dallas and then swing through Austin and San Antonio - how many cups of coffee did Beto drink on the road, how many stops at Buckee's for BBQ sandwiches?  I just found an article that states that Beto did about 80% of the driving, had about 5 cups of coffee a day, and lived on trail mix, beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes. 

I wish I could say it was worth it, that Beto was part of the "blue wave" of 2018 that was a response to Trump's victory in 2016, but the sad truth is that Ted Cruz got re-elected, but bear in mind that Cruz had one of the best-financed campaigns in the country, and no Democrat had won statewide office in Texas since 1994, so the odds were against Beto from the start. Beto used no professional pollsters or consultants, but did make use of social media, and an army of volunteers canvassing the neighborhoods to encourage more immigrants to register to vote. Then he got lucky when some of his statements about police brutality and NFL players taking a knee during the anthem went viral. And he raised $80 million for his campaign, mostly from small $20 donations at those town halls. Clearly this man could win over a crowd with his statements of hope and encouragement - BUT, still the election went to Cruz, 50.9% to 48.3%.  

Damn, that was close - and Beto set a record for most votes ever cast for a Democrat in Texas history.  Beto did say he would be unlikely to run for President in 2020, since he had young children, but then he did.  That didn't really work out either, and now he's the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, going up against Greg Abbott this fall.  He seems like a very smart guy, and I hope he continues to fail upwards, so to speak, and maybe he'll win another election someday, with his pro-gun control, pro-education, pro-environment and pro-cannabis platforms.  He's got the right ideas, just the bad luck to have those ideas in the wrong state, it seems. But he didn't come out of nowhere, Beto was a U.S. congressman for Texas for two terms, he probably could have held on to that seat longer, but clearly he feels he was destined for greater things, I celebrate the fact that he gave up the position he had because he wanted to do more.

Also starring Cynthia Cano, Jody Casey, Ted Cruz (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Chris Evans (not that one), Shannon Gay, Rhonda Hart, "Little" Joe Hernandez, Zack Malitz, Esther Martinez, Marcel McClinton, Amy O'Rourke, Estela Torres Powell, Michael Powell, Amanda Salas, David Wysong, 

with archive footage of Greg Abbott, Steve Bannon (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Wolf Blitzer (also carrying over from "Mayor Pete"), Mika Brzezinski (ditto), Stephen Colbert (ditto), Ellen DeGeneres (ditto), Rachel Maddow (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), George W. Bush (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Chris Cuomo (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Lester Holt (last seen in "Irresistible"), John Lewis (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Bill Moyers, David Muir (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Rick Perry (ditto), Willie Nelson (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Pat O'Rourke, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 early-morning jogs

Mayor Pete

Year 14, Day 224 - 8/12/22 - Movie #4,222

BEFORE: We're getting very close to the end, I should be able to wrap up the Summer Rock & Doc Block this weekend, just TWO films left after today's. It's been a wild ride, and we've learned a lot about everything from the Rat Pack to the stars of PBS, soul singers and drummers and chefs and scuba divers. But just like the recent heat wave, it's got to end at some point, and the way the linking worked out, I'm closing things out with two politicians and a comedian. There's a joke in there somewhere...like in post-Trump America, I'm not even sure I know what the difference is between them any more - like one lies and tells stories in front of a crowd, and the other is a comedian.  

Al Sharpton carries over from "Summer of Soul". 

THE PLOT: An inside look at Pete Buttigieg's campaign to run for President of the United States. 

AFTER: This is the LAST film in my chain this year that screened at DocFest, which took place in October, partially at the theater where I work part-time.  I remember a lot of people coming out of the screening of "Mayor Pete" saying good things about the film - and I didn't know there were so many Buttigieg fans in NYC, even a full year after he lost in the 2020 election.  Look, that wasn't that long ago, 2 years, so why does it feel like a lifetime ago?  So many things happened between then and now, the January 6 insurrection, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the second impeachment of Trump, the cyberninjas, the COVID vaccines, monkeypox, the death of Meat Loaf - look, it's been a lot to handle, OK?  I don't blame anybody who wants to just turn the news off and find better things to do with their time, like maybe curl up in a ball and rock back and forth while moaning.  If it makes you feel better, go ahead, I won't judge. 

But I feel like I never really got to KNOW all of the candidates that ran in 2020, and there were a TON of them.  Sure, we remember Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but who remembers Seth Moulton? Jay Inslee? Tulsi Gabbard? Deval Patrick? Michael Bennet? Tom Steyer? Wayne Messam?  And wait, Michael Bloomberg ran as a DEMOCRAT?  That's some bullshit right there - he was a Republican when he was the mayor of NYC for two terms, then he somehow got around the law regarding term limits by running again as an independent, which now sounds nuts - he didn't become a different person just by leaving the Republican party, he was the SAME GUY and somehow got a third term when the limit was TWO.  Mighty convenient that he was able to change the law about term limits in time for it to apply to HIMSELF.  If you think Trump had a problem leaving the Presidency, think how much worse that could have been, President Bloomberg would have just changed the law to allow himself to be President again. 

Pete Buttigieg is kind of right on that cusp of familiarity for me, I remember him running, he won two primaries and was a first place contender in the polls for about a week?  Eventually Biden entered the race and started to pick up some momentum, and then everybody sort of came to the conclusion that he had the best chance to beat Trump - everybody except Bernie Sanders, that is.  But Sanders had 26% of the Democratic support, while Buttigieg had 2.5%, so that was that.  BUT, Spoiler Alert, after the election, Biden offered Pete Buttigieg a position in his cabinet, as Secretary of Transportation, so that's a pretty good bump up from Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Isn't that the way life works sometimes, we try to get one job, but we don't get it, so we end up working a different job?  And then after a while, it feels like maybe that's the way things were meant to be?  

Buttigieg was well-spoken, and ticked off a number of boxes as the first openly gay person to seek the U.S. Presidency, and for a while there, it looked like he had a shot at becoming our second gay President. (There, I said it, you're not fooling anyone, James K. Polk...). It probably helped that Buttigieg was a veteran, was well-spoken and was in a committed relationship, and could pass as straight if he chose to, which he didn't. Some Midwesterners probably think all gay men are drag queens, which sure, some are, but not all of them.  So we're still kind of waiting for the first flamboyantly gay person to run for President, which might take a bit longer. But it says a lot about the citizens of South Bend that they kept electing Buttigieg, they were able to overcome any homophobia and judge someone on their deeds and intents, not by who they sleep next to. 

Buttigieg is also the first openly gay Cabinet Secretary, the youngest member of the Biden cabinet, and the youngest person to ever serve as Secretary of Transportation.  That's a win all around. What we may never know, however, is whether the experience he had as the mayor of South Bend, and any successes he had there, would have transferred over to the national level, had he been elected President.  Would it make sense to run America like a small town?  I'm not so sure, just because something works on the local level, it doesn't mean that's going to work when you blow it up on a grand scale.  Something tells me the problems in the United States are just too complex for that, especially when you've got 100 different senators all vying for their states to get a bigger piece of the federal pie, and thus legislative gridlock seems inevitable.  Two parties, sure, but the majority margins are so razor-thin, just look at how long Joe Manchin was able to slow down the bill about climate change.  If the Democrats had just ONE more senator, it wouldn't even be an issue, bills and laws would pass much quicker, and they wouldn't need to make so many concessions to West Virginia.  

The film follows Buttigieg from his decision to run for President through several of the primaries and debates, right up until he withdrew from the race.  He proved several times to be quick on his feet and able to answer complex questions quickly - the only one shown here that seemed to stump him was one regarding whether he'd prefer to run against Donald Trump or Mike Pence, and he sort of dodged it by saying, "Are those my only two choices?"  Obviously Buttigieg comes from the same state as Pence, and he was mayor of South Bend when Pence was Governor of Indiana, and Pence is notoriously uber-religious and anti-gay, so I don't think there's much respect there, especially since we're SUPPOSED to have a separation of church and state in this country, but all this "love the sinner, hate the sin" stuff keeps creeping in to our laws. And now we're going through the same B.S. with abortion, with conservatives allowing their religion to influence their politics, which is anti-Constitutional right down to the core. 

The film does not mention that Buttigieg acted as a stand-in for Pence when vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris was preparing to debate Pence, but Mayor Pete knew so much about Pence, I'm sure his insight was extremely helpful. 

Anyway, I think this is a very enlightening documentary - long after those other 2020 Democratic candidates have been forgotten, people are still talking about Mayor Pete.  Maybe the cabinet position is just a stepping stone, who knows?  He and Chasten make an adorable couple, I wish them the best - who can say what the 2024 election will bring?  A lot can happen in two years, but we're approaching the midterm elections and nobody even knows what's going to happen THIS November, let alone November 2024.  The other possibility here, though, is that I waited too long to watch this one, and perhaps it's no longer relevant.  Time will tell, I guess. 

Ah, if only I had started my documentary chain at this end, and flipped it all around, then I could have programmed this film in June, which is Pride Month.  Mea culpa - but the chain works the way it wants to work. 

Also starring Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg, Mike Schmuhl, Lis Smith, 

with archive footage of David Axelrod, Joe Biden (last seen in "We Feed People"), Donald Trump (ditto), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Clear History"), Michael Bloomberg (last seen in "Koch"), Cory Booker (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Beto O'Rourke (ditto), Mika Brzezkinski (last seen in "Irresistible"), Erin Burnett, Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain"), Trevor Noah (ditto), Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Bill Maher (ditto), Kamala Harris, Van Jones (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Rachel Maddow (ditto), Bernie Sanders (ditto), Katty Kay, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Matthews (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Jake Tapper (ditto), Lawrence O'Donnell (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Chris Wallace (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Elizabeth Warren (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Andrew Yang,

RATING: 5 out of 10 ice cream date nights

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Year 14, Day 222 - 8/10/22 - Movie #4,221

BEFORE: OK, here's that big blow-out summer concert I was talking about - from 1969.  Hey, I never said it was going to be a concert from THIS summer.  I missed this somehow when it aired on ABC, but that's OK, it's still on Hulu. 

Jesse Jackson, B.B. King, Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, Dinah Shore and Stevie Wonder all carry over from "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street". 

THE PLOT: Documentary about the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which celebrated African-American music and culture and promoted Black pride and unity. 

AFTER: I don't know, this was the Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature last year, and for some reason, I'm not feeling it.  Like everything's in place, but is there something wrong with me?  Is this not my kind of music?  Am I the wrong color to enjoy this?  I watch films about black performers all the time, but this one just didn't thrill me somehow.  

Maybe it's the exact material, which doesn't feel like A-list material, if I'm being honest.  I'm not a fan of Nina Simone, I don't know any of her songs, so of course "Backlash Blues" is just going to leave me cold, I've got no frame of reference.  I've never really been a fan of Sly and the Family Stone, either, but at least I know his songs - to me "Everyday People" is a very stupid song, but one with a very important message about racial harmony and acceptance, so I kind of give it a pass.  But all that "so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby" stuff doesn't do it for me. Then there's a line about a blue one who can't accept a green one for living with a fat one - well, I don't think there are any blue or green people, so I'm always kind of scratching my head when I hear this song. 

I've never heard of Ray Barretto, or Herbie Mann, or Abbey Lincoln either - sorry if I seem out of touch. Really, I'm trying to find something here that appeals to me, and it ain't easy.  OK, there's Gladys Knight & The Pips doing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", finally something I know - but as I said after watching that documentary about Motown last year, their version is just too frantic and arythmic for me - it predated the Marvin Gaye version, and the CCR version, both of which I prefer over this one.  This version of the song sounds like a mess, like the performers haven't quite figured out how to sing it yet. I know, I know, this version of the song was the original, but quite often I like cover versions better. 

Then there's the Edwin Hawkins Singers, which was really just a church choir, and that's when this Harlem Festival got a bit too preachy and religious for me.  The festival organizers justified this by saying that they wanted to bring some church stuff into the program because church attendance in NYC was declining, but did they ever think maybe there was a reason for that?  Maybe more and more people didn't LIKE church, so then why bring in a church choir?  To remind everybody of the thing they hate, which is church?  Or just to be a big pain in the ass?  

B.B King shows up, with another song I've never heard of - and same goes for the Chambers Brothers, they couldn't sing their hit song "Time"?  David Ruffin was there to sing "My Girl", but he was the only member of the Temptations to make the concert?  So people paid to see four Temptations but only got one?  That seems like a rip-off.  And I loved the Staples Singers so much when they sang on "The Weight" with The Band during "The Last Waltz", but here I just wasn't impressed by them.  OK, so Mavis Staples killed it on "Precious Lord Take My Hand", and so did Mahalia Jackson, but that's another church song.  And it was Martin Luther King's favorite hymn?  I'm tempted to ask "So what?" but that would probably get me into trouble.  

I'm going to say that the highlight of this whole concert was The 5th Dimension doing the two songs from "Hair", they recorded a medley of "The Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine In", and I liked everything about that, even the story that Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo told about how they managed to see the Broadway show and convinced the producers of a mostly-white musical to let them record those songs as a single.  And then finding out that they appeared at the Harlem Cultural Festival to counter accusations that they weren't black enough when they covered songs by white people.  That's fascinating, all the way around. 

There's an interesting effect in merging the musical performances with the interviews, in addition to talking to some people who attended the festival, the filmmakers also interviewed some of the performers who are still alive, like Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder, and other people who weren't there, like Chris Rock and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and got their reactions to watching the same footage that the audience just did. That all helps place this festival into proper historical perspective, but then part of me wishes that this film could have just been about the music, and also that the music could have been...better?  I hate to say that because "good" is subjective, and to some people this music might all be GREAT, but I just don't see it that way. 

The complaint among the Harlem community is that this festival took place the same year as Woodstock, but Woodstock got all the attention, with two feature films and a double-album, and the Harlem Cultural Festival was largely ignored, and it took fifty years to turn the footage into a documentary.  OK, I get that, but have you HEARD the music from the Woodstock Festival?  It totally kicked ass, except for Richie Havens and Sha Na Na.  TV producer Hal Tulchin recorded about 40 hours of concert footage in Harlem, and two TV specials aired clips from the festival in 1969, but that was it, the tapes then sat in a basement for 50 years.  The festival organizers tried for years to claim this was "the black Woodstock", but was it?  Also, you can't complain about Woodstock getting all the attention and then try to ride its coattails like that.  Plus, if you're going to do that, you might as well call this festival "Hoodstock".  

If you ask me, perhaps TOO much emphasis was placed here on the importance of this festival, there are cutaways explaining the Black Power movement, the rise of the afro, black fashions like the daishiki, and how significant it was that this many black people gathered together over the course of six Sundays in the summer of 1969.  You know, sometimes I just want to hear the music from a concert and not be bombarded with propaganda every five minutes.  I'm glad this was an important event for a lot of people, but give it a rest already. If it were a festival with mostly white performers and they were quoting the importance of white history and white fashion between the songs, and saying how great it was that so many white people assembled together in one place to celebrate being white, that would be very wrong, right?  Of course it would. Just saying. 

I don't know, maybe I'm just in a bad mood, I've got anxiety in my life right now because I'm not working much this month, so money's kind of tight.  I feel like either job could go away at any moment, and it troubles me.  I congratulate this film for winning the Oscar, and I acknowledge that the concerts were culturally significant, but they're just not my scene.  I read on IMDB that there were 40 hours of footage that got cut down to 24 hours, then 3 and 1/2, and finally 2.  Maybe that means the film would have been radically different if other choices had been made?  I'd be kind of interested in learning what material didn't make the cut. 

Also starring Ethel Beatty-Barnes, Barbara Bland-Acosta, Billy Davis Jr., Dorinda Drake, Sheila E., Margot Edman, Greg Errico, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Cyril "Bullwhip" Innis Jr., Musa Jackson, Gladys Knight (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Adrienne Kryor, Alan Leeds, Darryl Lewis, Sal Masekela, Marilyn McCoo, Jim McFarland, Lin-Manuel Miranda (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Luis Miranda (last seen in "In the Heights"), Denise Oliver-Velez, Roger Parris, Raoul Roach, Chris Rock (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Al Sharpton (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Greg Tate, Hal Tulchin, Allen Zirkin, 

with archive footage of Ray Barretto, Ben Branch, Stokely Carmichael (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), The Chambers Brothers, John Chancellor (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Walter Cronkite (last heard in "Becoming Cousteau"), Sonny Fortune, Redd Foxx (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Marcus Garvey Jr., Berry Gordy (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Sly Stone (ditto), Edwin Hawkins, Walter Hawkins, Chuck Jackson, Mahalia Jackson (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Julia"), Robert Kennedy (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Tony Lawrence, Abbey Lincoln, John Lindsay, Moms Mabley, Malcolm X (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Herbie Mann, Hugh Masekela, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Max Roach, Abe Rosenthal, David Ruffin, Mongo Santamaria, Nina Simone, The Staples Singers (also last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Willie Tyler, Blinky Williams. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 plugs for Maxwell House coffee

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Year 14, Day 221 - 8/9/22 - Movie #4,220

BEFORE: If you look back through my Rock & Doc Block this year, you may spot a recurring theme, connecting the subjects Bob Ross, Jacques Cousteau, Julia Child and now the stars of Sesame Street - they're all PBS mainstays from decades past.  I think Sesame Street airs on HBO now, but that hardly matters - it's been a PBS kind of summer for me, since I also discovered the series "American Masters", which aired the Sammy Davis Jr. doc. and also the Rita Moreno one. HBO provided its share of material, also, by airing tonight's doc and also "Adrienne", "Jagged", "George Carlin's American Dream", "Becoming Mike Nichols", "Mr. Saturday Night", "Listening to Kenny G" and "The Super Bob Einstein Movie".  But as we've learned, all things must come to an end, so after tonight just four docs remain in the chain, but I think I'm going out with a bang. Tomorrow night, it's another concert film, and I really haven't watched enough of those. 

Dizzy Gillespie carries over from "Listening to Kenny G". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story" (Movie #3,231), "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey" (Movie #3,232)

THE PLOT: Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most impactful children's series in TV history. From the iconic furry characters to the songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed our world. 

AFTER: I feel I've sort of come full circle, in my doc chain and in my life - one of the first docs this year was a film about Rick James, and very early on in my career, I was a P.A. on a Rick James music video. (I know, I talk about it a lot, but it's one of the coolest moments in my life that I can reference...). While working for the same company, back in a land called the 1980's, I had the opportunity to work on a couple segments for "Sesame Street", pieces that CTW wanted to look like music videos.  One was called "Between", featuring a singer named Jeff Red, and you can catch that one on YouTube, I think.  I remember having to go to a prop house and choose a bed that most resembled a slice of bread, because one had to transition in post to the other. I can still remember the lyrics: "When there's cheese in the middle of two slices of bread, it's between, between.  And when you slip inside the sheets of your comfy bed, you're between, between."  That's just never going to go away, I'll be singing it when I'm 80 and in a nursing home, probably.  

The other video was called "Adventure", designed to teach kids the meaning of that word, and it starred the very popular group En Vogue, plus a couple of the Muppets, like Count von Count, Grover and Elmo.  This was before Elmo blew up bigger than the other characters and kind of went solo. (Yeah, this one's on YouTube, too, take a look if you want to peek into my past...) Anyway, while the women of En Vogue are on their adventures in Count's spooky castle, the director wanted the backgrounds to look like comic books, so the production company borrowed some actual comic books from me, to zoom into and create that style.  I remember making the director sign something that said if anything happened to the comics, then the company would buy me replacements, I was sort of a dick about it.  I remember also working on a shoot for a superhero-type version of Big Bird, only he was blue, and I don't know if Sesame Street ever did anything with that footage. 

Which kind of makes me wonder, why the hell didn't I try to get a job at the Children's Television Workshop?  I was young (21) and dumb, I guess, I had contacts there but I didn't hit anybody up for a job, that could have turned into a career. I might still be working there now, what a nice gig that might have been, and I'm trying to remember what prevented me from making moves in that direction. I guess because I was trying to be an adult and distance myself from childlike things, and I figured if I had to work on a children's show, I'd go bonkers or something.  My whole career in film and animation production, I've avoided children's shows, because really, just shoot me. So I charted my own course, moved on to work for a commercial animation agent, then an independent animator, then a couple of movie theaters.  But I'm sidelined right now, and so naturally I'm wondering what I did wrong, or if my life could have been better if I'd made different choices.  

But here's the thing, I also remember the CTW people seeming a bit uptight, like they took the education aspect of the show very seriously.  Each season of "Sesame Street" had a bible with the learning goals for each show, the lessons they wanted kids to learn, and if you've watch the show, you know they're also picky about the way the letters and numbers are presented - no serifs on the letters, for example, and the Q and the 9 have to be written on the screen a certain way, NO EXCEPTIONS, and so maybe I would have gone completely bonkers if I worked there. I guess I'll always wonder - a lot of guest stars have been on the show in the last 30 years, so maybe I missed out on collecting some cool stories about working on those shoots - instead I work at special movie screenings now and encounter celebrities that way, but maybe I'd have a bit more money in my bank account if I'd had a solid union job at CTW.  I just wish I knew if the universe was trying to tell me something, and if it was, did I miss it? 

Here's why the documentary is so tricky for me, though - I don't always like those "making of" segments that they used to add to DVDs as bonus features.  Maybe it's because I already know how films and TV are made, and so that stuff just doesn't interest me.  I already know how puppetry works, and I'm not that impressed by it, not even knowing where the puppeteer's hand goes in Big Bird's head, so one of his wings never moves as a result.  Who cares how the sausage is made?  Not me.  But I'll admit it was nice to see Jim Henson and Frank Oz working Bert & Ernie together, and to realize how much of their personalities came through in those characters.  

I already knew about Joan Ganz Cooney, she spoke at my college graduation ceremony, but I'll admit I didn't know much about the contributions of Jon Stone, who came up with the idea for the NYC street-like set and directed many episodes of the show.  Like many other people, I watched "Sesame Street" regularly when I was a kid, and I got caught up in its illusory nature. I didn't get the joke about the show being "sponsored" by specific letters and numbers until I was older, and realized that "J" or "8" were taking the place of Ivory Soap or Folger's coffee, which adults probably found hilarious, right?  

Also, I knew all the characters by their stage names, and didn't realize until many years later that those were actors who had different names in real life.  To me they were Maria and Bob and Gordon and Luis, and I honestly didn't think much about any other reality.  Perhaps when I realized that the "Mad Painter" character looked an awful lot like Mr. Bentley on the sitcom "The Jeffersons" did I start to understand what actors were, and that they could play different people on different programs.  And tonight I re-learned that there were really TWO different people who played Gordon, Matt Robinson and Roscoe Orman - they sort of hint that there's a story there, the first Gordon was maybe some kind of activist, and though he helped create the first black Muppet, Roosevelt Franklin, that character fell out of favor because it was perceived as a bit of a negative stereotype.  I've just looked up the first Gordon on Wikipedia, and learned there have really been FOUR actors playing Gordon over the years.  My childhood is a lie?  Anyway, it seems there was a changing of the guard in 2016, all of the characters I knew as a kid retired or aged out of the program.  Still, that's a solid gig, if you can play a character for 35 or 40 years, like actors do on some soap operas.  

Meanwhile, everyone from Raul Julia, Lily Tomlin, Andrea Martin, and Kristin Chenoweth to Charlotte Rae, Bill Irwin, Ruth Buzzi and Michael Jeter played recurring characters, and if you go back to the earlier days, people like Mel Brooks and Betty White often did the voice-overs for the animated segments - which have been directed by a lot of people I've known in real life, like Mo Willems, Jen Oxley and John Dilworth, so what the heck was I so afraid of, that I chose not to work on Sesame Street?  I should have my head examined.  Oh, well, I've got my pride, at least. 

I don't usually say this, but I wish they'd played more clips from the show, but I guess this doc is really intended to show more of the back-story, the methodology of the creators of the show, rather than rehashing what's been seen on the screen.  I'm kind of over the Muppets, anyway, they've all changed since they got bought out by Disney, just like your favorite band started to suck once they got that big multi-album recording contract, am I right?  Just like Anthony Bourdain when he signed the deal for his THIRD travel show with CNN.  Let's face it, nothing's as good as you remember it being when you were younger.  Just me?  And on top of that, we learn that Jim Henson got divorced because he was spending too much time working with the Muppets and not enough time with his kids.  This is another common theme in this year's documentaries, just as Wolfgang Puck's son had to learn cooking, and Jacques Coustea's sons had to learn scuba diving, Henson's had to learn puppetry so they could spend more time with their father. That's kind of sad, I think. 

Also starring Frank Biondo, Linda Bove, Fran Brill (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Joan Ganz Cooney (ditto), Emilio Delgado (ditto), Bob McGrath (ditto), Roscoe Orman (ditto), Martin P. Robinson (ditto), Caroll Spinney (ditto), Christopher Cerf, Sam Gibbon, Bob Hatch, Brian Henson, Lisa Henson, Sharon Lerner, Loretta Long, Dick Maitland, Sonia Manzano (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Lloyd Morrisett Jr., Jeff Moss, Edward L. Palmer, Holly Robinson Peete (last seen in "21 Jump Street"), Nick Raposo, Dolores Robinson, Matt Robinson, Dulcy Singer, Norman Stiles, 

with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Paul Benedict (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Cab Calloway (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Northern Calloway, Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Listening to Kenny G"), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), James Taylor (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Julia"), Fred Rogers (ditto), David D. Connell, Evelyn Davis, Danny Epstein, David Hartman, Florence Henderson (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Jane Henson, Jim Henson (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Richard Hunt (ditto), Will Lee (ditto), Jerry Nelson (ditto), Lena Horne (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Jesse Jackson (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Peter Jennings (ditto), James Earl Jones (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Jerry Juhl, Madeline Kahn (last seen in "Mel Brooks Unwrapped"), B.B. King (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Martin Luther King (also last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Emily Perl Kingsley, Eda LeShan, Gerald S. Lesse, Shari Lewis, Kermit Love, Loretta Lynn (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Bob McRaney, Pat Nixon (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr..: I've Gotta Be Me"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Chet O'Brien, Odetta (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Frank Oz (last seen in "Knives Out"), Jack Paar (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Joe Raposo, Alaina Reed, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Lisa Simon, Paul Simon (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Buffalo Bob Smith, Emily Squires, Jon Stone, Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Orson Welles (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Stevie Wonder (last seen in "Under the Volcano")

RATING: 6 out of 10 quickly-consumed cookies

Listening to Kenny G

Year 14, Day 219 - 8/7/22 - Movie #4,219

BEFORE: Just five documentaries left in the chain after this one, but I'm still spacing them out so I don't have a big 2-week gap in September, ideally.  So I should be done with the Summer Rock & Doc Block in just about a week - and the theme for the last week is going to be "Entertainers & Politicians" - which kind of works because I think when this is over, I'll have two new co-champions with more appearances this year than Nicolas Cage, and one of them was an entertainer, and the other was a politician. They're both very likely to turn up in any documentary about the 1960's through 1980's. 

Oprah Winfrey carries over from "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain". It's kind of cheating, I know, because simply everybody has been on Oprah's show at some point, so who's surprised when two documentaries show their subject with her?  It's an easy link, no doubt - but I also get the satisfaction of knowing that if Anthony Bourdain were still around, he'd totally hate the idea of putting the documentary about Kenny G next to the one about him. Sorry, Tony, but you don't get to complain about this sort of thing any more.  

THE PLOT: An examination of the most popular instrumentalist of all time, Kenny G, and why he is polarizing to so many. 

AFTER: I'm now done with every movie that got signed to HBO's "Music Box" series that I wanted to see - I had no interest in the documentary about DMX, I just stuck to the ones that interested me. Well, sort of. I'm not really a Kenny G fan, so he's kind of on the cusp of who I'll watch a documentary about - provided he's lived a fascinating enough life, that is.  I didn't really know much about, say, Dick Gregory or Tiny Tim or Elaine Stritch until I took the time to watch their biographical docs - it's been an educational month-plus, that's for sure.  But is Kenny G a diverse enough person to hold my interest for 97 minutes?  For me, that's a big no. 

I don't feel much of a connection to his music, and it turns out I'm not alone - the music experts interviewed here don't think much of his music because it's not straight jazz, it's not really pop, and it certainly isn't rock, so what is it?  It's kind of it's own thing, what later came to be called "Smooth Jazz" by the people who name radio formats, and they built that format around HIS music.  The name came from a woman in a focus group who claimed to hate jazz, but she liked Kenny G because it was so smooth - that led to the A-HA moment in the marketing department, and for years Smooth Jazz was the music of choice for office buildings and dentist offices around the nation.  Mr. G's music is even bigger in China, where they play his song "Going Home" as the official song of closing businesses for the day, it's nearly mandatory to have that instrumental played, instead of a bell or a whistle, at closing time, signalling to all the workers it's time to stop working and pack up.  Yes, whether it's a factory or a shopping mall, nothing clears people out like playing Kenny G music - that seems about right.  

Kenny himself didn't really know this when he played in China, and accidentally played "Going Home" midway through a concert, and according to him, a fair number of people recognized the song, thought this meant that the concert was over and headed for the exits.  Umm, sure, Kenny, that's why half the crowd left your show early, if it makes you feel better to tell yourself that.  Now, what's the reason why people in America do the same thing?  Right, to beat the crowds and get out of the parking lot faster, sure. 

Kenny G also has a pretty high opinion of his own music, I get that, but I wonder why they didn't find more people to interview who also hold his compositions in high regard.  It makes me wonder if there are any experts out there who do - traditionally you would expect them to interview people who LIKE the subject of a documentary, not ones who can barely tolerate his music or feel very neutral about it.  One interviewed subject takes things a bit too far, referring to his instrumentals as "masturbation", and I hated it back in film school when people in class used that metaphor for any film they didn't like.  It should be reserved for films that are completely self-indulgent, but my issue with it is that it tries to make masturbation sound like a bad thing, and it's just not - it's sex with someone you care about.  Plus, that seems so archaic and Puritan to have a problem with self-pleasure.  Now, I think what the guy meant was that most jazz is performed by groups, like trios and quartets, where the musicians play off each other, take turns with the solos, and by contrast, Kenny G is just one guy, so therefore if most jazz is like group sex, then his instrumentals are therefore masturbatory.  But still, maybe find a better metaphor that doesn't link something quite pleasurable for many people to the music that you don't like.

His music also has a reputation for evoking emotions, and stories abound about people playing his songs in the background while, umm, in a romantic mood.  These people have never heard of Barry White or Marvin Gaye, I guess. Kenny himself doesn't claim to be that romantic of a person, but he was married twice and he has two sons (college graduates now), so he must have been in love at some point, right?  But this doc doesn't really get into that, it focuses more on record sales than relationships.  And Kenny's side hustles as a golfer and a pilot.  Musician, golfer, pilot, all of those things are somewhat similar in that they require a combination of skills, developed through practice, hard work and determination.  It's one thing to be diverse, but I don't know, it feels like maybe he's TOO diverse, that maybe he takes everything a bit too seriously.  

Still, for a Jewish guy from Seattle who almost went into his father's plumbing business, and studied accounting in college, he's done very well in the music business, despite what the haters say.  It's good to know that at least one high school "band nerd" made a career out of playing the saxophone, even if it took some time and a few different bands before Clive Davis offered him a solo record contract.  (He did play in Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra while still in high school, but that's not mentioned in this documentary.). What's weird is that he's composed many of his own songs, but has to work with professional musicians when it comes to things like chord progressions.  He can work out melodies, but not chords?  I guess that kind of makes sense, when I took a music theory class in junior high I had a similar problem, there were just too many choices, and the teacher couldn't quite explain which ones should follow the others, or maybe I was too dumb to understand it - let's just say it's a tricky thing to learn. 

Kenny G was also an early investor in Starbucks, so between that, record sales, royalties and tour money, he's probably doing quite well financially, and that gives him the freedom to record whatever he wants and collaborate with whoever he wants, so who cares what the critics say?  As you may know I work for an independent animator who's always running out of money, but the saving grace is that he gets to tell whatever story in his animation that he wants, there's no Hollywood studio telling him what the plot needs to be or censoring his content or language - and money does eventually come, sooner or later he'll get an offer to animate this commercial or that pilot project, and that keeps his studio going and keeps me employed - though quite often it's a case of feast or famine, and we're in a famine cycle right now.  Between Kickstarter campaigns and art sales to collectors, occasional royalty checks and money from foreign distributors, we keep the studio in business, but once in a while the insurance gets cancelled or the internet gets turned off, those are the breaks.  But man, it would be nice to work for somebody with a more steady stream of income and not have to worry about that for a while. 

But then there are the REAL Kenny G haters, like jazz musician Pat Metheny, who took issue with him playing a sax solo in a virtual duet with Louis Armstrong on "What a Wonderful World".  Since Kenny G is not a jazz artist, this recording irked a fair number of people who thought it was like spray-painting graffiti on the Mona Lisa, or even worse, some form of cultural appropriation for a white man to earn money and take credit for a recording made years ago by a black artist.  Yeah, that's a tough battle to fight, and probably the best thing to do is not even make that record in the first place, or if you do get away with it, just smile, nod, pick up your check and walk away quickly from any controversy like that. 

There are still worlds left to conquer, Kenny G would love to get back into working on soundtracks, he has done some music for films like "Dying Young" and "The Bodyguard", but he's got bigger plans, and there are some montages in this documentary, pieced together from clips from films like "Twister" and "Schindler's List", that give a suggestion of the stuff he'd like to do for Hollywood, and he's probably standing by the phone waiting for that call.  Hey, I say if Trent Reznor can win two Oscars for doing soundtrack work (for "The Social Network" and "Soul"), so can Kenny G.  Reznor is 75% of the way toward EGOT status, but all Kenny G has is one Grammy.  Hang in there, Kenny!

Also starring Kenny G (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Clive Davis (last seen in "Whitney"), James Gardiner, John Halle, Allen Kepler, Jason King (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr..: I've Gotta Be Me"), Will Layman, Pat Prescott, Ben Ratliff, Chris Washburne, 

with archive footage of Louis Armstrong (also last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Nat "King" Cole (ditto), Whitney Houston (ditto), Michael Bolton (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Katie Couric (ditto), Tom Cruise (ditto), Craig Ferguson (ditto), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Joan Rivers (ditto), Dana Carvey (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Phil Hartman (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "We Feed People"), Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Irresistible"), Natalie Cole, John Coltrane, Tony Danza (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Miles Davis, Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "The Dig"), Warren G, Stan Getz, Mel Gibson (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Dizzy Gillespie (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Chris Hardwick, Helen Hunt (last seen in "How It Ends"), Janet Jackson (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Kashif, Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Liberace (ditto), Larry King (ditto), Evelyn "Champagne" King, Jay Leno (last seen in "Julia"), Ramsey Lewis, Norm MacDonald (last heard in "Klaus"), Madonna (last seen in "Jagged"), Chuck Mangione, Reba McEntire (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Pat Metheny, Mike Myers (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Haywire"), Katy Perry, Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Drew Pinsky, Charlie Rose (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Will Smith (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Rod Stewart (last seen in "Tina"), Junior Walker, Dionne Warwick (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), The Weeknd (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Kanye West (last seen in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm")

RATING: 5 out of 10 internet challenges