Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You

Year 15, Day 119 - 4/29/23 - Movie #4,420

BEFORE: I'm working a long shift today at the theater - it's thesis presentation weekend for the film students.  There will be about five hours of screening, followed by a party in the lobby that might go on for an hour or two, and then the clean-up.  I may get home early on Sunday morning, so this post may be late in delivery.  And then I'll probably be too exhausted to start on my Sunday movie, so I'll have to squeeze that one in on Sunday afternoon, and pull a double shift on movie-watching.  Whatever I have to do to stay on track, because I can't be late with my Mother's Day movies, now, can I?

George W. Bush carries over again from "The Queen of Versailles". 

THE PLOT: A look at the life, work and political activism of one of the most successful television producers of all time, Norman Lear. 

AFTER: Yeah, it's 2 am on Sunday and I'm finally getting a chance to write something about this documentary, then I think it will be bedtime.  Just four docs left in the DocBlock before I move back to fiction films in early May.  I recorded this doc about Norman Lear from PBS, where it ran as part of their "American Masters" series - but something strange happened, there are 8 or 9 actors who are listed on IMDB as being in this doc, but I didn't see them - I even fast-forwarded through the whole film a second time to see if maybe I just missed them.  Nope, they're not there, but based on who they are, I'm thinking that PBS may have done some editing, and cut out about 3 or 4 minutes of footage that was there to promote those weird "live" remade versions of "All in the Family", "Diff'rent Strokes" and "The Facts of Life" that aired on network TV a few years back.  Anyway, those actors (Todd Bridges, Kim Fields, Charlotte Rae et. al.) were simply NOT in the version PBS aired, so I've removed them from my cast list below.  

Now, when this doc was first released, Norman Lear was a spry 93 years old - but he's now reached the century mark (born July 27, 1922) and I hope I'm not jinxing him by watching this doc during his big 100th year. Norman Lear was born in New Haven CT, but his family was living in Chelsea, MA when his father went to jail for selling fake bonds. Lear went to high school in Brooklyn, NY but then attended Emerson College in Boston. He dropped out in 1942 to join the U.S. Army Air Forces. He served on a bomber in the Mediterranean, and when he talked about bombing Germany you can tell he kind of regrets it.  Hey, maybe he dropped bombs on Dresden, when Kurt Vonnegut was there, wouldn't that be kind of weird? 

Of course, the movie skips ahead to the important stuff - being the producer of "All in the Family" a sitcom that was so controversial in themes of race and bigotry that it was preceded with a content warning when it first aired.  "Sanford and Son" was another production of his that was all about race - and then came the spin-offs, "Maude", "The Jeffersons" and "Good Times", all shot before live studio audiences and touching on the controversial issues of the day, like equal rights and abortion.  

I didn't know that Lear basically retired from television in the 1980's, partly to create an organization to counter-act the Christian right-wing group called Moral Majority, which was working in the political arena to influence the U.S. government, even though we're SUPPOSED to have a distinct separation between church and state.  The M.M. believed that their religion was better than all the others (don't they all?) but they used their money and influence to promote the Christian agenda over all others, including Judaism and Islam. Lear only dabbled in TV production for many years, but came back strong in 2017 with a Hispanic reboot of his old show "One Day at a Time".  I guess I didn't have a copy of this doc back last year when I watched "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It", but I think Lear was featured prominently in that one, too, because Ms. Moreno appeared in that reboot. 

Of course, Lear worked with all sorts of people during his almost 70-year career in TV. In the 1950's he worked on shows featuring Martha Raye and Tennessee Ernie Ford, then hooked up with Martin and Lewis for a while, then made a Western called "The Deputy" starring Henry Fonda and produced two features starring Dick Van Dyke ("Divorce American Style" and "Cold Turkey") before he revolutionized the sit-com format in the 1970's and devoted his life to social change through comedy.  Not bad for a Jewish kid from Connecticut. 

Mel Brooks shows up here, too - and he does that bit about Jewish people singing "Dancing in the Dark" and starting too high, which might be funny if I hadn't seen him do this same routine in at least THREE other documentaries...jeez, get some new material. 

I'd write more but my brain is fried - I've got to hit the sack and then start fresh tomorrow morning, or more likely, afternoon. 

Also starring Norman Lear (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Carl Reiner (ditto), Rob Reiner (ditto), John Amos (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Mel Brooks (last seen in "Mel Brooks: Unwrapped"), George Clooney (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Ben Lear, Kate Lear, Lyn Davis Lear, Bill Moyers (last seen in "Running With Beto"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Phil Rosenthal, Russell Simmons, Jon Stewart (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Bud Yorkin. 

with archive footage of Judd Apatow, Bea Arthur (also last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Rue McClanahan (ditto), Hermione Baddeley, Adrienne Barbeau, Bob Barker, Paul Benedict (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Dean Martin (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Father Coughlin, Phil Donahue (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Lena Dunham (last heard in "My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea"), Jerry Falwell (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Sally Field (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Tennessee Ernie Ford, Marla Gibbs (last seen in "Please Stand By"), George Gobel, Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Sherman Hemsley, Bob Hope (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Robin Williams (ditto), Louise Lasser (last seen in "Adrienne"), Frances Lear, Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Bill Macy, Bob Newhart (also last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Richard Nixon (also last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Carroll O'Connor (last seen in "Sammy Davis: I've Gotta Be Me"), Isabel Sanford (ditto), Jean Stapleton (ditto), Sally Struthers (ditto), Esther Rolle, Jimmie Walker, Mike Wallace (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?").

RATING: 6 out of 10 Emmy awards

The Queen of Versailles

Year 15, Day 118 - 4/28/23 - Movie #4,419

BEFORE: I've got five documentaries left after this one, and as I predicted, the docs have really shaken up the stats for the most appearances of the year.  Richard Nixon has come out of nowhere to tie Robert De Niro for the lead, they've both got 8 appearances.  That's what I get for watching so many docs set during the 1970's, like "Attica" and "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" and also docs about politics, like "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists" and "Where's My Roy Cohn?".  Presidents are always cheap cutaways during documentaries, so they tend to do well in my counts.  Case in point - George W. Bush carries over today from "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time". 

Currently tied for second, with 6 appearances each, are Bill Clinton, Walter Cronkite and MLK. Next with 5 appearances each are Muhammad Ali, Dale Dickey, Sean Penn, Anya Taylor-Joy and Malcolm X. Too many people with 4 appearances to mention them all, but thanks to my focus on Black History in April, Arthur Ashe, Sammy Davis Jr., Spike Lee, Barack Obama and Jackie Robinson are all on the board. 

THE PLOT: A documentary that follows a billionaire couple as they begin construction on a mansion inspired by Versailles. Over the next two years, their empire, fueled by the real estate bubble, falters due to the economic crisis. 

AFTER: This is a film that confirms what we've long suspected - that being rich doesn't make you classy, there are garbage humans at all income levels, it seems.  In 2008 David Siegel and his trophy wife Jackie were riding high due to his successful Westgate Resorts time-share business.  They were so wealthy that they set out to build the largest single-family private home in the country on one of their many plots of land, instead of just putting up another timeshare resort.  John Oliver's HBO show did a scathing segment just a couple weeks ago about what an enormous scam the time-share industry is, how they use manipulative tactics to get people to sign up, how they then make it nearly impossible for the buyers to even spend time at the property they co-own, and how they don't allow the buyers to sell back their properties, EVER, and instead force them to be handed down to the next generation as part of the buyers' estates, so their children then are on the hook for the monthly payments for the rest of THEIR lives. 

I guess this makes sense, I mean, you want to believe that if you die owning property, that property is going to then belong to your children or other heirs, unless they're in default, but your kids can always just SELL that property, they don't HAVE to live there and take care of it for you, anyway, you won't really care, you'll be dead, but with the timeshare space your children only own a PART of the property, like two weeks out of the year, and so maybe it's fine that someone inherits the time-share, but they should be given the chance to sell back their share, if they're not into the vacation resorts thing, or they wisely don't ever want to go to Florida. But instead it's like the old Wheel of Fortune prize showcases, once you buy something, it's yours to keep, even if you spin "Bankrupt" on the wheel later on. 

So the real estate bubble burst - because that's what bubbles do.  If you've got a piece of property and the value's going up, you can take comfort in knowing that your house or condo is worth more now than it was when you bought it.  But to take advantage of that increase in value, you have to sell it, and now you don't have it.  So, umm, where will you live then?  I still feel like I pulled off a fast one back in 2004, when I sold my Brooklyn condo for FOUR times the price it was when I bought it in 1993 for $105K.  (There was still $85K due on the mortgage, so I had to first pay off the bank with part of the $420K I got when I sold it.). We borrowed a quick $10K from my parents to cover the down payment on a house, then after the sale paid back my parents, covered legal fees, points, moving expenses and new furniture, and that left $280K to put toward the new house, which coincidentally also cost $420K.  Still had to get a mortgage for the difference, but overall we went from owning 2/5 of a small condo to owning 2/3 of a three-story house.  If I never make another real-estate deal in my life, I'll be happy with that one. 

Now I feel like I'm in the same spot, though - according to NYC's assessment, the house is worth twice as much as it was when we bought it almost 20 years ago, but that's phantom money.  We'd have to sell the house to get that money and then, umm, where would we live?  But I can see that it's easy to think you're richer than you are once you start calculating the potential value of the house you're sitting in.  But then, you're only rich on paper, not in the real world, and we have to live in the real world. And if that bubble bursts, all bets are off, and all plans go out the window.  We kept hearing in 2003 that the bubble was going to burst, so we sold in 2004, and I think the bubble DID burst a couple years later.  That made me feel like somebody who got off the Titanic before the iceberg hit.

The Siegels were caught in the "rich on paper" trap when the U.S. economy declined in 2008 - remember that the whole thing started with real estate, cheap credit and lax lending standards, and banks were holding trillions of dollars of worthless investments thanks to subprime mortgages.  So then the banks needed a bailout, but who told them to invest in such shitty properties in the first place?   Who made them loan money to people who couldn't pay it back?  OK, a few people maybe can be in default, but if everybody's in default, then can take down a whole bank, or a series of banks. And then people can't get their money, so they can't keep their houses, so more evictions, more foreclosures, more layoffs, more unemployment.  By then we're in the dark spiral of a recession, and the government has to step in, bailout the banks, facilitate a few mergers and basically stimulate economic growth again.  And who's to say it won't happen again?  Like, maybe next month?

The film took a look at the big by focusing on the small - one family whose income all came from the timeshare industry, and when people suddenly had no spare money to invest in the properties, there was no money coming in.  This was probably a bad time for them to start building the largest house in the country.  They had to move to the BACK-UP mansion, and look for other sources of income, like renting out their Rolls-Royce for weddings, and allowing one of their 27 nannies to move in to their daughter's abandoned playhouse.  It's a bit odd, but this topic kind of carries over from yesterday's Kurt Vonnegut doc - as a teen Kurt remembers that his family lost their house during the Great Depression, and they also had to move to a smaller house. 

The moral of the story is, to me, "Don't have kids."  Kids are expensive, and you become responsible for them, you can't just leave them in the house you can't afford, you HAVE to bring them with you to the new place, legally, and then they're going to keep eating and getting sick and growing out of their clothes, what's the point?  And then even if you take care of them for 17 or 18 years and they're still alive, it's time to pay for their college?  Like, how do you even WIN that game?  It's best to not start playing it in the first place, I think. Vonnegut had three kids and then adopted his late sister's four sons - that's SEVEN kids to feed on a writer's salary.  No thanks.

The Siegels have a lot of kids, too - and being deep in debt didn't seem to keep them from splurging on Christmas presents, or buying a bunch of pets that their kids would neglect and forget to feed, or going on thrift-shop binges for a whole bunch of crap that they didn't even need.  Clearly there's some obsessive behavior going on - I had an aunt who bought a lot of books when the local library had sales, but she would buy like THREE copies of the same book.  Why?  They were identical, and even if you read one, then you don't need the other two!  Jackie also seemed to keep collecting furs and getting botox and obviously spending money they didn't have, but never once considering maybe getting a job to help pay some bills?  

This stuff drives me crazy - I work for an independent filmmaker, and quite often, money is very tight.  But never, ever have I seen him sit down, figure out the minimum costs per month to keep his business running, and then set that as an income target for that month.  If you don't do this, you could easily be running at a loss every month, and at that point, it's only a certain number of months before you're so deep in debt, you can't climb out of it.  Look, if you own a restaurant, you've got food costs, utilities, staff, rent, and maybe some local publicity, and you need to add that all up to calculate your monthly cost of doing business.  It's good to know how much money you need to take in each month to reach your "break even" point, and if you're not hitting it, then you either need to take steps to fix that, or just shut the joint down. You can pay bills at random, but if you're not watching the bottom line then basically you're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and it's still going down, no matter what. 

Meanwhile, the tensions are running high in the marriage if there's no definite solution to their financial problems.  And it's nerve-wracking to watch, because we can sit at home and watch the movie and think, "Why not just SELL the property?"  "Why not just GET A JOB?"  "Why not just STOP BUYING THINGS YOU DON'T NEED?"  They can't stop, they're too far gone. Let's face it, you can't win, if you have some money and buy a house, now you have a house to care for, and that costs money, so you need more.  So you get a better job, but you need to dress better or get a new wardrobe for it, and that costs money.  Even if you start taking in more money than you're spending, you'll either find something new to spend it on, like a vacation or another car, or you'll save some money, but then get taxed on it.  Yeah, it's not looking good, whoever set up this whole furshlugginer economic system ought to be taken out and shot.  Roy Cohn only won because he died owing millions in taxes that he didn't pay, only he's too dead to enjoy it.

How long HAS this film been on my list?  It was released in 2012, but I don't think I became aware of it until a few years later, so let's say maybe I've been trying to get to it for five, maybe six years?  It was very, very hard for me to link to it, until I sort of pre-scanned through it and realized who appears in the archive footage - good ol' Dubya himself.  OK, I figured I could probably work with that and finally FINALLY get this one scratched off the list.  I took so long to watch this one that apparently there is now a SEQUEL TV series coming to Discovery, called "Queen of Versailles Reigns Again".  This is not a commercial (although I kind of wish it were) - I'm not getting paid anything to promote this new show.  (What is the opposite of an "influencer"?  Whatever it is, that's me.). It looks like the Siegel's hung on to their dream house through thick and thin, they never sold Versailles on the cheap just to make ends meet, and just maybe they finished building it and decorating it, against all practical advice.  Well, I guess some people will just never learn.  You can watch the show, but I don't think I have the stomach for it.

Also starring David Siegel, Jaqueline Siegel, Richard Siegel, Victoria Siegel, Lorraine Barrett, June Downs, Phillip Froelich, Marissa Gaspay, Tina Martinez, Virginia Nebab, Jonquil Peed, Wendy Ponce, Katie Stam, Terry Vaughn, Cliff Wright, Alyse Zwick

with archive footage of William Baldwin (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale"), Laura Bush (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Dick Cheney (also carrying over from "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Katie Couric (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Alan Greenspan, Rudy Giuliani (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Paris Hilton (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Steve Kroft (last seen in "Sheryl"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Eraser"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Fire With Fire"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 different kitchens

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

Year 15, Day 117 - 4/27/23 - Movie #4,418

BEFORE: OK, this is a relatively new documentary, it came out in 2021 - but I've been eagerly anticipating this one, so as soon as I found out it was streaming on Hulu, I told myself that I just HAD to work it into this year's Doc Block. Why?

Because, like many other people, I'm a big Vonnegut fan - I discovered his books in high school when I happened upon "Breakfast of Champions" in the library, devoured it in one sitting, and found that the author's views on life really spoke to me.  Then I read "Slaughterhouse Five" and watched the movie, and after that I had to read every single book Vonnegut ever wrote.  

There's no appearance by Walter Cronkite tonight, but newsman Morley Safer carries over from "Where's My Roy Cohn?".  That'll do. 

THE PLOT: Recounting the extraordinary life of author Kurt Vonnegut and the 25-year friendship with the filmmaker who set out to document it. 

AFTER: This is a film about Kurt Vonnegut, but it's also a film about Robert "Bob" Weide - who discovered Vonnegut's work in high school when he happened upon "Breakfast of Champions" in the library, devoured it in one sitting, and found that the author's views on life really spoke to him.  Then he read "Slaughterhouse Five" and watched the movie, and after that he had to read every single book Vonnegut ever wrote.  Gee, that sounds kind of familiar...

There are, or were, hopefully still are, millions of Vonnegut fans out there. Really, we should have a convention or something.  VonneCon?  Con-Negut?  I bet there's a fan club you can join, or at least a Facebook or Reddit group. Tumblr? MySpace?  Anyway, if you only know the novels, you only know half the story, really - except that Vonnegut put aspects of his life all over the books.  Still, you may know the books but not the man.  Here I kept thinking that the fictional sci-fi author, Kilgore Trout, who appears in so many Vonnegut books, was a stand-in for the author himself.  Well, yes and no, Vonnegut really based Trout on a struggling sci-fi author named Theodore Sturgeon (he just changed the type of fish) but over time Trout perhaps came to represent Vonnegut himself. 

But really, if any character was based on Vonnegut's own life, it would be Billy Pilgrim, from "Slaughterhouse Five".  Both Pilgrim and Vonnegut served in World War II, got captured after the Battle of the Bulge, and were held as prisoners in Dresden, Germany, before the city got bombed by Allied forces.  Vonnegut and his fellow POWs were put to work cleaning up the bodies of German citizens, and one can only imagine the horrors that he witnessed.  When Vonnegut got back to the U.S. after the war, he was determined to write a book about the horrors of Dresden, but it took him until 1969 to do so.  The book was written over fifteen years and went through almost a hundred drafts - and this was in the days BEFORE word processing, when an author just used a typewriter!  

But just after getting back from WWII, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high-school girlfriend, and enrolled via the G.I. Bill in the University of Chicago, where he studied anthropology and also worked as a reporter for the City News Bureau at night. Jane had a scholarship to study Russian literature, but dropped out when she became pregnant. (Kurt left the university without completing his master's thesis, but 25 years later, the school accepted his novel "Cat's Cradle" in place of his thesis, and conferred his degree.). Vonnegut worked for General Electric research labs in Schenectady, New York, but after he started getting stories published in Collier's magazine, he quit the G.E. job to become an author full time. His first novel, "Player Piano" drew attention when it was favorably compared to "Brave New World". 

More novels came, but they took him time to write.  Thankfully he could write short stories much quicker, but by then Kurt and his wife had three children, and had moved to Barnstable, MA where Kurt opened up a Saab dealership.  The cars didn't sell well, and the company went bankrupt, but at least being alone in a car dealership around the clock gave him plenty of time to write.  In 1958 Kurt's sister, Alice, died of cancer three days after her husband died in a train accident, and Kurt and his wife took in all four of their teenage sons. This made for a large, chaotic family life, raising seven children, which made it more difficult for him to write, but it also gave him more motivation to be successful at it.  "The Sirens of Titan" and "Mother Night" were the result, then came "Cat's Cradle" in 1963. After one more book, though, Vonnegut abandoned his writing career and took a teaching job at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa to sustain his family. 

Working at the University allowed him not just money, but also time to get back into writing. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967, and used the money to travel back to Dresden and get back on track writing that novel about World War II.  If you're not familiar with the story, it's told in non-linear fashion, as the main character, Billy Pilgrim, gets abducted by aliens later in life and is placed in a Tramalfadorian space zoo with a porn star named Montana Wildhack, and at some point the aliens grant him the ability to time-travel within his own lifetime, and he becomes "unstuck in time", and the three timelines of past, present and future play out to the audience in pieces.  Yes, I've railed against non-linear storytelling many times in this blog, but I make allowances for authors who really know how to do it - Vonnegut and Tarantino, and very VERY few others. 

More successes came for Vonnegut after that, he lectured at Harvard and taught at City College of New York, got several honorary degrees and was elected vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.  He got an apartment in New York and moved there in 1971 to produce a play he wrote, named "Happy Birthday, Wanda June", then fell in love with a photographer in NYC and decided not to go back home to Iowa. It happens, I guess - or as Vonnegut would say, "And so it goes..."  His wife had found religion, and Kurt saw himself as more of an agnostic, so after a few rounds of fighting they got divorced but remained friends. On the literary front, Vonnegut released "Breakfast of Champions" but not everybody understood his new simplistic writing (and illustrating) style - to some, it seemed like he had given up on storytelling altogether. 

Vonnegut married that photographer, Jill Krementz, in 1979, and they adopted a baby daughter, and he enjoyed another round of successful books in the 1980s, like "Deadeye Dick", "Galapagos", "Bluebeard" and "Hocus Pocus".  But he also struggled with depression and attempted suicide. Then came his cameo appearance in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy "Back to School", and a new generation started learning who Vonnegut was.  

Oh, right, Bob Weide, I said this film was also about Bob Weide, who started interviewing Vonnegut back in 1982 or so, he started to make a documentary about him but then got busy doing other things, then he re-connected with Vonnegut some years later and started it up again, shelved it again, then found himself hired to adapt Kurt's novel "Mother Night" into a movie and this put him BACK in touch with Vonnegut, who did a cameo in the movie.  This inspired Weide to shoot MORE footage for the documentary, but then he got hired to direct episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and shelved it again. Weide appears here on camera to explain to the audience why it took 40 years, overall, to finish the film.  I think maybe just Weide liked hanging out with his favorite author for 25 years, and then finishing a documentary was an added bonus. 

Normally I HATE when a director speaks to the audience to explain why a film was made a certain way, but I can see how maybe here he didn't have much choice - much like the director of "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary" which I watched last year - sometimes there's no choice, the viewers need to know WHY the film was made this way, and jumps around so much, or why things seem to be as disjointed as they are, because this was the only way to complete the film. Weide and Vonnegut ended up becoming members of each other's "extended families", so as with other non-linear storytelling techniques, I'll make allowances tonight for it - just don't let it happen again. 

Also starring Kurt Vonnegut Jr., (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions") Jim Adams, Steve Adams, Kurt “Tiger” Adams, Peter Adams, Joel Bleifus, John Irving, Jerome Klinkowitz, Sidney Offit, Dan Simon, Valerie Stevenson, Ginger Strand, Gregory Sumner, David Ulin, Dan Wakefield, Bernard Vonnegut, Edie Vonnegut, Mark Vonnegut, Nanny Vonnegut, Sam Waterston (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Robert B. Weide,

with archive footage of David Bowie (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), George W. Bush (last seen in "Running With Beto"), Dick Cheney (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "The One and Only Ivan"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Zappa"), Rodney Dangerfield (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Larry David (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Jeff Garlin (ditto), Cheryl Hines (ditto), E.L. Doctorow, Peter Fonda (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Charlie Gibson (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Keith Gordon (last seen in "Christine"), Oliver Hardy (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Stan Laurel (ditto), Bruce Jenner, Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Jane Kaczmarek (last seen in "CHIPS"), Jill Krementz, Ron Leibman (last seen in "The Hot Rock"), Norman Mailer (also carrying over from "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Chico Marx (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Groucho Marx (ditto), Harpo Marx (ditto), Zeppo Marx, Nick Nolte (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), George Plimpton (last seen in "When We Were Kings"), Colin Powell (last seen in "The Automat"), Harry Reasoner (last seen in "Attica"), Eugene Roche (last seen in "The Late Show"), Michael Sacks (last seen in "The Sugarland Express"), O.J. Simpson (last seen in "Tina"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "Sheryl"), John Updike, Linda Bates Weide, Burt Young (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America").

RATING: 7 out of 10 short fiction anthologies

Where's My Roy Cohn?

Year 15, Day 116 - 4/26/23 - Movie #4,417

BEFORE:The title of this documentary comes from something that Donald Trump reportedly said to his attorney general, Jeff Sessions (remember him?) when Trump learned that Sessions was going to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation of the Trump campaign's possible involvement in the Russian plan to interfere with the 2016 election (remember that?).  I guess it was a dig at Sessions, Trump wanted him to be more like Roy Cohn, and I guess, stand up for Trump and not investigate him at all?  Not really sure, but perhaps I'll get some understanding by watching the film. 

Walter Cronkite carries over again from "Attica". 

THE PLOT: Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues, from Joseph McCarthy to his final project, Donald Trump

AFTER: I feel like maybe I missed something, I just watched this whole documentary about Roy Cohn, and I still have no idea what he DID.  For a living - lawyer? Politician? Influencer?  Jeez, could you guys have maybe dumbed it down for me a bit?  At least with a tennis player like McEnroe or Arthur Ashe you can say "He won Wimbledon" and I'll know what that means, or you can say, "Muhammad Ali beat George Foreman to become the heavyweight champion again" and I'll GET IT.  But I still have no idea what Roy Cohn did on a daily basis, or what made him so important that somebody decided to make a documentary about him. Did I fall asleep?  Again?

Oh, right, the Rosenbergs.  He was a D.O.J. prosecutor in the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were found guilty and then executed.  So there's that.  There's apparently some controversy about how the trial all went down, and some people are now saying there was prosecutorial misconduct, and maybe the Rosenbergs should not have been executed - Alan Dershowitz's take on the case was that they were both guilty, and framed. 

Then Cohn had a role in Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist hearings - this was the big Red Scare in the 1950's, and McCarthy hired Cohn on the recommendation of J. Edgar Hoover. (Nope, no red flags there, not a one.). Then apparently there was something called the "Lavender Scare", where Cohn and McCarthy claimed that Soviet intelligence agents had blackmailed U.S. Government employees into committing espionage in return for not exposing their homosexuality.  And somehow, Roy Cohn knew just where to find all the gay government employees.  Cohn was later in trouble for getting his "very close friend" David Schine special treatment to keep him from being drafted in 1953.

Cohn then left the political swamp of Washington DC for a career as an attorney in NYC, where his clients included Donald Trump, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Mafia bosses like Tony Salerno, John Gotti and Mario Gigante, Steve Rubell (owner of Studio 54) and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.  And if you start singing the song about how "One of these things is not like the others", you're way off base - we now know the Roman Catholics are just as bad as all the rest of the scum and villainy that made up Cohn's clientele.  Cohn rapidly built up a career filled with accusations of theft, obstruction, extortion, bribery, tax evasion, blackmail, fraud, perjury and witness tampering.  Meanwhile he had an active social life, most likely at Studio 54, and Barbara Walters was his "beard". 

Cohn defended Trump in 1973 when he was accused of violating the Fair Housing Act on 39 different properties.  I'm sure it was all just a misunderstanding, though. Trump's corporation apparently quoted different rental terms and conditions to African-Americans, pulling the old "no vacancy" scam when they saw the color of the applicant's skin.  Yeah, that tracks. As part of a settlement in 1975, Trump Corp. was required to send a list of rental vacancies on a bi-weekly bases to the New York Urban League, but three years later they were back in court for not doing that. Cohn also got involved with the construction of Trump Tower, which somehow managed to be built with concrete during a city-wide Teamster strike, so it's possible that organized crime was somehow involved. YA THINK?

Cohn went on to help get Ronald Reagan elected by arranging the success of third-party candidate John Anderson, who somehow got the Liberal Party endorsement and drew enough votes from Jimmy Carter for Reagan to seal the deal in the Electoral College. Cohn worked with Alan Dershowitz on the Claus Von Bulow trial, was friends with CIA director William Casey, and in what was probably a "quid pro quo", then got Reagan to help further the interests of Rupert Murdoch, and we all know how great THAT has turned out for the country. So if there was anything really bad or evil or legally questionable in the 1960's through 1980's, it seems like Roy Cohn was somehow involved - he was like the Forrest Gump of political malfeasance. 

Cohn also denied his homosexuality in public, despite having close associations with J. Edgar Hoover (gay), Cardinal Spellman (probably gay) and McCarthy consultant David Schine (totally over-the-top gay).  Cohn denied being gay right up until he died from AIDS in 1986 - well, it's not a total tip-off, Arthur Ashe wasn't gay, but then again, Roy Cohn never had heart surgery and several blood transfusions.  Roger Stone once cleared the whole thing up in a New Yorker article by saying "Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men." Oh, sure, that clears everything up, it's so simple.  Roy was directly involved with getting hundreds of gay men fired from the U.S. government, some of whom then committed suicide, so I don't know what that says about Roy Cohn, he was either in deep denial or he hated himself on a very deep level.

Cohn's goal was to "die completely broke, owing millions to the IRS". Mission accomplished.  They gave him a square on the AIDS Memorial Quilt that reads "Roy Cohn. Bully. Coward. Victim." and I'm not sure how we're supposed to reconcile all of those things in one man. Another writer described him as a lawyer who hated lawyers, a Jewish person who hated Jewish people, and a gay person who hated gay people.  Well, maybe that does clear everything up.  But was he so screwed up that he had to screw up the whole country while he worked this stuff out?  Cohn was, after all, the guy who introduced Donald Trump to Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, the people who helped get him elected.  Thanks, Roy Cohn, and EFF YOU while I'm at it. 

Also starring Ken Auletta, Marie Brenner, Robert Cohen, Thomas Doherty, Joseph Epstein, David Cay Johnston, Elizabeth Kabler, Martin London, David Marcus, Gary Marcus, Sam Roberts, Anne Roiphe, David Rosenthal, Roger Stone, Peter Sudler, John Vassallo, Adam Wallace, Jim Zirin, 

with archive footage of Roy Cohn, John Anderson, Bill Boggs (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), William F. Buckley, Thomas Eagleton, Geraldine Ferraro, Carmine Galante, John Gotti (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), J. Edgar Hoover (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Larry King (last seen in "Val"), Ed Koch (last seen in "Barry"), Norman Mailer (last seen in "When We Were Kings"), Joseph McCarthy, Robert Morgenthau, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Nixon (also carrying over from "Attica"), Nancy Reagan (also last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Franklin Roosevelt (last seen in "Walt & El Grupo"), Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, Steve Rubell, Morley Safer (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Mike Wallace (ditto), Anthony Salerno, G. David Schine, Liz Smith (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Julia"), George Steinbrenner, Harry Truman (last seen in "The Good German"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Fred Trump (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Gore Vidal (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Barbara Walters (last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night")

RATING: 4 out of 10 character witnesses

Attica

Year 15, Day 115 - 4/25/23 - Movie #4,416

BEFORE: It's very difficult for me to concentrate lately, because I did apply for a new job, and that seems to be all that I can focus on, waiting to hear if I'm going to get an interview or not.  I don't want to say too much about it and jinx it, but I did tell a few friends and co-workers about it, just to give them a heads-up - also I called in a few favors for some references and recommendations, which is very unlike me, usually I'd just sit and stew in silence, desperately hoping.  But I really want the new gig, I've got to start making some moves in my career before it's too late - so I think that's worth calling in a few favors from people with connections.  Cross your fingers for me - but it might take weeks before anyone contacts me for an interview, or maybe they won't call me at all, it's tough to say. 

Walter Cronkite carries over again from "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper" - and I'm sticking with news events of 1971.  

THE PLOT: This unnervingly vivid dive into the 1971 uprising sheds new light on the enduring violence and racism of the prison system and highlights the urgent, ongoing need for reform 50 years later. 

AFTER: Well, if you're not having a great day, if you're frustrated with your job(s) or your relationship isn't going well, or you just feel overall depressed regarding your place in the world, this is the kind of film that can really help you find some perspective - because at least you weren't involved in a prison riot today.  Heck, at least you're not in prison, that's something right there.  My chances of getting shanked or beaten by the guards or shot by a SWAT team trying to regain control of the prison yard were essentially zero, and I'm thankful for that, really. 

And if you think the prison system in this country suffers from systemic racism, just imagine how bad things were back in 1971, even in a prison in upstate New York, a very liberal state overall, but once you go upstate or out on Long Island, really, all bets are kind of off.  I mean, even the prison system in New York City is inherently racist, even now, so it's probably terrible out in the suburbs and more rural areas.  

So when the Attica Prison Riot (or Rebellion, or Uprising, or Massacre, depending on who you ask) took place, it was a (mostly) black group of inmates against a (mostly, if not all) white group of prison guards - there was inspiration drawn from the Black Panther movement, and other Civil Rights groups when the inmates rose up and took over the entire complex.  They were seeking better living conditions and political rights, and they weren't wrong, because I think at the time people in prison couldn't vote, and were at the mercy of very violent (and usually racist) guards. 

Over 1,200 of the 2,200 incarcerated men rioted and took control of the prison - which means that what, 1,000 guys just stayed in their cells and didn't want any trouble?  I'm not sure that was an option for anyone at the time, because taking 42 staff members hostage meant that nobody was in charge of running the prison, so that meant nobody supervised the meals, and eventually the inmates were going to run out of food - it's a wonder that they lasted four days of chaos and nobody cooking things, plus no water, which meant that the inmates had to dig latrines in the yard and endure miserable conditions - yet everyone still wanted to sleep outside, because they hadn't done anything like that in so long.  It's funny what you miss when you don't have your freedom, I guess. (I hate camping, so it probably would take a long prison sentence for me to want to sleep outside.)

Four days of negotiations proved fruitless when the authorities agreed to 28 of the prisoners' demands, but NOT to give them amnesty from prosecution for taking over the prison in the first place.  Naturally this is where the sticking point was, because the prisoners feared retaliation from the guards as soon as they surrendered control of the prison back to them - and Governor Rockefeller, the head of the NY State Prison system, and a host of corrections officers and state police weren't going to simply overlook the fact that the inmates had risen up and their actions had apparently led to the death of at least one C.O.  A similar uprising had occurred at the Manhattan Detention Complex the year before, and after an 8-hour hostage situation, the state officials promised not to take punitive action against the rioters - only THEY DID, they broke their promise and had the rioters shipped upstate - to Attica, where several were held for months in solitary confinement.  

In August 1971, a member of the Black Panther Party had been shot and killed while trying to escape from San Quentin prison in California, and the day after his death, 700 Attica inmates took part in a hunger strike in his honor, and it was believed that this led indirectly to the riot.  The prison was entirely on edge, so that a small incident of violence in the recreation year and another bit of confusion over some locked doors may have caused the riot.  The inmates sought media attention fairly quickly after taking control of the prison, and re-presented a list of demands they had made two months before, which had been ignored by the warden and the State Commissioner of Corrections.  A group of reporters and outside observers was let in to the prison to assist with negotiations.

Things fell apart when that guard died in the hospital, and got worse when Gov. Rockefeller refused to visit the prison, and instead authorized the State Police to retake the facility by force, and during that process, which involved hundreds of state troopers, 128 men were shot in the prison, 29 inmates died and nine of the hostages were killed. But initially it was reported that the prisoners had slit the throats of those hostages - that wasn't true, they were killed by gunfire, which meant the police killed innocent hostages, which is incredibly irresponsible and morally wrong in SO many ways. 

Then came the horrible treatment of the surviving prisoners, who were stripped naked and made to crawl on the ground, through the blood and through the latrines, then they were repeatedly beaten as they were brought back to their cells.  Several of the riot's ringleaders were clearly and systematically killed by the guards, even after control of the prison had been regained. This amounted to summary execution, which was blatantly illegal.  Anyone present as observers, such as National Guardsmen assigned to carry out the bodies, was told to never speak of the torture of the inmates they witnessed after the riots. Inmates were treated for wounds received from beatings for many days after the uprising was over. 

Then the investigations and lawsuits began - 62 inmates were charged or indicted within the next four years, and two inmates were convicted for assault and murder for the death of that guard.  But there was no disciplinary action against the state police who killed inmates and hostages while re-taking the prison, although there were reports that the Attica Task Force was covering up evidence of criminal actions by law enforcement.  Five years later, the new governor of New York "closed the book" on Attica by pardoning all inmates who pleaded guilty to get reduced sentences and also dismissed all pending disciplinary actions against the law enforcement officers. Civil suits from inmates, famlies of deceased inmates, prison employees and families of slain prison employees, however, dragged on until 2000 and 2005. 

I'm trying to be generous with my rating tonight - because I learned so much about the incident that I never knew before.  That should be the true test of a documentary, I think - though I'll admit I fell asleep watching this on Monday night, I did finish it on Tuesday morning after I woke up.

Also starring James Asbury, David Brosig, Daniel Callaghan, Tad Crawford, Stewart Dan, John Dunne, Elizabeth Gaynes, Arthur Harrison, Joe Heath, John Johnson, Clarence B. Jones, Lawrence Akil Killebrew, Tyrone Larkins, Dee Quinn Miller, Don Mitzel, George Che Nieves, Carlos Roche, David Rothenberg, Raymond Scott, Herman Schwartz, Alhajji Sharif, Daniel Sheppard, Lewis M. Steel, Ann Valone, Jaime Valone, Maryann Valone, Al Victory, 

with archive footage of L.D. Barkley, John Chancellor (also carrying over from "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper"), Edward Cunningham, John Edland, George Jackson, William Kunstler (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Al Mitzel, John Monahan, Roger Mudd, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Russell Oswald, William Quinn, Dan Rather (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Harry Reasoner, Nelson Rockefeller (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Jerry Rosenberg, Bobby Seale (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Frank Smith, Michael Smith, Carl Valone, Michael Whiteman, Tom Wicker, Malcolm X (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?")

RATING: 6 out of 10 tear gas canisters

The Mystery of D.B. Cooper

Year 15, Day 114 - 4/24/23 - Movie #4,415 

BEFORE: Walter Cronkite carries over from "What Happened, Miss Simone?" So this is a good time to tell you my Walter Cronkite story.  My first got a job working on a documentary about Walter Cronkite, which was being made by a production company run by Walter's son. As such, she was tasked with retrieving certain collectible items from the Cronkite summer house on Martha's Vineyard, so her bosses suggested she drive up there, make a road trip out of it, and so we went on a little mini-vacation and stayed at Walter's place, though he wasn't there at the time. (I did meet him later, at a company party once the documentary was complete.)

Those collectible items that we were sent to pick up from the house included the helmet that Walter wore while reporting from World War II front lines and the little scale model of the Apollo 11 spacecraft that he showed to TV viewers during his broadcast of the moon landing.  Also a bunch of framed portraits that famous artists and fans had made of his likeness over the years.  This must have been in 1994, because I remember we watched a Cleveland Indians baseball game on Walter's TV, and that was the year the World Series ended up getting cancelled due to a strike. 

Walter had been retired since 1981, and he lived until 2009 - I think the documentary series was called "Cronkite Remembers", and it came out in 1997. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper" (Movie #3,868)

THE PLOT: A documentary that looks at the well-known case, which is largely regarded as the greatest unsolved heist in American history. 

AFTER: This documentary might have tried to do TOO much - without, in the end, really accomplishing anything at all.  First off, it had to tell the story of what happened in 1971, when a man who said his name was D.B. Cooper hijacked a plane flying from Oregon to Seattle, told a flight attendant he had a bomb, and demanded $200,000 in cash, plus four parachutes, upon landing in Seattle. He got his money, allowed the passengers to deplane, and then made the flight crew take off again, heading to Mexico City.  But a half-hour into that flight, he opened the plane's rear door and disappeared somewhere over Washington state.  To date, he has never been found or identified.

So, the doc has to tell this story, but it does so in pieces, and in between those pieces, it presents us with four different people who MIGHT have been D.B. Cooper.  I mean, if you can't have one for sure, you might as well have four maybes, right?  But, then, how do we know if any of those people (or, more often, their friends and famiy) are telling the truth?  People might have CLAIMED to be the hijacker just to pad their resumé or impress their friends.  

Look, it's not like the FBI is ever going to have success with this case - it happened over 51 years ago, and they stopped actively investigating it 6 years ago, so I guess their limit is 45 years, if they haven't solved something by then, they just give up?  It's also possible that NONE of the five people who claimed to be D.B. Cooper were that guy - the guy made a blind jump into a heavily wooded area at night, during bad weather, with no knowledge of the area and a parachute that hadn't been checked out.  So he may have not even survived the jump, which might explain why the ransom money was never spent.  Some of the money turned up in a trench that was dug by the Columbia River, but there's no explanation for how that happened. Eventually the kid who found the money in 1980 got to keep some of it, and sold some of the bills in an auction.  

When I finish writing this, I'm going to read up on the D.B. Cooper case on Wikipedia - but the film suggests that the following people COULD have pulled off the hijacking: 

1) Duane Weber, who made a deathbed confession to his wife, Jo Weber, that his name was really "Dan Cooper", and she later learned about the hijacking, found a book on D.B. Cooper in the local library that her husband had written notes in.  Weber also told his wife that he'd buried a bucket, but had forgotten where he buried it.  The case against this one seems to be that Weber might have only WISHED he were Dan Cooper, his memory seemed to be shot, and for that matter, so is his wife's.  They're both unreliable witnesses, and the guy who helps Jo Weber with household chores and her memory seems to know more about the case than anybody else - he might have fed them all this information.  However, the FBI ruled out Duane Weber as a suspect in 1978 because his fingerprints didn't match any in the plane, and his DNA didn't match samples recovered from Cooper's tie.  But his wife did claim she saw him throw a bag of "trash" into the Columbia River in 1979, just upstream from where that money was found in 1980.  

2) Barbara Dayton - OK, this one takes a bit of free thinking, but this couple, Ron and Pat Forman, started hanging out with this woman who was a college librarian and recreational pilot, and they found out that Ms. Dayton had been born a man, Robert Dayton, and was one of the earliest people to undergo gender reassignment surgery.  The Formans got suspicious that Barbara would change the subject any time conversation turned to the D.B. Cooper case, and now they swear that one night when Barbara was wearing dark glasses, she looked exactly like the sketch of D.B. Cooper.  Look, I get it, if you lived in rural Washington in the 1970's there wasn't much to do but go over to your neighbor's houses and drink, then divulge your innermost secrets, or at least your fantasies - but that doesn't mean your transgender neighbor is D.B. Cooper, just because she claimed to be. 

3. L.D. Cooper - ah, this one would seem to make sense, if you believe that all you have to do is change one initial in your name if you need to hide from the law.  But Marla Cooper swears that she remembers the Thanksgiving where her uncle L.D. and another uncle were planning something at her grandmother's house in Oregon, and then the next day Flight 305 got hijacked, and her uncle showed up in a bloody shirt and claimed to have been in an auto accident.  Uncle Lynn Doyle disappeared shortly after that, and Marla's father believed him to be responsibile for the hijacking, and swore her to secrecy - but she broke her silence in 2011, and talked to the FBI about her uncle.  Again, not a DNA match, so the FBI didn't spend much time tracking him down. 

4. Richard Floyd McCoy - some say that this guy was just a copycat of D.B. Cooper, he hijacked a similar plane (with a rear exit) that took off from Denver in 1972, demanded $500,000 and four parachutes in San Francisco, and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten instructions, plus his fingerprints. He got caught two days later with the ransom money and got a 45-year sentence, but escaped from jail with accomplices two years later.  Three months after that, he was tracked down in Virginia Beach and killed in a shootout with FBI agents.  Some people wrote a book claiming that McCoy was also Cooper, so they both died at the same time, which would explain why Cooper has never been found - but the FBI didn't consider McCoy to be a suspect in the Flight 305 hijacking because McCoy was in Las Vegas at the time, and had Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utah the next day. BUT McCoy was an Army veteran, did two tours in Vietnam, was a helicopter pilot with the Green Berets, and later he was in the Utah National Guard and was also a recreational skydiver. 

It's maddening, any one of these people could have been D.B. Cooper - or just as likely, none of them.  Wikipedia mentions a whole bunch of suspects that the film didn't even bother to mention, like Ted Braden, Kenneth Peter Christiansen, Jack Coffelt, William Gossett, Joe Lakich, John List, Ted Mayfield and Robert Rackstraw - and once you start going down this rabbit hole, you may never come out of it with any more clear answers than you had going in.  I'm now going to read the whole Wiki page ONCE and then try to walk away from it. 

What's more disturbing is the enormous pile of letters seen in the FBI's case file - all from people either claiming to be D.B. Cooper or suggesting that their father was D.B. Cooper, because he abandoned their family in 1971 and at least if he were D.B. Cooper, then he would have had a reason beyond the fact that his wife and kids were driving him crazy. There's something very sad about this, people grasping for some form of validation in the theory that maybe their father was a hijacker and not just a shitty parent.  But since we're never going to have a clear answer about who D.B. Cooper was, I'm afraid that validation is never going to come. So those people are ultimately just as clueless about their relatives as the FBI is about who hijacked that plane. 

Also starring Harold Anderson, Ben Anjewierden, Owun Birkett, Peter Caulfield, Tim Collins, Marla Cooper, Billie Dayton, Pat Forman, Ron Forman, Bob Fuhriman, Geoffrey Gray, John Jesper, Tamsyn Kelly, Jefferson King, David Mills (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Bill Mitchell, Edwina Mitrica, Frank Montoya Jr., Tina Mucklow, Nick O'Hara, Hannah Pauley, Sharon Power, Amy Pryke, William Rataczak, Bernie Rhodes, Miles Richardson (last seen in "The Courier"), Rena Ruddell, Emma Samms (last seen in "Delirious"), Bruce Smith, Jerry Thomas, Jo Weber, Anne Wittman (last seen in "Proof") 

with archive footage of David Brinkley (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), John Chancellor (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Savannah Guthrie (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), L.D. Cooper, Barbara Dayton, Brian Ingram, Richard Floyd McCoy, Duane Weber, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 Raleigh filter-tipped cigarette butts (remember when you could smoke on a plane?)

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Year 15, Day 113 - 4/23/23 - Movie #4,414

BEFORE: OK, today's film is going to wrap up the Black History part of the chain - I know, I know, it wasn't a full month.  But I only had so many documentaries that would link up with each other - I'll try to do better next time. I remember hearing good things about this doc, but it kind of fell through the cracks in previous years, and then when I saw it was on Netflix, I kind of remembered about it again, so it made the cut this time around, and it helped me fill in the gaps caused when I realized that Mother's Day was later on the calendar than I thought.  I'm still poised to hit films about mothers right on time, now that I added the extra docs in. 

Walter Cronkite carries over from "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool".  Tomorrow I'll re-tell the story of my encounters with Mr. Cronkite. 

THE PLOT: A documentary about the life and legend of Nina Simone, an American singer, pianist and civil rights activist labeled the "High Priestess of Soul". 

AFTER: I found out about Nina Simone the same way I discovered Buddy Guy - from her covers of Beatles songs, which I collected for a long while.  She covered "Here Comes the Sun" and also "My Sweet Lord" (which didn't count for my collection because it's a solo Harrison song) and for some reason when I was ripping all of my CDs to iTunes I quit before I got all the covers covered, so I don't have a digital copy of these songs handy, I'll have to check them out some other way tonight.  

There's so much more to Nina Simone than cover songs - or is there?  Now I'm not so sure, because that does seem to be like 90% of her catalog.  Based just on "Here Comes the Sun", she had a way of re-working songs, changing the tempos, the phrasings, doing some improvisational additions, making each song her own, but I bet the strict Beatles fans may have hated her renditions.  But back then, simply EVERYBODY was doing this, from Richie Havens to George Benson to Booker T. & the M.G.'s.  As long as the songwriters got the credit and the publishing royalties, who cared?  

Nina Simone also got noticed for her covers of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "The House of the Rising Sun" and the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody".  Even her very earliest recordings were covers, like a song from "Porgy & Bess" or "I Put a Spell on You", or the jazz standard "My Baby Just Cares For Me", which she released in 1962, but it became a hit after being used in a perfume commercial in 1987, however, Simone had already signed away her rights to any royalties. Something similar happened with the song "Feelin' Good", which she recorded in 1965, but it didn't become super popular until 1994, and then again when Adam Lambert sang it on his season of "American Idol". 

Like so many other artists and athletes profiled in these past two weeks (jeez, was Easter just TWO WEEKS ago?  It feels like so much longer...) Nina had a troubled marriage.  I can't tell now if that's just par for the course among famous people, like Muhammad Ali had THREE troubled marriages, I wonder why...  But Nina married a NYC cop who became her manager, and while he booked her shows and moved with her into a nice house up in Mt. Vernon, it doesn't seem like they had much in common except for their problems.  (Actually, this was her second marriage, the doc doesn't even mention her first, I guess because it was so short.). And much like with Miles Davis, there was domestic abuse - but this also might be par for the course for the 1960's, as the alpha males were all afraid of women's rights, and were raised in homes where their mothers were treated as inferior.  Still, that's no excuse. 

Then, also like many of the artists and athletes profiled in these past two weeks, Nina got involved in the Civil Rights movement in the mid-60's, but her husband, not so much.  So she wrote a protest song about the church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, which was a turning point for her, but her husband could only see that she was losing gigs and being boycotted. The couple lived close to Malcolm X in Mt. Vernon, their kids played together, and then Simone recorded a song written by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, and another one based on an unfinished play by Lorraine Hansberry, called "Young, Gifted and Black".  And then after the MLK assassination, she dedicated a song to him, called "Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)".  

Another turning point in 1970, when Simone took off for Barbados, and it was a bit unclear whether she was just going on vacation between gigs, or fleeing the country to avoid prosecution for unpaid taxes (allegedly unpaid as a protest against the Vietnam War).  She left her wedding ring behind, so her husband naturally assumed this meant she wanted a divorce.  Well, she did have an affair with the Prime Minister of Barbados, supposedly, though this doc conveniently doesn't mention that.  From Barbados she relocated to Liberia, an African country founded by former U.S. slaves, and there she felt more comfortable.  Her daughter joined her there, but found Simone to be abusive toward her, so she came back to NYC and lived with her father.  

By the early 1980's she was performing regularly at a jazz club in London, all the while wishing she could go back to her original dream of becoming the world's first Black classical pianist.  But I guess at some point that ship sailed, she'd had a successful pop career and there was no going back - I feel her pain, as I've come to realize that I'll never write that killer screenplay or that book about Beatles covers, there's just no time to do it. And by the mid-1980's, Simone had moved again, to perform at another jazz club in Paris.  She was apparently rude to the patrons on a daily basis, or perhaps it was all part of the act, again it's tough to determine.  At some point a long-time friend found her in Paris and persuaded her to move to the Netherlands, where she finally got some medication for her bipolar disorder and tried to be happy for a while. 

Finally, late in life, she got some recognition from the industry, like a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2000, and an honorary degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, which had refused her entry at the start of her career.  Four Grammy nominations, but no wins - and according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, her official status there is "Umm, it's complicated."  But hey, she's in the R&B Hall of Fame, and her protest song "Mississippi Goddam" was preserved by the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".  So there you go, who can argue with that? 

Also starring Stanley Crouch (also carrying over from "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), George Wein (ditto), Eleanor Belinfanti, Gerrit De Bruin, Dick Gregory (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Elisabeth Henry, Lisa Simone Kelly, Gregory Marlow, Roger Nupie, Ilyasah Shabazz, Attallah Shabazz, Al Shackman, 

with archive footage of Nina Simone (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Stokely Carmichael (ditto), James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Sammy Davis Jr. (also carrying over from "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Malcolm X (ditto), Lorraine Hansberry, Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Andrew Young (last seen in "Citizen Ashe")

RATING: 5 out of 10 live albums