What's My Name: Muhammad Ali

Year 15, Day 105 - 4/15/23 - Movie #4,406

BEFORE: After that whole film on the "Rumble in the Jungle", I'm doing a deep dive into the whole career of Muhammad Ali who carries over (along with MANY others) via the magic of archive footage. Technically, this is a "miniseries" and not a movie, because HBO is airing it in two parts, but I've made exceptions for this sort of thing before, like HBO's other documentaries on Elvis Presley and the Michael Jackson scandal. I get it, with a run time of nearly three hours, this probably needed to be cut into two parts for airing - some people won't invest three hours in watching a movie but they'll binge-watch a 10 part series if the episodes are 30 minutes each. Weird, right? 

THE PLOT: One of the most iconic figures in athletic history, Muhammad Ali's incredible story from world champion boxer to aspiring social activist is explored through his own voice and never-before-seen archival material. 

AFTER: If you just go by the numbers, which this documentary tends to do, Ali was one of the most successful boxers in history, starting with a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics for boxing in the light heavyweight division, then four years later beating Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight championship, and so on.  The film keeps a visual tally on the screen of Ali's fight record, which I think gets up to 56 wins and only 2 losses at one point.  You might think that's so much winning that you, as a viewer, might get tired of winning, and you'd be right to think that.  How many times can we see the pattern repeat itself - Ali has a match, Ali wins the match, Ali's record increases by one.  Repeat as necessary.  One notable reviewer said this film "never bogs down in repetitiveness" however I disagree, it's repetitive as hell. 

But it's the 2 losses that then become the most interesting, because they stand out. And the timing of the losses in the documentary means that Episode 1 is able to show the time that Ali stripped of his title after refusing to register for the draft, and his attempt to bow out of possible military service in Vietnam.  Of course this allows inclusion of Ali's plans for a potential comeback, and he opens his own training facility in rural Pennsylvania, which includes a sparring ring inside some kind of log cabin.  But even after getting his boxing license reinstated by the Atlanta Athletic Commission, and then a federal court case that forced the New York State Boxing Commission to do the same, Ali still had to contend with Joe Frazier, who became the heavyweight champion during Ali's absence from the sport. The first title match between Ali & Frazier (there would be at least two more, down the road) was called "The Fight of the Century", and was held in Madison Square Garden in March of 1971, and (spoiler alert) Frazier won.  It turned out the nascent "rope-a-dope" strategy was no match for a powerful left hook.  

So in Episode 2 we get to see Ali battling his way back, through Jerry Quarry, Floyd Patterson and Bob Foster, and getting his jaw broken by Ken Norton in the second loss of his career. Despite considering retirement (again), Ali beat Norton in their second match, setting up the rematch with Joe Frazier, who had recently lost his title to George Foreman.  And you guessed it, I've circled back to the "Rumble in the Jungle", as detailed in yesterday's film. I suppose it's logical that if Ali had lost to Frazier, and Frazier had lost to Foreman, logically everyone was expecting Ali to lose to Foreman - but boxing is not a logical sport, I guess. But that's why Ali came in as an underdog, and winning the Rumble was considered an upset. And 1 BILLION people watched it happen. 

After that, Ali fought Chuck Wepner, Ron Lyle and Joe Bugner, so it's back to the prepared sequence of win after win, then Ali vs. Frazier 3, which was the "Thrilla in Manila".  But then Ali started struggling in fights in 1976, Cosell noted that he's never seen Ali so off in his timing, and talk of Ali's retirement began again.  Ali was notably out of shape when it came time to fight the up-and-coming Leon Spinks in 1978 (I didn't follow boxing back then, I was busy being 10 years old) and Ali lost to Spinks but won the rematch 7 months later, making Ali the first heavyweight boxer to win the championship belt three times - what is this, wrestling? 

Ali, once again, announced his retirement in 1979, but came back yet again to face his old sparring partner, Larry Holmes, to try to become a four-time champion.  But by this time Ali was struggling with trembling hands and stuttering - the Mayo Clinic declared him fit to fight, but clearly this was the beginning of the end.  Holmes easily dominated Ali, Ali started racking up more losses, and his last fight was in the Bahamas in December of 1981.  

Notably, this film doesn't get into Muhammad Ali's personal life, and it turns out there's a reason for that - he was married four times and had nine children, most of whom you haven't heard about.  Laila Ali, of course, but her mother was Ali's third wife. And he kind of married one other woman in an Islamic ceremony that wasn't officially recognized.  So, umm, are we counting that marriage, or not?  The man also had a large number of affairs, and I suppose all this goes counter to the squeaky-clean, religious image that he projected to the public.  There were other people along the way claiming to be Ali's children, plus there were palimony suits and sexual assault suits.

This omitted information, though, might help to explain why Ali started talking about retirement when he was 25, and then didn't get around to it until he was nearly 40.  Kids, wives, girlfriends and lawsuits are expensive, or maybe he just got used to a lavish lifestyle, despite the appearance of living in a remote Pennsylvania cabin.  Ali claimed to be "broke" shortly after winning at the Olympics, but then once he started boxing professionally the paydays kept getting bigger and bigger, with a $10 million purse for the Rumble in the Jungle.  Sure, Ali did a lot of charity work, and reportedly gave housing money to homeless people, but, umm, where did all the rest of the money go?  And why couldn't he, just, you know, STOP before his financial troubles got out of hand?  Maybe he had to tithe some money to the Nation of Islam.  

And then there's that montage at the end, which shows the older Muhammad Ali traveling the world and meeting with Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein.  Umm, there are some mixed messages there, don't cha think?  I get that he was trying to negotiate the release of American hostages, but being photographed with Saddam just isn't a good look. 

"What's My Name" was released in 2019, and then Ken Burns released a longer, four-part docuseries "Muhammad Ali" on PBS in 2021.  But Burns started working on his project back in 2016, so I'm guessing he was pissed when Antoine Fuqua finished "What's My Name" two years before his doc was ready.  For me, this is six documentaries down, and I think 19 to go. 

Also starring Drew Bundini Brown, Odessa Clay, Howard Cosell, Angelo Dundee, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, Don King, Sonny Liston, Ken Norton (all carrying over from "When We Were Kings"), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Steve Allen (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Count Basie, Oscar Bonavena, Ed Bradley (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Jim Brown (last seen in "100 Rifles"), Joe Bugner, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "The Automat"), Fidel Castro (last seen in "Becoming Cousteau"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Jack Paar (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Malcolm X (ditto), Sam Cooke, Bill Cosby (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Rocky Marciano (ditto), Ossie Davis (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Joe Louis (ditto), Sammy Davis Jr., (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Merv Griffin (ditto), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Yank Durham, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Sugar Ray Robinson (ditto), Nikki Giovanni, Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - The Don Rickles Project"), Pope John Paul II (ditto), Berry Gordy (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Gorgeous George, Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Saddam Hussein (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Robert F. Kennedy (ditto), Richard Nixon (ditto), Jackie Robinson (ditto), Sugar Ray Leonard, Nelson Mandela (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Joe E. Martin, Elijah Muhammad, Tip O'Neill, Floyd Patterson, Tony Perez, Jerry Quarry, Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Diana Ross (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Bill Russell, Earnie Shavers, Leon Spinks, Ernie Terrell, Mike Tyson (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Jersey Joe Walcott, Chuck Wepner,

RATING: 5 out of 10 unanimous decisions

When We Were Kings

Year 15, Day 104 - 4/14/23 - Movie #4,405

BEFORE: Spike Lee carries over again from "Hoop Dreams" and I'm still at the intersection of documentaries, sports and Black history.  I will get back to tennis in a bit, but I've got to get there through boxing and baseball, if that makes sense.  This film focuses on the heavyweight title match held in the country of Zaire, referred to as the "Rumble in the Jungle". I've about it so many times over the years, but still I can't really tell you any details, so once again, I'm playing catch up tonight, time to learn some sports history. 

THE PLOT: Boxing documentary on the 1974 world heavyweight championship bout between defending champion George Foreman and the underdog challenger, Muhammad Ali. 

AFTER: My usual complaint about boxing movies, at least fictional ones, is that I don't end up learning very much about the sport - the different punches, the strategies, the techniques - most fiction films are good for a couple of intense training montages, then they throw the characters into the ring and let them have at it.  That's all well and good, but I'm not really LEARNING anything that way.  This doc swings far back the other way, we almost learn TOO MUCH about boxing strategy - but that's OK, you can never learn too much, it's almost always never enough. 

Tonight I learned WHY the boxing match took place in Zaire, Africa - so that's a good start.  Don King was just starting out as a boxing promoter and he financed the $10 million purse by holding the fight there.  After all, what's $10 million out of the budget of a COUNTRY?  Countries approve millions in pro-tourism funds all the time, and getting the heavyweight championship to be held somewhere other than Las Vegas or Atlantic City, that's a win-win, right?  Zaire promotes itself as a travel destination for, umm, boxing fans (?) and the fighters get paid, and the money goes to the boxers and promoters, the way it's supposed to work, and not to some Vegas middle men.  Or, a country's dictator launders about $10 million in dirty money by filtering it through a boxing match, who can say?

(What I love most about the "Rumble in the Jungle" is how that nickname not only inspired the "Thrilla in Manila" the following year, it also got parodied in the movie "The Slammin' Salmon", where the boxer-turned-restaurant owner is famous for fighting in both the "Dispute in Beirut" and the "Fracas in Caracas".). 

Plus, it looks like a good time was had by all - there was a concert held with James Brown, The Spinners, the Crusaders, and African singing sensation Miriam Makeba - this was apparently the Zaire 74 Music Festival, which ran about the same time.  Here's the next thing I learned, that Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Don King and their entourages all flew over to Zaire, and then Foreman got a bad cut over his eye during training, so the fight was pushed back about six weeks, and everybody just sort of hung around.  Well, that means more time to enjoy the culture, the Zaire 74 Music Festival, and hey, let's make a doumentary with a lot of B-roll, since we've got a whole lot of nothing else to do. By the end of the six weeks, Ali had become a fixture around Kinshasa, interacting with the people, and he couldn't walk down the street without a crowd of followers.  Foreman, no doubt, was sequestered at the hotel, enjoying the air conditioning while devising a better way to grill hamburgers and sandwiches. (I've owned a few grills in my time, and I just want to say, it's IMPOSSIBLE to both "seal in the juices" and "knock out the fat" at the same time.  Those are simply opposing things, a device can usually do one but not the other.  Also, "the juices" IS FAT, so let's get that straight.)

The world therefore anticipated the Rumble for six weeks, and that's what the first hour of this film is about - that wait.  YOU, TOO will experience what it must have been like for boxing fans to wait. That. Long.  So yeah, the film drags for a while, you can only watch so much footage of Ali training and then walking around town saying clever things.  The Music Festival ran from September 22 to 24 in 1974, and James Brown was nice enough to hang around for a couple interviews, but then the fight didn't take place until HALLOWEEN.  80,000 people stuck around, though, or perhaps came back to watch the fight, and another 50 million tuned in for the closed circuit or pay-per-view airing.  Needless to say, there was no internet back then, no ESPN app on your phone, so you had two choices, fly to Zaire (now called Democratic Republic of the Congo) or pony up the money for the PPV.

The other important thing to note here is this was Ali's "comeback" fight, much like Elvis' 1968 TV concert special.  Ali was stripped of his title in 1967 and suspended from boxing for three years for his refusal to be drafted and maybe fight in Vietnam.  Here's where "The Greatest" should have taken a page from "The King's" book, they drafted Elvis largely as a publicity stunt, he was never going to pick up a gun and shoot enemies, the top brass would see to that - but it sent a message to the U.S. public that nobody was above the law.  Similarly, if Ali had accepted military service, they would have found a nice cushy, out of the way spot for him, hence sending a message that nobody was above the law.  Ali getting killed in Vietnam would have had more of a negative impact on enrollment, see?  So they wouldn't have let that happen, I'm sure the U.S. military wanted to draft him just to make a point - but it's just a theory, really.

In 1970, Ali regained his boxing license and worked his way up to an attempt to regain the heavyweight championship from Joe Frazier, only Frazier won by unanimous decision, so Ali had to find another path.  Then Foreman came from winning gold at the 1968 Olympics on a path to ultimately beat Frazier, still at the young age of 25 in 1974, compared to Ali's age of 32, it seemed the smart money was on the younger, scrappier Foreman, and even Howard Cosell figured that Ali would likely retire if he lost the Rumble.  

Ali had the speed and the technical skills, but Foreman had the power.  Ali disoriented him early by leading with his right hand - a surprising tactic because his right hand took longer to arrive (so the analysts said) so Foreman would theoretically have more time to react to a right cross, but that didn't seem to matter.  Also, none of Foreman's sparring partners would probably lead with a right, so he hadn't trained that way, therefore it was unexpected. But Ali's rights barely made an impact, and then Foreman started landing punches of his own. 

Time for the old rope-a-dope.  Ali let Foreman push him up against the ropes, and punch Ali on the arms and body, making Foreman waste a lot of energy on punches that didn't do much damage.  Ali was therefore able to get in more punches to Foreman's face, while taunting him that he wasn't throwing enough punches, and this made Foreman angry.  By the fourth or fifth round, George Foreman was looking tired. By the eighth round, Foreman had no defense and was tired from throwing so many punches.  Ali then got in some right hooks, a five-point combination, then a left hook and a hard right brought George to the canvas. 

Ali proved he could not only take punches, but adopt a new fighting style that involved staying in one place, instead of the usual "float like a butterfly" tactic of moving around a lot. Most of Foreman's punches were to Ali's body, except for a few blows to the head that seemed to have no effect (umm, until years later, of course.). George Foreman was essentially done, he tried for years to arrange another title bout against Ali, but retired in 1977 after a loss to Jimmy Young.  Ali kept SAYING he would allow a rematch against Foreman, but saying that and doing that turned out to be two different things. 

The documentary version of the 1974 fight didn't come out until 1996 (what the hell took so long?  The film version of "Woodstock" was released only one year after the concert...) but when "When We Were Kings" finally did get released, it won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature - and the filmmakers really should thank Siskel and Ebert for changing the way that documentaries were nominated - in other words, this came out two years after the "Hoop Dreams" scandal.

Also starring Norman Mailer (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), George Plimpton, Thomas Hauser, with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), George Foreman, Don King (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), James Brown (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), B.B. King (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Mobuto Sese Seko, Malick Bowens, Lloyd Price, Miriam Makeba, Drew Bundini Brown, Odessa Clay, Howard Cosell, Joe Frazier, Stewart Levine, Sonny Liston, Alan Pariser, Dick Sadler, Zach Clayton, Angelo Dundee, Archie Moore, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes

RATING: 6 out of 10 back-handed jabs (the conversational kind)

Hoop Dreams

Year 15, Day 103 - 4/13/23 - Movie #4,404

BEFORE: Spike Lee carries over again from "Venus and Serena" and this is the reason why I had to break up the tennis-based docs, because today's film is almost three hours long, so I had to move it to a night when I had a bit more time (not working at the theater) and more time to sleep in the next morning.  So it kind of had to be moved from a Tuesday night to a Wednesday night.  This also moves another long documentary coming up from a Thursday night to a Friday night - same deal, it moves to a night I'm not working, followed by a morning where I can sleep in.  Spike Lee appeared VERY briefly in "Venus and Serena", he was just captured in archive footage, talking to Richard Williams at one of their matches. But that counts. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Hustle" (Movie #4,307)

THE PLOT: A film following the lives of two inner-city Chicago boys who struggle to become college basketball players on the road to going professional. 

AFTER: What I'll probably be saying a lot this is week is "Eh, not really my thing..." because I'm not that into the sports scene.  I followed the Mets for a while, and the Red Sox for a while longer after that, but tennis and basketball, not so much.  I'm about two weeks late for March Madness, I know, but the bracket competition WE watched this March was on the Food Network, which was Tournament of Champions IV. (32 chefs compete, the next round is 16, then 8, and so on down to 1)

To say that "Hoop Dreams" has been on my list for a while would be an understatement - since it's also on that list of "1,001 Movies to Watch Before You Die", and I'm always looking to cross another film off that list (I've seen 439 of them now) so when I see a chance to watch another one, I kind of have to take it. The problem I have now is that so many of the films left that I have NOT seen are either from the black & white era (and I can't dub films from TCM to DVD any more) or they're foreign films, or in some cases, both.  So it's slow progress for me, I cross off MAYBE one or two films a year from that list these days.  But I'd enjoy newer Hollywood fare over old boring silent films anyway, so there's that.  

BUT, when I saw that TCM was going to be running "Hoop Dreams" this year as part of their "31 Days of Oscar" programming, I had to record it.  I think it's also on HBO Max, but it's more convenient for me to watch something from my DVR instead of my computer, because then I can sit in the recliner and fall asleep right after - and with a running time of nearly three hours, I figured, quite correctly, that would work with my weird-ass schedule.  The lucky part came when I already had a framework for what docs I wanted to watch this year, and "Hoop Dreams" just slid right in between other sports films with Spike Lee in them. 

The film follows two high-school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, both basketball players from inner-city Chicago who get recruited to attend St. Joseph High School, in Westchester, Illinois, which is a mostly white suburb.  However, it's also the school that NBA star Isiah Thomas played for, and the school's coach, Gene Pingatore, was credited for coaching Thomas and running an outstanding competitive basketball program.  I'm not sure how the filmmakers chose just two students to follow, perhaps they felt that the two recruits from the city, the ones who had to commute to school 90 minutes each way would make for the best story, as they were both following in Thomas' footsteps. 

Never meet your heroes, they say, though Agee clearly lit up when Thomas came to speak at the school, in many ways it was downhill from there.  The film follows the ups and downs of Agee and Gates' academic and athletic pursuits.  While Agee moved up four reading levels after starting at St. Joseph, before long he was writing very basic reports for class and then his family fell behind in paying the tuition, perhaps because of his father's drug problem.  Gates, meanwhile, found a sponsor in an alumnus of the school who paid his tuition, but then he struggled to get an acceptable score on the ACT exams.  Gates made the St. Joseph varsity team in his freshman year, while Agee was forced to transfer to another school and played basketball there in his sophomore year. 

Their troubles continued in junior year as Gates suffered a knee injury, and Agee's father left the family, forcing them to go on welfare - but he later returned and Agee's mother earned her nursing degree. Gates also got courted by several prominent colleges, and signed with Marquette, which offered him free tuition, even if his knee didn't get better.  Then in senior year Gates was basically benched, while Agee took his public high school team to the semi-finals of the state championship.  You kind of get the feeling that maybe one of these teens will be successful, but their fates are so in flux that it's impossible to predict which one it will be. (I'll admit I just checked Wiki to see if either one ever made it into the NBA. No spoilers here.)

The big controversy back in the day was that both Siskel and Ebert LOVED this film, but it didn't get nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards. An investigation into the process revealed that the nominating committee for that category did not consist of documentary filmmakers, and on the day when all the films were screened for the committee, time was so tight that they could not POSSIBLY watch all the eligible films together in the time allotted - so the voters were given flashlights, and if a majority of the committee found a film boring and waved their flashlights, the screening was stopped and they all moved on to the next film.  The scandal resulted in changes being made to the nomination process, future voting was done by Academy members who had more experience in the documentary field, and also, members watched as many of the films as possible, but on their own time, not in one big screening room where films could be vetoed if the first few minutes were deemed boring. 

And hey, if you think a nearly three-hour film is too long, bear in mind the filmmakers here had about 250 hours of footage after five years of filmming, and the first cut of the film was 10 hours long, which then got trimmed down to six hours - but the editing itself took about three years.  The effort paid off after "Hoop Dreams" won the Sundance Festival's Audience Award for Best Documentary in 1994, which led to a distribution deal with New Line. And in addition to being on that list of 1,001 Movies to See Before You Die, it's also on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  All that kind of makes me feel guilty for saying, "Eh, it's not really my thing..." but that's still where we find ourselves. 

Also starring William Gates, Arthur Agee, Emma Gates, Curtis Gates, Sheila Agee, Arthur "Bo" Agee, Earl Smith, Gene Pingatore, Isiah Thomas, Marlyn Hopewell, Bill Gleason, Marjorie Heard, Luther Bedford, Aretha Mitchell, Catherine Mines, Alvin Bibbs, Willie Gates, Kevin O'Neill, Bobby Knight, Joey Meyer, Frank DuBois, Bo Ellis, Bob Gibbons, Stan Wilson, Mike Krzyzewski (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Rick Pitino (ditto), Dick Vitale (ditto), Jalen Rose, John Thompson, Chris Webber, narrated by Steve James (last seen in "Life Itself").

RATING: 4 out of 10 letters of intent

Venus and Serena

Year 15, Day 102 - 4/12/23 - Movie #4,403

BEFORE: Spike Lee carries over from "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists" - and I was torn over whether to put this one here, in between two other docs with Spike Lee, or save it for next week, where I have two other tennis-based docs scheduled.  Either way, it would work, as there's so much overlap in my chosen docs, but I'm putting it here because one other interviewee also carries over, and I'll just catch back up with the tennis stars next week.

I've got a whole week of sports docs, so it's a Jock Doc Block for sure.  And as I mentioned before, there's also a focus this time around on athletes and musicians of color, so it's my de facto late version of Black History Month, since I couldn't get to that topic in February. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "King Richard" (Movie #4,238)

THE PLOT: As of 2011, Venus and Serena Williams had been winning championships for over a decade, pushing the limits of longevity in such a demanding sport. This film grants unprecedented access into their lives during the most intimidating year of their career. 

AFTER: At times this documentary felt like a shot-for-shot remake of "King Richard", but I realize how backwards that sounds, because this film came out about a decade earlier, and also feature the REAL footage, everything in "King Richard" was a re-creation of THIS, it's just that I watched that 2021 biopic first, that's all. The footage of Richard Williams loading his tennis playing daughters into a minivan in the mornings, going to early morning practices and teaching them unconventional methods like throwing their rackets over and over, all this footage was re-shot with a made-up Will Smith to resemble reality, I get that.  

But there is stuff hear that "King Richard" didn't cover, as it follows both women on the pro tennis circuit over the course of a whole year, their "comeback" year after Serena had a hematoma and a pulmonary embolism, while Venus was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease.  I don't think that the dramatic film mentioned these health problems, but I could be wrong.  I also don't think "King Richard" mentioned that their parents got divorced, which is a pretty notable exclusion.  Richard Williams and Oracene Pryce kept co-parenting and co-coaching their daughters, but it was probably much more awkward when Dad's new wife was also hanging around.  Also a son from a previous relationship that he kind of forgot to mention.  

But Richard and Oracene were the ultimate "helicopter" parents, or tiger parents (as in Tiger Woods) who drilled the lessons of success into their daughters - sure, it's great to tell your kids that they can achieve greatness in whatever field they want, but what's seen here is a special kind of brainwashing where the parents practically willed a couple of tennis champions into being.  And there's no doubt that this benefited the parents, once their daughters started winning tournaments and getting endorsement deals, so you have to wonder if they did this all for their daughters' benefit, or their own.  It somehow goes beyond teaching kids about hope and achievement, I think.  Sure, the story of the Williams sisters is probably inspiration to kids of all colors, everywhere, but how many of those other kids really have the potential to be tennis champs, and would they even want to?  

I can't argue with the statistics, of course - Venus Williams has seven Grand Slam singles titles, while Serena has 23, and together they hold 14 women's doubles titles.  They've been ranked as No. 1 and 2, side by side, several years in a row.  Nobody's disputing their success, I just don't know what might have gotten lost along the way, like childhood or an inability to see the world as from anything but a champion's point of view, for starters.  Then, what does that do to any person's ego or personality?  It's probably just sour grapes on my part, I suppose. 

Same question, with regards to their personal lives - one of Serena's exes is Brett Ratner, cancelled filmmaker and widely-recognized garbage human.  Congrats on breaking up with him, I suppose, but boo for getting together with him in the first place.  She's married to the founder of Reddit now, most likely a better choice. Venus has dated a pro golfer, a Cuban model and a publishing heir, no ring on that finger yet, just saying.  '

What's weird is that the sisters are also friends, teammates AND rivals on the court - and it's tough to see how all of those things are possible.  They've won Doubles titles together, but then they've often had to play each other in the singles division of the same tournaments - how do they switch the rivalry off and on?  Since I don't really follow the sport, I wish the documentary could have done a deep dive into this study in contrasts - instead we get a breakdown of Serena's alleged multiple personalities, Summer, Megan-Serena, and Laquanda aka "Psycho Serena".  While this condition is a bit concerning, it also seems to be very interesting, and I think also warranted a bit more explanation.  Perhaps they are coping mechanisms for dealing with difficulties, but I'd keep an eye on Laquanda if she's the one that surfaces when a line judge's rulings don't go Serena's way. Again, just saying. 

So it's a fascinating portrait of two pro athletes who also seem to be, and I don't mean this to be perjorative, a bit mentally messed up.  But we need to know where this comes from, if it's a direct result of the way they were force-trained by their parents, or if it's got something to do with being Jehovah's Witnesses, or if it's some by-product of the mindset resulting from winning so many championships.  It could be crucial to determine if all that success breeds an ego trip, and what the fallout from that might be, though I've obviously got my suspicions.  It's obvious that when the sisters face "adversity", which is defined as "not winning a particular championship", there's some sense of entitlement there.  They wouldn't get so mad about it unless they felt that they deserved to always win, and I wonder who taught them that?  Even self-proclaimed "obsessive perfectionists" might do better if they could somehow learn to lose gracefully, even once in a while. 

Also starring Venus Williams, Richard Williams, Oracene Price (all last seen in "King Richard"), Serena Williams (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Raul Arevalo, Victoria Azarenka, Sascha Bajin, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Flag Day"), Common (last seen in "The Informer"), Carlos Fleming, Leland Hardy, Martina Hingis, Billie Jean King (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Rick Macci, Iva Majoli, John McEnroe (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Patrick McEnroe, Arnon Milchan, Isha Price, Arnold Rampersad, Brett Ratner, Dave Rineberg, Chris Rock (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Jill Smoller, Irina Spirlea, Gay Talese (also carrying over from "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Jon Wertheim, Lakeisha Williams, Anna Wintour (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold")

with archive footage of Arthur Ashe, Marion Bartoli, Mary Carillo, Kim Clijsters, Jimmy Connors, Katie Couric (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Matt Lauer (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Martin Luther King (also last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Malcolm X (ditto), Rosa Parks, Samantha Stosur, Marlon Wayans (last seen in "On the Rocks")

RATING: 4 out of 10 post-match interviews

Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists

Year 15, Day 101 - 4/11/23 - Movie #4,402

BEFORE: This will be a shorter version of my Doc Block than usual, last year's Block was 46 films long (total includes two fiction films needed to make the connections) and stretched from June 24 to August 13.  But just 25 films in this year's plan (total includes one fiction film needed to make the connections) because Mother's Day is coming up, and I'll have to wrap up in time to set that holiday up.  Still, there's a lot of overlap because once I get on a topic like politics or sports, the films tend to interview the same people over and over, or the same figures pop up in archive footage - Presidents, a-level athletes, newscasters, and for some reason, Spike Lee.  He's always down for an interview, must have a lot of time on his hands. So there were many different ways I could organize these 25 films, it's not a big circle like last year's chain, but still, there were lots of possibilities. I've found an order that suits me, and I'm going to try to resist the temptation to mess around with it, because it's going to get me where I need to be, and that's the most important thing. 

Robert De Niro carries over from "Val". 

THE PLOT: The story of New York City journalists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, lauded in their time as the voice of New York. 

AFTER: Either one of tonight's subjects probably warranted a documentary of his own, but combining them into one is not only a study in contrasts, it's symbolic of the city of New York, which always presents you with a choice.  Do you follow the Yankees or the Mets?  The Knicks or the Nets?  Giants or Jets?  And do you read the Daily News or the NY Post?  (Oh, right, there's also the NY Times, but come on, it's no fun except for the crossword puzzle.). When I came to college in NYC in 1986, I had to start making some choices, and I went with the Daily News because it had the best comics section - and I used to get my paper for free just by  finding one on top of the subway trash each morning. (I stopped that practice when I got a paper full of actual crap one day, and kept buying the Daily News only on Sundays for the comics and crossword.)

Along the same demographic lines, perhaps, people tended to follow either Breslin or Hamill, again based on which paper they bought, although both men bounced around a bit, Hamill ran the Daily News for a while, Breslin stayed mostly at the post until he was asked to leave for his racist comments. For a brief time both men worked for the SAME newspaper, and then a lot of people didn't know what to do, you just can't root for both the Yankees and the Mets, it's not natural. 

The two men had similar roots, Irish-Catholic and working class families.  Both started as beat reporters with ink running in their veins, and both lived a good long time, which meant that they both experienced great loss, Breslin outlived his wife and two daughters, Hamill divorced one wife and then dated celebrities like Jackie Onassis and Shirley MacLaine before getting married again.  Both men were present the night that Robert Kennedy got shot, Hamill had a hand in convincing RFK to run for President, and then of course regretted that decision to some degree. Hamill was also one of the men who disarmed the assassin, then Breslin sat on him to hold him down. Breslin also ran for office, on a semi-serious NYC Mayor & City Council President ticket with Norman Mailer, before going on to semi-fame in commercials for Piels beer. ("It's a good drinkin' beer!")

There's not enough time to cover every relevant news story that these reporters, umm, reported on - so they had to just hit the highlights.  Like that time that real-estate mogul Donald Trump weighed in on the Central Park jogger rape case by taking out full page ads in the newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty in NYC so it could be retroactively applied to the five suspects. Yeah, that one got nasty REAL fast.  And then it turned out, years later, that it was a big mix-up, the five arrested suspects were innocent, and they only lost decades of their life to incarceration, what a mistake it would have been to listen to Donald Trump.  Well, we all had a good laugh over that one, and I wonder what ever became of that Trump guy.  

Another case highlighted here was a female police officer who broke through the glass ceiling in the NYPD, only to have someone discover nude photos of her, taken before joining the force, that were printed in an X-rated magazine.  She got fired for "conduct unbecoming an officer" even though the pics were from years before, and Jimmy Breslin championed her case in the press, arguing that posing for nudie pics wouldn't preclude someone from becoming a good officer.  It just seemed to be a subject that Breslin knew a lot about, that's all - he probably had a copy of the magazine in his collection.  Oh, that Jimmy Breslin...

Breslin was also intimately involved in the cases of Bernhard Goetz, the subway shooter, and David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer.  Both were media circuses with Breslin at the center, and the issues raised by Goetz, as a vigilante, were complex.  Most people supported Goetz in theory at first, because he was defending himself during a robbery, but when it was discovered that he shot the suspects in the back, and hated the world in general, public support slowly turned against him, with Breslin leading the charge.  And questions were raised about whether Breslin's contact with Berkowitz maybe encouraged him to kill again and again, after he had a reporter to send messages to. The film then winds it way through the AIDS crisis of the 1980's, the Crown Heights riot of 1991, and of course the horrific events of 9/11/01. 

The truth is that newspaper journalism was much healthier back in the days of Breslin and Hamill - the Daily News used to have a staff of 400 reporters and editors, and these days it's more like 40.  (And once A.I. starts writing the columns, it's going to be down to zero, maybe real soon.) These were the days before the internet, mind you, so every city had to have their own staff of reporters, you couldn't share an article instantly over the web.  And back in those days nobody had a cell phone with a news app, so if you wanted the latest information, it came in paper form.  We're saving trees now, but what have we lost along the way?  Typesetters, copy boys, beat reporters, local movie reviewers, they've all gone the way of the dinosaur. Now everybody who's anybody has a YouTube channel or a podcast, it's just not the same. 

You can also thank Jimmy Breslin (along with sportscaster Jimmy the Greek) for creating "cancel culture", or actually for making racist comments to co-workers and creating the NEED for cancel culture, because shortly after Breslin's tirade toward an Asian-American co-worker who said that one of his columns was sexist and also wasn't very good, people got together and decided that overtly racist people everywhere should not be allowed to keep their jobs and make a living, and if they did then right-thinking people would get together and boycott that newspaper or TV show or restaurant or whatever. Jimmy lost his job, the liberal snowflakes won their first battle and cancel culture just kind of ballooned from there. 

The joint interview with Breslin and Hamill was recorded in 2015, but Breslin died in 2017 and for many times in this movie, his words are read aloud by actor Michael Rispoli, who has a similar accent. (A weird carry-over from yesterday's film, where Val Kilmer's son read so many of his father's words...). I know this is a somewhat controversial practice, the filmmakers on the Anthony Bourdain doc got into some trouble for using a computer to simulate Bourdain's voice on ONE line, and if you follow this technique to its illogical conclusion, you could make a doc where anyone is made to say anything, like someone could manufacture a clip where their political opponent says, "I admire Hitler" or something equally as damaging. 

But that's the chance you take when you set out to make a documentary, you pick a subject who's had a long and storied career, and you cross your fingers, hoping that they'll stay alive long enough for you to finish recording their side of their story.  "Deadline Artists" premiered at the DOC NYC Festival in November, 2018, and then Pete Hamill died in 2020 at the age of 85. Well, at least he lived long enough to see the movie about him.  We're not going to see people like these men again - can you imagine 50 years from now someone making a documentary about the great influencers on Instagram and TikTok from the year 2023?  Not gonna happen. 

Also starring Pete Hamill (last seen in "The Paper"), Harvey Araton, John Avlon, Mike Barnicle, Dan Barry, Tony Bennett (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Cibella Borges, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Driven"), Earl Caldwell, Charlie Carillo, Bill Clark, Richard Cohen, Gail Collins, Andrew Cuomo (last heard in "Alone Together"), Maria Cuomo, Matilda Cuomo, Michael Daly, James Duff, Tony Dunne, Jim Dwyer, Ronnie Eldridge, Richard Esposito, Kathy Hamill Fischetti, Brooke Gladstone, Brian Hamill, Denis Hamill, Fukiki Aoki Hamill, Jim Hennesey, Bill Hoffman, Johnnie Jones, Edward Kosner, Robert Krulwich, Spike Lee (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Mike Lupica, Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Les Payne, Nicholas Pileggi, Colin Quinn (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Sam Roberts, Shane Smith, Gloria Steinem (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Gay Talese (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Garry Trudeau, Richard Ward, Tom Wolfe (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Ji-Yeon Yuh and the voice of Michael Rispoli (last seen in "Empire State")

with archive footage of Jimmy Breslin (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), Spiro Agnew, David Berkowitz, Charles Bronson (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Bob Costas (last seen in "Here Today"), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Mario Cuomo (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Alfonse D'Amato, Phil Donahue (last seen in "Julia"), Bernhard Goetz, Abe HIrschfeld, Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Robert Kennedy (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Malcolm X (ditto), Gene Krupa, Norman Mailer, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (also last seen in "Julia"), Jackie Robinson (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Linda Ronstadt (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Mike Royko, Curtis Sliwa, Lionel Stander, Donald Trump (last seen in "Running With Beto")

RATING: 7 out of 10 broken fingers (after investigating the Mafia)

Val

Year 15, Day 100 - 4/10/23 - Movie #4,401

BEFORE: I just didn't have many choices linking out of "Paul, Apostle of Christ" if I wanted to include it as this year's Easter film - in fact, there was just ONE possible link, so Joanne Whalley carries over and that's going to kick off my Doc Block that will take up the rest of April.  Joanne is the ex-wife of actor Val Kilmer, so after hitting another century mark I can transition right into documentaries, this has usually been a summer thing for me over the past few years, but I need to fill the space between Easter and Mother's Day somehow, and docs can get me MOST of the way there.  But there's a bit of an Easter-Passover connection here, too, as Val Kilmer played Moses in the animated feature "The Prince of Egypt" and also in "The Ten Commandments: The Musical". 

I've made some last minute additions to the chain, after finding out I had the wrong date for Mother's Day, I thought for some reason it would be on May 9 and designed a chain around that, only to then find it's really on May 14 - turns out it's always on a Sunday, so I must have confused it with Easter's date of May 9.  Well, when in doubt, just add more documentaries, right?  Last year HBO Max provided me with several docs that aired as part of their "Music Box" programming, like "Jagged", "Listening to Kenny G" and "Mr. Saturday Night", and that same network also contributed "Becoming Mike Nichols", "Adrienne" and "George Carlin's American Dream".  Well, it's HBO Max to the rescue once again, with docs about Muhammad Ali and Willie Mays that are going to fit RIGHT into my programming.  

It's a lot more work keeping track of all the people who appear in archive footage in these docs, but I'm willing to do the work, also to keep updating the IMDB for these films when I find that the listings are incomplete.  Hey, IMDB, I don't know where your offices are, but if you need to hire more people to watch movies to confirm unlisted appearances, I can make myself available. 

THE PLOT: Documentary centering on the daily life of actor Val Kilmer, featuring never-before-seen footage spanning 40 years. 

AFTER: OK, 100 films into 2023, so tonight I'm starting the 2nd third of Movie Year - second third?  Yeah, I guess so.  Documentaries are going to fly by, and then horror films and Christmas will be here before you know it. Time seems to have sped up, and we're all getting older faster, and that includes Val Kilmer.  He had a bout with throat cancer (more on that later) but more importantly, he's still alive, and he's got a warehouse full of videotapes and home movies that he was able to turn over to some documentarian. Hey, if he can't be in any more Hollywood movies, there's time to tour the world, make some personal appearances, sign some memorabilia and record a documentary.  Val's son Jack narrates the film, with something perhaps close to his father's voice.  

It's been a full life in Hollywood, sure, but then there was so much more - marriage, divorce, a daughter and a son, a desire to perform Shakespeare, especially "Hamlet", that probably never came to fruition, a lot accomplished in his career but not everything he set out to do.  The jobs are never really linear, are they?  Nothing really is.  But first the film goes way back to Val Kilmer's childhood, making home video versions of classic films like "The Great Race" with his two brothers, Wesley and Mark. But Wesley drowned in a jacuzzi at the age of 15, after an epileptic fit, and so I suppose what's surprising is that Val wanted to keep making movies after that.  He became the youngest person accepted into the drama program at the Juilliard School, and it seemed like his career was off to a fine start, he clearly had "the bug" for acting, only in his first off-Broadway play, he was relegated to the third lead after Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn signed on.  

The big break came in the film "Top Secret!", which was an "Airplane!"-like spoof of spy and war movies, and that was just about as far from doing a serious thing like "Hamlet" as one could get.  Once you do a comedy film, it's easy to get pigeon-holed into that genre, so what's amazing there is that he did make another comedy, "Real Genius", but then pulled himself into drama/action by landing a role in "Top Gun".  (Sure, I could easily link to "Top Gun: Maverick" from tonight's film, but there's no challenge in it - plus, I'm saving that film for Memorial Day weekend.)

You would expect a standard documentary focused on an actor to just roll clips from his biggest hits (and even some misses), and there's no shortage of material to draw from here: "Top Gun", "Thunderheart", "The Real McCoy", "Tombstone", "Batman Forever", "The Saint", "The Prince of Egypt", "Wonderland", "The Missing", "Alexander", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Deja Vu", and "The Snowman" (and those are just the ones I've seen!). But this doc only really focuses on a few of these, like his 1-film stint as Batman, "Tombstone" (of course) and "The Doors".  

Kilmer as Jim Morrison in "The Doors" was really something special - a chance to work with Oliver Stone, sure, but also a chance to disappear into the role.  Kilmer looked a lot like Morrison to begin with, give him long hair and some singing lessons in the rock style, and heck, you're halfway there.  But Kilmer spent months rehearsing not just the singing, but BEING Jim Morrison, wearing tight leather pants all the time, playing Doors music around the house 24/7, and it's revealed here that this probably contributed greatly to his divorce from Joanne Whalley.  How rare is it that someone can method-act their way into a role where they, the actor, then become virtually invisible. When they cross-cut in the doc between Kilmer and Morrison, before long you won't be able to tell which one is which.  (Umm, yeah, cue up the movie "The Doors", I'm overdue for a re-watch...)

Kilmer buried his sorrows by signing on for the film "The Island of Dr. Moreau", for a chance to work with his idol, Marlon Brando.  But the shoot wasn't all smiles, Kilmer frequently argued with the director over the quality of the film they were making, and on most days, Brando didn't even show up and had a look-alike standing in for him. Sure, stand-ins are frequently used on movie sets so the actors don't get worn out, but in this case the look-alike probably got more screen time than Marlon did.  It's another case where things just didn't seem to work out for Mr. Kilmer, or he got where he wanted to be and realized that it just wasn't a great place to be.  Hey, it happens to many of us at some point in life.  

The Hollywood movie game is a tough business, in the end, and actors are just the meat puppets that get placed in front of the camera to follow the director's orders.  And if the meat puppets challenge the directors, they may not get to stay in front of the camera for long, just saying. Oh, you'll work on plenty of TV shows and films, but just not the ones that get released.  After a cameo in "MacGruber" in 2010, Kilmer didn't make another solid movie worth talking about until "The Snowman" in 2017, unless you count doing voice-acting in "Planes".  So the best advice is just show up, do whatever dance the director says to do, get your check and go home - arguing with a Hollywood director is one of the most futile things you can do, unless your goal is to get fired. 

Money seemed to also be elusive for Kilmer, even before the divorce.  His father wanted to buy up a lot of land in the San Fernando Valley and become some kind of real-estate baron, but to do that he borrowed money from Val, and put his name on a couple dozen shell companies to hide the profits.  So Val had the choice to either sue his own father, or write a large check to make everything OK - so there went his "Top Gun" money.  Later he owned a 6,000 acre ranch in New Mexico, with the intent of starting up an arts community there, and/or letting his kids inherit the land, but found he needed to sell the property to finance the production of his own film projects, especially "Citizen Twain".  

As an homage to Mark Twain, who apparently invented the one-man show (and who, some might say, was the first stand-up comic), Kilmer would appear in prosthetic make-up and a white suit and perform monologues as Twain, and the visual and vocal similarity was just stunning - on a par with his previous resemblance to Jim Morrison, for sure, only more relevant to American history.  The project began as a screenplay about Twain and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science church, but it morphed into a one-man stage show in 2012, then a filmed version of the show was released as "Citizen Twain" (I see what you did there...) but it seems once again fate had other ideas for Kilmer, because the throat cancer diagnosis a few years later meant that vocal impressions of Twain would no longer be possible.  Welp, I guess it's back on the convention circuit to sign "Batman" action figures and sign "Top Gun" 8 x 10 photos. 

Sure, you can make a long list of the films that Kilmer was considered for, but didn't get picked for - most of them, like "Point Break" and "The Matrix", seemed to have hired Keanu Reeves, but again, it's a tough business. Nobody in any job ever gets all the opportunities they WANT to have, most everyone has to settle for the ones they get, and acting's no different.  And most everyone at the top tier in Hollywood has too much money, the big stars usually have to start a foundation or invest in a struggling premium tequila business just so they don't get taxed at the highest possible rate.  At least Kilmer spent his fortune covering up his father's shady business deals, so he never had that problem. I guess that's something?

Also starring Val Kilmer (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Jack Kilmer, Mercedes Kilmer, with archive footage of Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Fairuza Balk (last seen in "The Island of Dr. Moreau"), Powers Boothe (last seen in "Frailty"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Jerry Bruckheimer, Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Pig"), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Bernie Casey (last seen in "Never Say Never Again"), Cher (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Jon Cryer (last seen in "Shorts"), Warwick Davis (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Marlene Dietrich (last seen in "Paris When It Sizzles"), Robert Downey Jr. (last heard in "Dolittle"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Anthony Edwards (last seen in "Mr. North"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot"), Jimmy Fallon (also last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Larry King (ditto), Jay Leno (ditto), Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Downhill"), John Frankenheimer, John Garfield (last seen in "Destination Tokyo"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Alec Guinness (last seen in "Spielberg"), Lucy Gutteridge (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "The Family"), Peter Kass, Norman Keesing, Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Northman"), Stephen Lang (last seen in "The Lost City"), David Letterman (also last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), James Lipton, Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Michael Mann, Richard Masur (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Kelly McGillis (last seen in "The Babe"), Jim Morrison, Paul Muni, Laurence Olivier (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Slappy's Revenge"), Jane Pauley (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Term Life"), Sean Penn (last seen in "The Weight of Water"), Regis Philbin (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Rick Rossovich, Kurt Russell (last seen in "Like Father"), Joel Schumacher, Tony Scott, Gene Shalit (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Tom Sizemore (last seen in "Spielberg"), Mira Sorvino (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Oliver Stone, Tom Stratton, David Thewlis (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), James Tolkan (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Barry Tubb (last seen in "Top Gun"), Burt Ward (last heard in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Adam West (ditto), Denzel Washington (last seen in "The Little Things"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "Geostorm"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 books of poetry

Paul, Apostle of Christ

Year 15, Day 99 - 4/9/23 - Movie #4,400

BEFORE: James Faulkner carries over from "Final Portrait", and it's Easter Sunday, which means I have to issue my occasional and/or bi-annual manifesto on religion.  I was raised Catholic, which means that the stories of Jesus and the apostles (and to a lesser degree, all those damn saints) were very real to me for the first 17 years of my life.  Every Sunday and also one night during the week, this was my reality, all the stuff in the Bible really happened, Jesus performed miracles and died for our sins and then he rose from the dead, which somehow didn't negate the whole "died for our sins" thing.  I went to college and immediately stopped going to church, because I'd been a practicing Catholic for so long I figured I'd practiced enough, and I was eager to see what my life would be like if I could sleep in on the weekends, maybe I'd be more productive.  Anyway film became my religion over time, instead of the Catholic thing. 

Since then I've identified as agnostic, more or less, I think that probably something went down in 33 A.D., but perhaps based on my experiences with film, I don't think that any story that's been told and re-told by so many different parties over two thousand years could possibly be reliable, they can't even keep Batman's story consistent for more than two movies, how could Jesus' story possibly be believed after it's passed through so many different hands?  It's the Greatest Story Ever Retold, and Retold and Retold, and it's like the kids' game of Telephone, every time you relay a message you change it a little bit or put your own spin on it.  I've spent decades thinking about what really happened (or didn't happen) in the Biblical times, and how stories change over time, and I've determined that we're just never really going to know - and that anybody who claims that they DO know has an agenda, usually they want you to donate money, so how can I take that seriously?  I'm not even going to get into all the other problems with organized religion, especially the Catholic one, but let's just say I don't put my trust in them or their version of historical events. 

Anyway, there are some good stories in the Bible, with important morals and life lessons, but that's all they are to me, stories.  And "True stories" is something of an oxymoron usually - if it's true, then it's not a story and vice versa. The simplest explanation to me is that the miracle parts of the story developed over time, and there's probably a germ of truth somewhere in them, but we can never be sure, but people are going to believe what they want to believe, and those people aren't interested in my take on history. I'll still watch the stories, but as a skeptic - and it took me TWO years to link to this film for Easter, I put it on a DVD with "Mary Magdalene" maybe three years ago, and man, it was tough to get back here.  The actors in this film just don't make a lot of movies, I guess, or at least not ones that I've put on my watchlist, so that explains why I have to take a thematic wide left turn tomorrow, to put me on the road to some Mother's Day-themed movies. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mary Magdalene" (Movie #3,798)

THE PLOT: Luke travels Roma looking for apostle Paul, turned in as Nero's prisoner, to tell his story before his execution. 

AFTER: I like to think that I'm not very gullible, my B.S. meter is very sensitive and that I'm not inclined to fall for any scams - but that's due to experience.  We gave a $500 deposit to a window company last year to get all the window hardware in our house fixed, you know, in case we ever wanted to open our windows when the weather is nice (and in NYC, you get about one week in the spring and another in the fall when it's neither too hot or too cold to do this) but after two months had gone by with no window repair taking place, we called the company only to hear that their voice-mail was full - of angry message from other people who'd given them money without any services provided.  The company vanished or shut down, and somebody took off with all the cash.  We complained to the Better Business Bureau, but they insisted on getting in touch with the company to hear their side of the story, and they were unable to do that, so the case was marked as unresolved.  

Since then, I've been on high alert, which is not a bad thing, because it means that, ideally, I'll never make that mistake again, or be susceptible to any false claims of making my life better for a small fee.  My wife and I got roped into a time-share sales pitch one time in Atlantic City, we had no intention of buying, but we were offered a free gift for an hour of our time, but in the end we barely escaped with our lives due to their high-pressure sales tactics.  (She had seen "Glengarry Glen Ross" so she spotted the scammy practice of having a phony couple signing a fake contract right in our line of sight...)  But organized religion is the ultimate scam, you give them a few dollars a week in the collection plate, and what do you get in return for this?  A piece of stale bread and a sip of cheap wine and the assurance that those items are going to turn into Jesus's actual body and blood inside your body.  Umm, yeah, sure.  Also there's a promise of eternal salvation down the road, but, well, let's just say that by the time you determine if that shit is real or not, you won't be in a position to do much about it. 

I love the story about Emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.  His mother, Flavia Julia Helena Augusta, aka Saint Helena, had access to the Imperial Treasury and made frequent trips to the Holy Land to search for ancient relics.  She funded the construction of churches in Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives, the sites of Jesus' birth and ascension, allegedly. Then she set her sights on finding the temple that was built over the supposed site of Jesus' tomb, and also finding the "true cross". Bear in mind this was all taking place around the years 325-327, and please, show me the piece of wood that would still be standing, outdoors, in all kinds of weather, for three hundred years straight.  Still, she found three crosses, and to "prove" which one Jesus had been crucified on, the locals brought out a woman from the city who was near death, and after touching the third cross, she suddenly recovered.  Helena declared this the "True Cross", and naturally took big chunks of that back with her to Rome, because that's what Romans did.  

Are you freaking kidding me?  She fell for the old "True Cross" scam, the locals got a big payday and a HUGE laugh out of this, and they got some pretty nice churches built with Roman money to boot.  How do we know the woman was really sick?  How do we know the locals just didn't nail up a couple crosses and set St. Helena up from the get-go?  And then all of the saintly relics from St. Stephen's toe to St. Patrick's eyeball, it's all a bunch of hooey and scams within scams.  St. Helena also brought back alleged pieces of Jesus' tunic and pieces of the rope that tied him to the Cross.  Again, it was THREE HUNDRED years after the fact that they "found" all of these things. There was no chain of provenance for any of these materials, and zero accounts that the apostles or early Christians thought to preserve Jesus' cross in any way, so I call bullshit. But by all means, if somebody needs to see a piece of wood to believe the story is true, I see the value - however if you put all the pieces of the "True Cross" out there together, I bet you could build at least 17 crosses from them.  For more storytelling fun, look up "The Golden Legend" which traces the wood for the cross from the Tree of Knowledge in the garden of Eden through Moses' rod and a bridge that the Queen of Sheba walked over.  Again, it's a story that is on some level not believable in any way. 

And this is what the Christian religion is based on, in the end, a bunch of stories that got corrupted over the years by people who were all looking to make a buck.  When you start to pick the stories apart you may come to realize, as I have, that it's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors that's based on constantly shifting sands.  No logic or facts are actually involved, just people at different times in history who all thought they could enhance the stories by putting their spins on them - so Jesus Christ is no different from Batman or Spider-Man, a whole host of storytellers has been working over the years to shape the character's story for the best possible reception among the current populace. OK, end of Easter rant. 

We do believe that Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, was a real person, who lived in the first century, originally as a Pharisee who participated in the persecution of early Christians, in the area around Jerusalem.  And we're told he had some kind of revelatory experience while traveling on the road to Damascus, during which he saw a very bright, blinding light and heard the voice of the risen Jesus. We can never really know what he saw or heard, again it's one of those situations where proof would deny faith, so it's up to you whether you want to take Saul/Paul at his word.  But he was blinded by the light and had his sight restored three days later by Ananias of Damascus (or, you could posit that he accidentally stared into the sun, the loss of sight was temporary, and his eyes just got better...) but this led to him being baptized, proclaiming that Jesus was the Son of God, and then making countless journeys to spread the Good News to communities in Asia Minor, Greece, Syria, Macedonia, etc.  

Don't forget, he also wrote "letters" to the Corinthians, though history is unclear on whether they ever wrote back.  (Eddie Izzard did a very great comedy routine on this back in the day...). Look, I"m not saying he didn't do good or important work, clearly he did, like bringing financial support from Antioch to Judea during a famine in 45 AD.  And he preached the Gospel, which does have some positive messages, to communities all around the Mediterranean - the guy got around and had an impact on the world, and I'll wager we've got more proof of his good work than we do for Jesus' miracles. (That loaves & fishes thing, it turns out a lot of people in the crowd brought their own lunch...). But I'm also skeptical of any missionary work, because like everything else, charity comes at a price.  Missionaries go from HERE to THERE to not just bring financial support, but also to convert more people to THEIR religion - so there's an agenda there as well, and more converts means more money, nobody does anything for free, after all. So even with good intent, missionary work is also part of the bigger pyramid scheme.  (What would be funny to me would be learning how the investment scheme worked that funded the ACTUAL pyramids.  I bet that was a scam, too.)

Oh, right, the movie - Luke, before he was Saint Luke, was a physician from Antioch and an apostle of Jesus. He wrote like 1/4 of the New Testament, including the Acts of the Apostles, which is how we know so much about Saul/Paul.  Here he travels to Rome to visit Paul in prison and get his story down in case anybody should want to write a best-selling book someday.  But when the prefect of the prision, Mauritius, discovers Luke he has him imprisoned, too, because he believes they're plotting an uprising to free Paul from prison.  

But the prefect also has a dying daughter, and none of the usual sacrifices to the Roman gods seem to be helping her.  His wife suggests asking Paul for help, and Paul recommends Luke, the DOCTOR.  To get the medical supplies that Luke needs to help the prefect's daughter, the prefect needs to know where the underground Christian community is hiding in Rome.  Luke, as a DOCTOR, saves the life of the prefect's daughter (see, it's technically not a miracle, as magic is just science that we don't understand yet...) and Luke is released but Paul is executed anyway, because Nero demands it.  Also a bunch of Christians are brought to the "circus" and fed to the lions, so yeah, this doesn't really feel like a win here, but hey, that's Rome for you. They'll chop your friend's head off and make you say "Thanks" for the effort. 

This is, however, a solid reminder that Christianity was once the LESSER of the religions, for many years it took a back seat while the Roman Empire officially still had their "pagan" pantheon to believe in.  But through missionary work, all that letter-writing and the constant telling and re-telling (and enhancing) of the Bible stories, it took hold and in the last two thousand years a lot of people have spread the Good News and lined their pockets at the same time.  About one-third of the global population identifies as Christian and it's the majority religion in over 150 countries.  How does it stay on top?  Simply by claiming, as all religions do, that it's the "one true religion" - which is a bit funny, because they can't all be that, right?  And then it's really funny/not-funny to me when the evangelical Christians decry that all the Buddhists and Muslims are pagan and wrong and evil, because they've clearly forgotten that there was a time when their religion was the upstart and the underdog, also that nothing lasts forever, not even this, so it's at best short-sighted to think that this was always The Way and always will be The Way.  Anyway, as I said before, nobody listens to me and by the time everyone figures out the truth, it's going to be too late. So Happy Easter, I guess. 

Also starring Jim Caviezel (last seen in "The Ballad of Lefty Brown"), Olivier Martinez (last seen in "Taking Lives"), Joanne Whalley, John Lynch (last seen in "In the Name of the Father"), Yorgos Karamihos (last seen in "Ben-Hur" (2016)), Antonia Campbell-Hughes (last seen in "Under the Skin"), Alessandro Sperduti, Alexandra Vino (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Manuel Cauchi (last seen in "13 Hours"), Husam Chadat (ditto), Noah Huntley (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Kenneth Spiteri (last seen in "Risen"), Anthony Edridge, André Agius, Henry Holland, Daryl Luke Vassallo, Vladislav Ilich, Mario Opinato (last seen in "The Promise"), Nora Jolie Eckermann.

RATING: 4 out of 10 Roman candles (umm, it's not what you think)