Directed by Danny Alpert, Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel
Culture Representation: The documentary “No Small Matter,” about children’s learning abilities before kindergarten age, interviews a racially diverse group of people (white, African American, Latino and Asian) who are educators, academics and parents representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A child’s ability to learn can be hampered by poverty, abuse, and a lack of caring adults in the child’s life, and it’s become increasingly harder for middle-class parents to afford childcare for pre-school children.
Culture Audience: “No Small Matter” will appeal primarily to parents, educators and other people who are concerned about how to teach children under the age of 6.
Larry Johnson, Wahnika Johnson and their daughter Laryn in “No Small Matter” (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)
The documentary “No Small Matter” tackles two different but related topics, and handles one topic better than the other. The first topic (which is the one that’s handled better) is an exploration of children’s learning abilities from birth to the age of 5. The second topic is about the increasing struggles for non-wealthy parents in the United States to give their pre-school children the best possible education and learning experiences.
“No Small Matter” directors Danny Alpert, Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel do a very good job of balancing interviews with experts and footage of real middle-class/working-class parents and pre-school children. The documentary gives a fairly comprehensive overview of children’s learning abilities before they reach school age. The movie also advocates for better support systems for parents of pre-school children, as affordable childcare become increasingly difficult for parents who have to work outside the home.
The best scenes in the film are with childhood educator Rachel Giannini, who was working at the time at Highland Park Community Nursery School and Day Care Center in Highland Park, Illinois. Her infectious enthusiasm for teaching kids and giving them positive encouragement to be themselves in their learning process are inspiring for anyone who wants to know how a good pre-kindergarten teacher should be.
Narrated by Alfre Woodard (who is also the documentary’s executive producer), “No Small Matter” covers subject matter that a lot of people might already know. For example, it’s fairly common knowledge that babies can start learning from birth. Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, tells a story of interacting with a baby who was just 42 minutes old. He saw that when he stuck out his tongue, the baby immediately did the same, which is an indication of how quickly newborn babies can learn imitation skills.
The documentary also mentions the new technology that’s available to study babies’ brain activities. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences co-director Patricia Kuhl declares that it’s possible to see what’s going on in a baby’s brain before the baby can talk. However, the documentary could have used a little more discussion about how devices such as smartphones and tablets can affect brain activity for pre-school children.
One of the best aspects of “No Small Matter” is that the film has an impressive and diverse list of experts who are interviewed. The academics include University of California at Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnick; Georgetown University psychology professor Deborah Phillips; Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek; University of Wisconsin pediatrics professor Dipesh Navsaria; and University of Wisconsin psychology professor Seth Pollak.
There are also several leaders of children-oriented nonprofit organizations, such as Center for Youth Wellness founder/pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris; Zero to Three executive director Matthew Melmed; Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada; Child Care Aware of America executive director Lynette Fraga; National Association for the Education of Young Children CEO Rhian Allvin; ReadyNation co-founder Robert Dugger and AVANCE executive director Jessica Atlas.
One interview that seems a little out of place is with Sesame Workshop senior vice president of curriculum and content Rosemarie Truglio, because during the interview, she’s interrupted by “Sesame Street” character Cookie Monster, who does a comedic skit with her. It’s supposed to be funny, but it comes across as too staged, awkward and perhaps some kind of sponsorship deal that the filmmakers made with Sesame Workshop. If people want to watch “Sesame Street” skit, they can watch “Sesame Street.” It doesn’t need to be in this documentary during what’s supposed to be a serious interview.
Several people in the documentary say things are already well-known: There’s a direct link between poverty, lack of education and crime. People who end up in prison are more likely to be poor and uneducated (not completing a high-school education) than people who not poor and not educated. Aside from the fact that prisons are filled with poor people who can’t afford good legal representation, poor and uneducated people are less likely to get jobs that can pay a living wage, thereby increasing the possibility that they will turn to crime to make money.
It’s a vicious cycle that experts say has the greatest chance of being broken by giving poor people the education that can increase their chances to climb out of poverty. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections secretary John Wetzel says, “True criminal justice reform is investing in early childhood education.” Arthur Rudnick, a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, adds: “You won’t find a better return than investing in early childhood education.”
But the rising cost of that early education is something that’s become increasingly difficult for working-class and middle-class families. Shea Gattis is named in the documentary as an example of someone who benefited from early education as a way to prevent some of the negative lifestyle circumstances and choices that plague low-income communities. Gattis is part of the Carolina Abecedarian Project, launched in 1972, which has been tracking him for more than 40 years since his childhood. He came from a low-income community, but received early education through the project and has been thriving as a law-abiding citizen with a good career.
The documentary shows three families who are struggling with making ends meet and having affordable child care for their pre-school children.
A married couple in Yorktown, Virginia—special-education teacher Wahnika Johnson and systems administrator Larry Johnson—have to put their daughter Laryn in day care after Wahnika’s maternity leave ends and she has to go back to work. The movie shows that how this transition has an emotional effect on Wahnika.
A married couple in Henderson, Nevada—nail technician Shannon Poff and security guard Donnie Poff—work two different shifts so that one can be home to take care of their son Daymean, who was born with a heart defect. Daymean’s medical bills have put the couple heavily in debt.
A single mother in Waco, Texas—Maria Hernandez—uses the nonprofit AVANCE program, which provides free child care for low-income families in the area.
It’s not exactly news to report that many families struggle with being able to afford childcare. What the documentary could have explored better is how a program like AVANCE works and is able to get funding and how a program like AVANCE can be implemented in other communities who need these programs the most.
Melmed comments that the U.S. military has “the best family support system in the United States.” It’s a belief confirmed by U.S. Army first-class sergeant Keacha Simmons, a mother who is interviewed kin the film. That’s great, but considering that most families in the U.S. don’t get military benefits, “No Small Matter” could have taken a closer look at people and organizations that are doing something about the problem of making good childcare affordable to families.
People already know that teachers/educators of children are grossly underpaid in the United States. With most budgets of cities, counties and states already stretched to the limits, it seems as if the future of early childhood education has to rely more on private funding. Where are all the billionaires who can help? And if a lot of wealthy people are helping, where is the money going? No one seems to ask these questions in the documentary.
Melmed has this to say about one of the best ways to rethink childcare and to make it more fun and educational for kids: “It’s not babysitting. It’s brain building.” “No Small Matter” is a good documentary that examines the issues and problems of educating pre-school age children in the United States. However, the documentary would have been much better if it also focused on realistic and attainable solutions.
Abramorama released “No Small Matter” on digital and VOD on June 26, 2020. The movie’s DVD release date is June 30, 2020.
Culture Representation: The documentary “Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things” features a racially diverse (mostly African American and white) group of people (mostly music artists and writers) discussing the life and legacy of singer Ella Fitzgerald.
Culture Clash: Fitzgerald experienced damaging racism, and her love of touring took a toll on her personal life.
Culture Audience: “Ella Fitzgerald: One of Those Things” will appeal mostly to people who are fans of jazz and biographies of legendary singers.
Ella Fitzgerald in “Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things” (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment)
Ella Fitzgerald left a unique legacy in music that can be compared to very few artists. She mastered the genres of swing, bebop, American standards and, of course, jazz. The well-made documentary “Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things” (directed by Leslie Woodhead and narrated by Sharon D. Clarke) is perhaps the definitive biography film of Fitzgerald, who died in 1996 at the age of 79. Although the film does not reveal anything new about her, it does have some great archival material and a well-rounded group of people who are interviewed.
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, but she was raised primarily in New York state. Her family moved to Yonkers, New York, in 1919, when she was 2 years old. Although she grew up in poverty, she discovered a love of the arts at an early age, and she helped earn money for her family as a dancer and as a singer.
Her teenage years were very turbulent. When Fitzgerald was 13, her beloved mother Tempie died. Ella Fitzgerald biographer Judith Tick says in the documentary the death of Ella’s Fitzgerald’s mother was “a devastating blow, because her mother had been the continuity in her life, and Ella was lost.”
Fitzgerald was sent to reform school in 1933, where she was beaten and experienced other forms of abuse, which people in the documentary say was doled out the harshest to the black kids in the reform school, compared children of other races. Her experiences at the reform school were so traumatic for her, that Fitzgerald never spoke publicly about what happened. However, the documentary shows records from the school with hand-written notes by school authorities that describe Fitzgerald as “ungovernable”—an indication that, despite any abuse she suffered there, her spirit could not be broken.
Yonkers is in close-enough in proximity to New York City that Fitzgerald was able to go to the big city and experience the culture of New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, which was the epicenter for African American music in the Northeast. In November 1934, Fitzgerald made her Apollo Theater singing debut on Amateur Night. And, as the famous story goes, she was was initially booed by the audience, but then she won them over with her voice.
The documentary includes an interview with dancer Norma Miller, who was in the audience for Fitzgerald’s fateful Apollo Theater debut, which was the first time that a very nervous Fitzgerald had ever sung in public. “We booed her,” remembers Miller. “They were introducing somebody we didn’t know. We were a bunch of rowdy teenagers in the balcony … Can you imagine? We booed Ella Fitzgerald!”
Fitzgerald’s son Ray Brown Jr. adds, “It was one of those defining moments, like ‘I’m here. I have to do something. Something has to be accomplished.’ And to be able to pull something out of yourself that’s so magical, that’s pretty amazing.”
Miller remembers the turning point when the audience’s reaction went from jeers to cheers: “We heard a sound [her voice]. It was so perfect. She shut us up so quick, you could hear a rat piss on cotton!”
From that Apollo stage debut, Fitzgerald then began hanging out in New York City even more. She would meet two of the people who would have a major impact on her early music career: Louis Armstrong (who was a big inspiration for her) and drummer/band leader Chick Webb, a dwarf-sized hunchback who didn’t let his unusual physical appearance deter him from being a larger-than-life force in the music business.
Webb had an all-male band and was very reluctant at first to let Fitzgerald in the group. He had two concerns over including her in the band: Her safety and her sex appeal. On the one hand, Webb wasn’t sure if Fitzgerald would be the target of sexual misconduct as the only woman in a group of randy men. On the other hand, Webb thought that Fitzgerald wasn’t attractive enough to appeal to the band’s audience. It’s mentioned in the documentary that Webb cruelly called her “ugly,” and he and other people would sometimes taunt her over her weight.
In the end, talent won out, and Fitzgerald became part of Webb’s band. It was the big break that led to her first mainstream hit “Mr. Paganini.” She experienced even bigger success with the classic “A Tisket A Tasket,” one of her signature songs.
Smokey Robinson says that “A Tisket A Tasket” was the first Ella Fitzgerald song her remembers hearing: “My sisters used to play that all day long, every day.” The massive crossover success of the song led to Fitzgerald making her film debut in the 1942 movie “Ride ‘Em Cowboy.” In the film, she sang “A Tisket A Tasket” on a bus where all the people on the bus except for Fitzgerald were white. The irony is that in real life in that era, she would’ve been relegated to the back of the bus in many places in the U.S., where racial segregation was legal at the time.
This segregation affected Fitzgerald’s life in many different ways. In terms of her career, she (like other black entertainers) could not perform in certain venues that refused to have black performers. She also wasn’t allowed on certain TV programs and radio shows. And even the music she performed early in her career (swing and bebop) was considered “race” music at the time.
Her physical appearance was also harshly judged in other ways. Female entertainers were expected to be thin, glamorous and sexy (not much has changed since those days), and “Ella did not fulfill those expectations,” says writer Margo Jefferson. Her success is testament to how Fitzgerald was a groundbreaking nonconformist in her field, Jefferson adds.
Fitzgerald was also a trailblazer when, after Webb died at the age 30, she took over his band and became the leader, and the band was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra. The documentary mentions that some of the band members resented having a woman as their leader, so there was some inevitable friction. After the group disbanded during World War II, Fitzgerald’s popularity waned.
But she was a master reinvention, so Fitzgerald transitioned from swing to bebop music. It was by performing bebop that she was able to showcase her brilliant ability to have her singing voice do solos on the same level as musical instrument solos. Jazz pianist Kenny Barron comments, “She had a great ear [for music].”
She started hanging out with Dizzy Gillespie and eventually toured with Gillespie and his band. It was while touring with Gillespie that Fitzgerald fell in love with Gillespie’s bass player Ray Brown. Fitzgerald and Brown married in 1947, and adopted the son of Fitzgerald’s half-sister and named him Ray Brown Jr. (The documentary does not mention Fitzgerald’s first husband, Benny Kornegay. Their 1941 to 1943 marriage ended in an annulment.)
Fitzgerald’s marriage to Brown ended in divorce in 1953, but the former couple still worked together for many years afterward. It’s mentioned several times in the documentary that Fitzgerald was a workaholic who loved to perform and travel. That heavy touring schedule, which she kept up for several decades, took a toll on her personal life. By her own admission, she could never be the type of wife and mother than many people expected her to be, so it was difficult to find a love partner who could understand how devoted was to music.
Another transitional period in Fitzgerald’s life and career was when Norman Ganz became her manager in the mid-1940s. He wanted Fitzgerald to cross over to an even broader audience, so it was his idea to have Fitzgerald perform standards from the Great American Songbook. Ganz also launched Verve Records, as a showcase for Fitzgerald. It allowed her to appeal to a more affluent and sophisticated audience, which opened the doors for her to perform at venues that were traditionally off-limits to black performers.
And sometimes those doors could only be opened because the venues were shamed into doing so. The Mocambo nightclub refused to book Fitzgerald, until Marilyn Monroe, who as a big fan of Fitzgerald, famously said that she and other celebrities would boycott the club unless Fitzgerald was allowed to perform there.
Granz was also a tireless advocate in pushing for desegregation not only for Fitzgerald but also for other people of color. Granz’s biographer Tad Hershon comments on Granz: “He saw the evils of segregation, and was determined to campaign against segregation in jazz music.” When Fitzgerald moved to Beverly Hills in California, she couldn’t buy a home there, due to racial discrimination, so Granz had to buy the home and put it in his name.
Although Granz was undoubtedly a loyal champion for Fitzgerald, he’s also described in the documentary as “nasty” and “controlling.” Not only did he want a tight grip on Fitzgerald by dictating what she could and could not do, he also alienated other artists (such as Gillespie and Sinatra) because of his bossy ways. When Sinatra refused to take Granz’s orders, Granz spitefully told Fitzgerald that she couldn’t work with Sinatra anymore.
Granz stood by Fitzgerald when she and members of her entourage were arrested in Houston in 1955, just because some members of the entourage were shooting dice in her dressing room. The documentary includes a snippet of an audio interview from Fitzgerald where she said that even though the arrest was an obviously racist set-up and a humiliating experience, the irony is that people at the police department still asked for her autograph. Granz later sued the Houston police department for reimbursement of the bail money.
One of the rare gems in the documentary is a never-broadcast clip from a radio interview that Fitzgerald did in the 1960s, when civil-rights protests were very much at the forefront of African American struggles for equality. In the interview, Fitzgerald talked about how it bothered her that when she traveled outside the U.S., particularly in Europe, people couldn’t understand why the U.S. was so segregated and that even someone as famous as Fitzgerald would be treated like a second-class citizen in certain parts of the U.S.
In the interview, Fitzgerald also said that die-hard racists probably won’t change their minds, but younger generations might have different beliefs about race. And Fitzgerald mentioned that she had to speak out about these issues, because she felt it was the right thing to do, even though some people think that entertainers shouldn’t talk about politics.
At the end of the interview, Fitzgerald asks where the interview will be heard. When the interviewer tells her it will be heard across many states, she replies that she might get in trouble for what she said, but she needed to say it. Perhaps her comments were considered too “radical” at the time, and maybe that’s why the interview never aired.
Tony Bennett comments in the documentary about Fitzgerald: “She never made a political statement, except when I heard her say three words. And it was the most complete definition of the complete ignorance of the world and the way they treat African Americans. She said, ‘Tony, we’re all here.’ In three words, she said the whole thing.”
In addition to her problems with racism, Fitzgerald was experiencing issues as a mother who was frequently away from home. Her relationship with her son Ray suffered, especially during his rebellious teen years, when he was shipped off to Catholic military school. When Ray moved out of the family home in the 1970s, he was estranged from his mother for about 10 years afterward. Fortunately, they reconciled, and he speaks of his mother in very loving ways in the documentary.
Other people interviewed in the film (who all predictably praise Fitzgerald) include music artists Patti Austin, Johnny Mathis, Jamie Cullum, Laura Mvula, Cleo Laine, Andre Previn (who died in 2019), Itzhak Perlman and drummer Gregg Field. Also weighing in with their thoughts are jazz writer Will Friedland, Newport Jazz festival founder George Wein and Jim Blackman, a longtime Fitzgerald fan who was her last tour manager.
During the course of her influential career, Fitzgerald won almost every possible prestigious award for music. She earned the nicknames First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady Ella. But this documentary also beautifully shows that her greatest accomplishment is how she paved the way for so many other artists and created a legacy that will continue to influence countless generations.
Eagle Rock Entertainment released “Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 26, 2020.
Peter Sellers, Peter Medak and Spike Milligan on the set of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” as seen in “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)
Culture Representation: Taking place in England and Cyprus, the documentary “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” features director Peter Medak and an all-white group of other senior citizens talking about his disastrous 1973 experience making the comedy film “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” starring Peter Sellers.
Culture Clash: Several people in the documentary say that Sellers was a nightmare to work with and that he deliberately sabotaged production of the movie.
Culture Audience: Aside from obviously appealing to Sellers fans, “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” will also appeal to people who are fans of 1970s European cinema and behind-the-scenes stories about difficult filmmaking experiences.
Peter Medak in “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)
In 1973, director Peter Medak had such a traumatic experience making the comedy film “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” starring British actor Peter Sellers, that he made a documentary four decades later to talk about what went wrong. That documentary is “The Ghost of Peter Sellers,” which is part therapy session, part quest for redemption and part cautionary tale about what can happen when a director of a movie loses control to a mentally unbalanced movie star. Sellers has been dead since 1980 (when he passed away at age 54), but it’s clear from watching this aptly titled documentary that the self-pitying Medak is still haunted by Sellers and won’t let go of the past.
Medak begins the documentary (which mixes new interviews with archival footage) by giving a brief background about himself and then describing how he got to direct “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” When Medak met Sellers in 1972 at Alvaro restaurant (a celebrity hotspot) on King’s Road in London, Sellers was riding high as one of the biggest comedy stars in the world (he was best known for the “Pink Panther” movies), and Medak (who was born in Hungary in 1937) was a director whose career was on the rise, thanks to his breakout 1972 film “The Ruling Class.”
Sellers asked Medak if he wanted to direct a comedy film called “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” which would star Sellers and co-star Spike Milligan, a frequent collaborator of Sellers. Milligan (who died in 2002, at the age of 83) was a well-known comedic actor/writer, whose credits included previous collaborations with Sellers, such as “The Goon Show,” “The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d,” “A Show Called Fred” and “Son of Fred.”
“For a director, it was irresistible,” Medak remembers of being offered this opportunity. But in hindsight, he says, “Like an idiot, I said yes.” What could possibly go wrong? Well, almost everything.
For starters, “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” was greenlighted for production based mostly on a concept rather than a well-written screenplay. Evan Jones and Milligan were credited with writing the screenplay, while co-writer Ernest Tidyman was uncredited. Jones’ previous film screenplay credits included 1963’s “The Damned” 1966’s “Funeral in Berlin” and 1971’s “Wake in Fright,” also known as “Outback.”
Here’s the gist of the very convoluted, messy plot of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun”: In the 17th century, on a pirate ship, an Irish cook named Dick Scratcher (played by Sellers) and three accomplices kill the pirate captain Ras Mohammed (played Peter Boyle), and Scratcher takes over the ship as the new captain. Scratcher and his crew then go on a quest to find the treasure that was buried by the murdered captain, using a treasure map as their guide. A series of misadventures ensue for the treasure hunters, including landing in the wrong country; kidnapping a boy who can see ghosts; threats of mutiny; and encountering Scratcher’s old friend Billy Bombay (played by Milligan).
What the filmmakers did not plan for and severely underestimated was how difficult it would be to make a movie that takes place on an unsteady boat. The film production in Cyprus was plagued by bad weather and a boat that kept breaking down, including an incident when a drunk navigator crashed the boat. And worst of all, according to people interviewed in the documentary: a star of the movie who went out of his way to ruin the film because he didn’t want to do the movie anymore.
In “The Ghost of Peter Sellers,” Medak revisits a lot of the people and retraces a lot of the steps to places in England and Cyprus that were part of the torturous process of making “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” Medak is accompanied to many locations by his screenwriter friend Simon Van Der Borgh, who seems to have no real purpose in the documentary, other than as emotional support for Medak.
In London, Medak shows Van Der Borgh the location where Alvaro used to be. They also visit Norma Farnes, who was Milligan’s agent. Medak and Farnes hadn’t seen each other in about 42 years, but their reunion looks a little rehearsed and staged. (In fact, the beginning of the movie shows Medak asking someone to reshoot a scene where they’re supposed to greet each other.)
And there are also meetings/interviews with some members of the cast and production team of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” including producer John Heyman, who helped finance the movie but was not given producer’s credit; Film Finances managing director David Korda; actors Murray Melvin, Costas Demetriou and Joe Dunn (who was Sellers’ stunt double); boat recovery operations worker Costas Evagoru; and costume designer Ruth Meyers. (Heyman died in 2017, which gives you an idea how long ago some of these interviews must have been filmed.)
Also interviewed are several people who knew Sellers well, including personal assistant Susan Wood; his daughter Victoria Sellers; his American agent Maggie Abbott; and his London agent (from 1964 to 1968) Sandy Lieberson. Victoria Sellers was only 8 years old when “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” was made, but she seems to be in this documentary only so Medak can have an additional person in a long list of people talking about how Peter Sellers was a difficult and deeply unhappy person.
Medak even includes an interview with Rita Franciosa, widow of actor Tony Franciosa, who co-starred in “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” as Pierre Rodriquez, the only gentlemanly pirate on the ship. She says that Tony took the movie more seriously than Peter Sellers did. There’s no mention of Rita actually being on the film set, so her observations are second-hand at best. It’s just another example of Medak trying to gather a chorus of people in the documentary to validate the narrative that Peter Sellers was horrible, unprofessional, and largely to blame for the movie being a nightmare.
Medak also has a three-way commiserating session with director Piers Haggard (“The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu”) and director Joe McGrath (“The Goon Show”), where they talk about how working with Peter Sellers was an unpleasant experience for them. Robert Wagner, who co-starred with Sellers in 1963’s “The Pink Panther,” also says in the documentary that Sellers was a terrible co-worker.
In a separate interview, John Goldstone of Monty Python Productions weighs in with his opinion (even though Peter Sellers wasn’t affiliated with Monty Python) by saying that the way Medak was treated by Peter Sellers was awful and not how a comedy film set is supposed to be. This echo chamber of Peter Sellers bashing is Medak’s way of saying, “See, I’m not the only one who feels this way.”
Besides having extreme mood swings, being very fickle, and demonstrating a huge ego, Peter Sellers is described as someone who went out of his way to make life miserable for the cast, crew and other people on the team of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” Things got off to a bad start because the first day of filming in Cyprus was shortly after Sellers had ended his tempestuous engagement to Liza Minnelli. “He was catatonically depressed,” Medak remembers.
Some of the people in the documentary speculate that Peter Sellers probably had an undiagnosed mental illness. He would go through extreme emotional “ups” and “downs.” And he would change his mind on a whim, by being in love with an idea one minute and then hating it the next minute. Regardless of what was going on in his personal life or mental health, Sellers made it clear to everyone after filming started that he didn’t want to do the movie.
According to Medak, Peter Sellers resorted to various tricks, such as not showing up for work for several days, by claiming he had a serious medical problem requiring him to be bedridden, and he had a doctor’s letter to “prove” it. But Medak remembers finding out that the illness was a lie when he saw a newspaper article with a photo of Peter Sellers gallivanting around London with Princess Margaret on a day that Sellers claimed to be sick in bed at home. In the documentary, Medak interviews Dr. Tony Greenburgh (Sellers’ personal doctor), who admits that writing a fabricated letter is something he probably would have done for Sellers at the time. “He was a good friend,” says Greenburgh.
Peter Sellers also began acting as if he, not the director or producers, were running the show, according to Medak. He demanded that producer Thomas Clyde be fired. (Clyde got to keep his producer’s credit, along with producer Gareth Wigan.) Robin Dalton, who was Medak’s agent from 1968 to 1975, says in the documentary: “It’s the only time I ever remember where the producers got sacked after the first week [of filming] by the star.”
Medak remembers one day on the film set that Peter Sellers began barking orders at people and declaring that he was now in charge. Medak says that the way Peter Sellers was acting was very much like the domineering Fred Kite character that he played in the 1959 comedy film “I’m Alright Jack.” Needless to say, Medak and Sellers clashed on the film set.
But Peter Sellers also had problems with co-star Milligan. Medak says that Sellers and Milligan had an intense rivalry with each other, with each one trying to outdo the other to prove who was funnier. Things got so bad between Sellers and Milligan that Sellers demanded that he not share any scenes with Milligan. Certain scenes had to be rewritten and reshot because of these demands.
And why didn’t Medak quit? He says in the documentary that he couldn’t afford to quit because his wife was expecting their second son, and the family needed the money at the time. If Medak had quit, not only would he have to give up his director’s fee, but there would also be a possibility that he would be sued for breach of contract.
But it wasn’t just about the money. Medak admits that he was also thinking about his reputation, and he felt that he had something to prove by finishing this disaster of a movie. Peter Sellers was so desperate to get out of filming “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” that he offered Medak half of his actor’s fee if Medak quit the film. Sellers hoped that Medak quitting would shut down the film for good. Medak refused to quit, which no doubt fueled even more of Sellers’ resentment toward Medak.
In the middle of all this turmoil about the movie, there was a bizarre interlude when Peter Sellers filmed a series of cigarette commercials directed by Medak. Antony Rufus Isaacs, a producer of the commercials, is one of the people briefly interviewed in the documentary. After they filmed the commercials, they went right back to the torment of getting “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” completed.
Medak’s quest in reliving this trauma comes across as earnest but a little pathetic. He has a large scrapbook for “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” which he carries around in the documentary like someone who had a love/hate relationship with high school would carry around their high-school yearbook. And more than once, some people in the documentary (such as Heyman and Farnes) essentially tell Medak: “Get over it.”
Multiple times in the movie, Medak breaks down and cries when he talks about how the experience of making “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” scarred him for life. But it’s hard to feel complete sympathy for him when he later admits that he walked off the job on several other movies that he was hired to direct after “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” Medak blames this unprofessional behavior on the bad experience that he had with Sellers.
In the beginning of the documentary, Medak makes it sound like Sellers and “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” ruined his career. In reality, which he admits toward the end of the film, Medak had a long career in directing movies and TV shows after that negative experience. There’s even a photo sequence during the documentary’s end credits showing Medak on the sets of many of these subsequent projects.
And this is where Medak’s privileged blind spot is on display. Despite having his own history of being difficult and unprofessional on jobs that had nothing to do with Peter Sellers, Medak still continued to get opportunities to direct movies and TV shows for decades. If a director who’s a woman or a person of color ever behaved in the same way, they wouldn’t be given as many opportunities as Medak was given.
Therefore, all of Medak’s whining about Peter Sellers in the documentary makes Medak look like a schmuck. Peter Sellers was never a longtime collaborator of Medak’s. They did just one movie together, so Medak’s career wasn’t as intertwined with Sellers as he would like viewers of this documentary to think it was.
Heyman put it best in the documentary when he comments on making “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” and how it really affected people’s careers: “I don’t know how many nails there are in a coffin, but this [“Ghost in the Noonday Sun”] is a very small nail. We’re all to blame.” In other words: Yes, the movie was a disastrous flop, and other people besides Medak were affected too, but it didn’t ruin anybody’s career.
Therefore, Medak really can’t blame any subsequent career decline on Peter Sellers, whom Medak seems obsessed with on an unhealthy level. During one of Medak’s crying bouts in the film, he admits that one of the reasons why he feels so hurt is because he was and still is a huge fan of Sellers, whom Medak calls a “genius.” Yes, but you only worked with Sellers on one movie all the way back in 1973. Move on.
And this is the other problem with the documentary not being entirely truthful and very slanted to make Medak look like a “victim.” At the end of the documentary, it’s mentioned that Columbia Pictures thought “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” was such a mess that the studio shelved the film. While it’s true that “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” was never released in cinemas, it was eventually released in 1985 on home video.
This home-video release is never mentioned in the documentary, because the documentary misleads viewers into thinking that “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” is locked away somewhere, never to be seen by the public. Because the documentary omits that “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” was released (just not in cinemas, as Medak had hoped) and is available to be seen by the public, it’s just another example of how Medak has a “poor me” attitude that is unrelenting and ultimately very annoying.
In the beginning of the documentary, Medak gripes about “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” by saying, “For 43 years, I covered up this very dark spot on my life. I carried this grudge against myself … for all these years.” Now that Medak has directed this documentary and aired out his grievances about Peter Sellers, perhaps he can find better use of his time, by appreciating the good things in his life instead of blaming his career problems and self-identity on a dead one-time co-worker and a little-seen bad movie he made decades ago.
1091 Pictures released “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” on digital and VOD on June 23, 2020.
Culture Representation: The documentary “Athlete A” interviews an all-white group of people to discuss how officials and survivors handled the crimes of convicted sex offender Larry Nassar, the disgraced former doctor who worked for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University.
Culture Clash: The documentary examines how Nassar’s crimes were actively covered up by officials and how a team of Indianapolis Star investigative reporters exposed the Nassar scandal in 2016.
Culture Audience: “Athlete A” will appeal primarily to people who like true-crime documentaries, but the movie doesn’t uncover anything new and leaves out some important details.
Rachael Denhollander in “Athlete A” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
There will be inevitable comparisons of Netflix’s 2020 documentary film “Athlete A” (directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk) and HBO’s 2019 documentary film “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal” (directed by Erin Lee Carr), because both documentaries essentially cover the same topic. Neither film uncovers anything new about the 2016 scandal that exposed Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of hundreds of female patients while he worked as a doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. “Athlete A” takes a different angle from “At the Heart of Gold” by giving more of a spotlight to the Indianapolis Star newspaper team that broke the story.
“Athlete A” gets its title from the alias that was given to gymnast Maggie Nichols when she filed a formal complaint with USA Gymnastics in 2015 to report that Nassar had sexually abused her numerous times, in the guise of administering “medical examinations.” Nichols’ complaint was one of several that USA Gymnastics actively covered up and did not report to police. Michigan State University also did the same thing when it received numerous sexual-abuse complaints about Nassar, whose known abuse spanned more than 20 years.
Maggie Nichols is among the survivors of Nassar’s abuse who are interviewed in “Athlete A,” which also interviews former gymnasts Rachael Denhollander, Jessica Howard and Jamie Dantzscher, who are also survivors of Nassar’s abuse. “Athlete A,” which focuses more on how the scandal went public, has a much smaller number of people interviewed, compared to “At the Heart of Gold,” which has a broader look at the aftermath of the scandal. And ultimately, taking a much narrower view might be why “Athlete A” provides a less complete picture than “At the Heart of Gold.”
The Nassar scandal exposed the culture of cover-ups, abuse, silence and intimidation that many female gymnasts (who are usually underage when the abuse starts) have had to endure in their quest for athletic glory. Several media outlets and documentaries have already done in-depth investigations and reported their findings of the Nassar scandal, but the Indianapolis Star was the first to break the story.
“Athlete A” gives a lot of screen time to the Indianapolis Star team members who broke the story: investigations editor Steve Berta and investigative reporters Marisa Kwiatkowski, Mark Alesia and Tim Evans. They all give a step-by-step replay of how they uncovered how deep the scandal was and how far back the cover-ups were, as more and more women started coming forward to the Indianapolis Star with their Nassar horror stories.
Berta says of the culture of female gymnastics: “What the culture was like was new to me, and we were sort of plunged into it.” Kwiatkowski explains that the Indianapolis Star (which is nicknamed the Indy Star) somewhat stumbled onto the Nassar story when the newspaper was investigating a broader story on why people don’t report sexual abuse in schools.
The Indianapolis Star got a tip to look into USA Gymnastics, and that led the reporters down the path to find out about Nassar’s sex crimes and what officials did to cover up the complaints against him. (Nassar has now been stripped of his medical license. In 2017 and 2018, he received numerous prison sentences that will ensure that he will die in prison.)
Curiously, “Athlete A” paints an incomplete picture by focusing mostly on USA Gymnastics as the chief perpetrator of the cover-ups, and the documentary largely ignores Michigan State University’s similar cover-ups of Nassar’s crimes. Several officials from USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University have since been fired or have resigned because of the Nassar scandal. Many of these disgraced officials are facing criminal and/or civil cases because of their involvement in the scandal.
As many people who are familiar with the scandal already know, USA Gymnastics had a policy to not report a sexual-abuse claim to the police unless the alleged victim, the alleged victim’s parents and/or an eyewitness signed the complaint. Most of the accusers were underage children, so this policy goes against most U.S. state laws that require companies and organizations to report complaints of underage sexual abuse to police.
Nassar certainly wasn’t the only one to be accused, and when his sex crimes were exposed, the media also uncovered that over a period of 10 years, USA Gymnastics had received sexual-abuse complaints against approximately 54 coaches (most of the crimes were against underage girls), but those complaints were never reported to police. USA Gymnastics often transferred many of those coaches to other locations.
Steven Penny Jr., who was president/CEO of USA Gymnastics from 2005 to 2017, is portrayed in “Athlete A” as the king of the Nassar cover-ups. The documentary includes some brief commentary about him, including people who say that Penny abused his power and that his marketing background caused him to give more priority to image and sponsorship deals for USA Gymnastics instead of the safety and well-being of the athletes.
Berta says, “They [USA Gymnastics] were so busy trying to sell that brand that they didn’t have time for these girls.” The documentary also includes archival news footage of Penny’s pathetic appearance in a 2018 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, when he invoked the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in his refusal to answer any questions.
Gina Nichols and John Nichols, the parents of Maggie Nichols, say in “Athlete A” interviews that they had trusted Penny when he told them that USA Gymnastics would be handling Maggie’s sexual-abuse complaints against Nassar. The Nicholas parents say that when Sarah Jantzi, Maggie’s coach at the time, first reported the abuse to USA Gymnastics in 2015, the company ordered the Nichols parents and Jantzi not to go to the police and were told that the matter was going to be handled internally by USA Gymnastics.
A human-resources consultant hired by USA Gymnastics interviewed Maggie, but when her parents followed up to find out the status of the investigation, they were stonewalled by USA Gymnastics and told that they couldn’t reveal any details because it was an ongoing investigation. Meanwhile, Nassar continued to be a USA Gymnastics doctor, and several gymnasts later testified that he abused them before, during and after the 2016 Olympics.
Maggie Nichols eventually went public in 2018 about how Nassar abused her. But her experience is strikingly similar to others who survived his abuse. (Nassar is believed to have sexually abused at least 500 female patients.) All of his survivors, and even people who weren’t abused by Nassar, say that he easily fooled people into thinking he was the “nice guy” in a sea of gymnastic coaches and officials who were tough and openly abusive to athletes.
If people are wondering why all these parents of underage kids didn’t take it upon themselves go to the police after finding out about the abuse, it’s explained in “Athlete A” (and other documentaries/news reports about the Nassar scandal) that USA Gymnastics had the power to decide who would be selected to go to the Olympics. These parents naïvely trusted that USA Gymnastics would do the right thing in handling the abuse complaints, but there was also fear of upsetting Penny and other people at the top who could make or break their daughters’ Olympic dreams.
Gina Nichols and John Nichols believe that Maggie was blackballed from being on the Olympic team because she was a “whistleblower.” Maggie was a bronze medalist at the 2014 USA Gymnastics National Championships and a silver medalist at the 2015 USA Gymnastics National Championships. She was considered a top contender to be chosen for the USA Gymnastics women’s team for the 2016 Olympics.
Despite a having a knee injury at the 2016 Olympic tryouts, Maggie performed well, but didn’t make the Olympic team, while some Nationals team alternates were chosen instead. Gina Nichols and John Nichols say in the documentary that they saw signs that USA Gymnastics had blackballed them because the organization treated them differently after Maggie’s abuse was reported to USA Gymnastics, but the complaint against Nassar hadn’t been made public yet.
After the abuse was reported, Gina Nichols and John Nichols say that at the 2016 Olympic tryouts, they didn’t have reserved seats and there weren’t TV cameras following them, as there normally would have been for all the other USA Gymnastics televised events where star gymnast Maggie previously participated. The Nichols parents don’t come right out and accuse anyone specific for causing this blatant snubbing, but it’s obvious that they believe several people’s claims that Penny demanded it. The good news is that Maggie went on to achieve gymnastic championships in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, while she was a student at the University of Oklahoma.
“Athlete A” includes archival video footage of Denhollander being interviewed in 2016 by the Indianapolis Star when she came forward to expose Nassar, 16 years after he abused her. She says at one point: “I wish I had dealt with it 16 years ago. I don’t think I could’ve dealt with it, but I can now.”
The documentary also shows the toll that this abuse took on the survivors, many of whom were ridiculed and not believed when they first came forward. Denhollander, who looks painfully thin in her 2016 interview with the Indianapolis Star, says that she had trouble eating because of all the stress. Dantzscher, who was on the USA Olympics team in 2000, says that gymnastics was her “first love,” but she tearfully admits that it took her years to be proud to be an Olympian because Nassar abused her at the Olympics and she associated the Olympics with the shame of the abuse.
“Athlete A” also delves into the history of women’s gymnastics to explain how it went from being a sport that had mostly regular-sized adult women prior to the 1960s but it eventually changed into a sport dominated by underage girls, and a height of 5’4″ was considered “tall” for female gymnasts. This “little girl” aesthetic for female gymnasts coincided with the rise of Romanian gymnastic coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi, a husband-and-wife duo whose Karolyi Ranch training facility in Texas was where Nassar committed a lot of his sexual abuse.
Beginning with Russian gold-medalist gymnast Olga Korbut at the 1972 Olympics and especially with Romanian gold-medalist gymnast Nadia Comăneci at the 1976 Olympics, the trend moved in the direction of underage, very petite girls being pushed to compete in gymnastics at the Olympics. Comăneci was only 14 when she became a gold medalist at the 1976 Olympics. Her victory made her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi highly in demand to train female gymnasts.
In 1981, the Károlyis defected to the United States with their choreographer Geza Poszar, who is interviewed in “Athlete A.” The Károlyis also went on to coach Olympic gold-medalists gymnasts Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug. “Athlete A” spends a little too much time going off-topic by rehashing the Olympic victories of Comăneci, Retton and Strug. These gymnasts had nothing to do with Nassar.
Poszar says that the Károlyis’ method of working with gymnasts was “total control over the girls.” He says that Károlyis (and coaches just like them) often abuse the gymnasts verbally, emotionally and physically. It was common for the gymnasts to be slapped and be told that they were fat animals, says Poszar. That type of abuse was “acceptable” in his native Romania, he says, and it apparently was acceptable in the United States too.
Károlyi Ranch, a training facility near Hunstville, Texas, closed in 2018. The Károlyis are no longer USA Gymnastics coaches (Béla retired in 1997, while Márta retired in 2016), and they have both been sued for being part of the Nassar cover-up. “Athlete A” includes a clip from a videotaped deposition of Márta Károlyi admitting that she knew about complaints of Nassar’s abuse that was happening at the ranch.
People familiar with Károlyi Ranch describe it as an oppressive, isolated compound where parents weren’t allowed to visit, gymnasts were forbidden to call people outside the ranch (where cell-phone reception was difficult anyway), and people were punished for reporting abuse. The Károlyis, just like everyone else accused of covering up for Nassar, are not interviewed in “Athlete A.”
Giving her perspective on coaching techniques is former U.S. Nationals Team gymnast is Jennifer Sey, author of the 2008 memoir “Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams.” Sey, who competed as a gymnast in the 1970s and 1980s, says that coaching methods for female gymnasts haven’t changed much over the years: “You could be as cruel as you needed to be to get what you needed out of your athletes.”
Sey adds, “The line between tough coaching and abuse gets blurred.” She and other people in the documentary (including Dantzscher) mention something that’s commonly known in the gymnastics world: Gymnasts are often forced to compete with serious injuries, including fractured or broken bones. As an example, “Athlete A” shows Strug’s 1996 Olympic victory, which happened despite her severely injuring her ankle during the last stretch of the Olympic match.
Tracee Talavera, who was on the USA Women’s Gymnastics team at the 1984 Olympics, says she remembers how the Olympic gymnasts from Eastern Europe always looked scared and they never looked happy. Mike Jacki, who was president of USA Gymnastics from 1983 to 1994, adds his perspective, by saying that the popularity of Mary Lou Retton and more American female gymnasts starting to win at the Olympics, was the start of USA Gymnastics becoming a bigger business.
“Athlete A” clearly discusses Olympic gymnasts from the 1970s and 1980s, as a way to put into context the culture of abuse that enabled Nassar. But this detour into the history of female gymnastics ultimately takes up too much time in the documentary, which should have kept its focus on the Nassar cases.
And for a documentary about the investigation of a sexual abuser who had hundreds of victims, “Athlete A” has a surprising scarcity of interviews from people in the fields of law and law enforcement. Only one personal attorney is interviewed: John Manly, who is Dantzcher’s lawyer. From law enforcement, Michigan State University Police detective lieutenant Andrea Munford and Michigan state assistant attorney Angela Povilaitis are interviewed, and they describe their involvements in the Nassar case. (Again, nothing new is revealed here.)
“Athlete A” also includes the expected news archival footage of the survivor impact statements that were read during Nassar’s 2018 sentencing hearings, after he pleaded guilty to numerous charges. Denhollander and Dantzscher were among the survivors who read their statements while a shamed Nassar sat in the courtroom. Maggie Nichols did not attend these hearings, but her mother Gina read Maggie’s statement in court. “Athlete A” does not have interviews with Nassar’s most famous survivors, including Olympic gold-medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney.
Former USA Gymnastics president/CEO Penny was arrested in 2018 on charges of evidence tampering. His criminal case is pending, as of this writing. Video footage of his arrest is included in “Athlete A.”
But in an apparent myopic zeal to make Penny look like the top evil overlord of covering up for Nassar, “Athlete A” oversimplifies and overlooks the fact that a cover-up of this magnitude and length wasn’t just orchestrated by mainly one person. “Athlete A” fails to mention two of the toxic enablers who were given some scrutiny in “At the Heart of Gold”: John Geddert (former USA Gymnastics coach) and Kathie Klages (former Michigan State University gymnastics coach). Geddert is under criminal investigation, as of this writing.* In February 2020, Klages was convicted of two counts (one felony and one misdemeanor) of lying to police.
There have been other people who’ve been accused of actively covering up for Nassar’s crimes, including former Michigan State University president Lou Anna Simon, who resigned in 2018. In 2019, Simon was charged with lying to the police, but in May 2020, those charges were dismissed. In 2018, Scott Blackmun resigned as CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. That same year, Alan Ashley was fired as U.S. Olympic Committee chief of sport performance over his involvement in the Nassar scandal. Simon, Blackmun and Ashley are not mentioned in “Athlete A” or in “At the Heart of Gold.”
“Athlete A'” does mention Rhonda Faehn, who was a USA Gymnastics vice president at the time that Maggie Nichols filed her complaint against Nassar, but Faehn did not go to police with the complaint. In yet another example of omitting information, “Athlete A” never mentions what happened to Faehn: She testified against Nassar in 2018 in grand-jury proceedings, then she was hired by the University of Michigan in 2019 (and then fired after one day, due to public backlash), and later that year, Faehn was given a temporary job as an international team coach at Waverley Gymnastics Centre in Australia.
“Athlete A” certainly has good intentions to put the spotlight on the serious issue of abuse, as it pertains to American female gymnasts. However, the documentary ultimately just recycles information that other people already reported. The documentary’s interviews are compelling, but the filmmakers’ lack of original investigative reporting and omission of crucial details are ultimately a letdown for this important subject matter.
Netflix premiere “Athlete A” on May 24, 2020.
*UPDATE: John Geddert committed suicide on February 25, 2021, the same day that he was indicted on 24 counts of abuse-related crimes, including human trafficking and sexual assault.
Culture Representation: The documentary “Dads” has a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Asian and Latino) representing the middle-class and wealthy and talking about fatherhood.
Culture Clash: Some of the fathers interviewed in the film talk about defying traditional masculine stereotypes, by being more involved in raising their children than previous generations of fathers were expected to be.
Culture Audience: “Dads” will appeal to anyone who likes nonfiction films about parenting issues, even though it shuts out any perspectives of fathers who are poor or have negative attitudes about being fathers.
Robert Selby (pictured at right) and his son RJ in “Dads” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)
The documentary “Dads” puts such an unrelenting positive and happy spin on fatherhood that it has a strange dichotomy of being a nonfiction film that isn’t entirely realistic. Bryce Dallas Howard (the eldest child of Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard) makes her feature-film directorial debut with “Dads,” which devotes considerable screen time to members of the Howard family talking about fatherhood. “Dads” is ultimately a very uplifting “feel good” movie, but it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking or reveal any new concepts of fatherhood.
There are no deadbeat dads or bitter fathers who’ve lost child custody in “Dads.” Instead, the documentary focuses only on fathers who love being dads and have good relationships with their children. There are several celebrities interviewed in the film (all of whom have a background in comedy), such as Judd Apatow, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Patrick Harris, Ron Howard, Ken Jeong, Jimmy Kimmel, Hasan Minhaj, Conan O’Brien, Patton Oswalt and Will Smith.
“Dads” has three kinds of footage: soundbites from the celebrities, with Bryce Dallas Howard as the interviewer (she sometimes appears on camera); clips of home movies (the clips from random, unidentified people give the documentary an “America’s Funniest Home Videos” look); and six in-depth profiles of seven middle-class fathers from different parts of the world.
Although the celebrities offer some amusing anecdotes, many of their stories seem rehearsed or their comments are made just to crack a joke. Smith, in particular, seems to have memorized way in advance what he was going to say in this documentary. With the exception of Ron Howard, the celebrities are not shown with their children in this documentary, which is why the celebrity segments in the film are pretty superficial. The best parts of the documentary are with the people who aren’t rich and famous, because that’s the footage that actually shows “regular” fathers (who don’t have nannies) taking care of the kids.
The seven non-famous fathers who are profiled in the movie are:
Glen Henry (in San Diego), an African American who became a “daddy vlogger” to document his experiences as a stay-at-home dad.
Reed Howard (in Westchester, New York), who is Bryce Dallas Howard’s youngest sibling and was a first-time expectant father at the time the documentary was filmed.
Robert Selby (in Triangle, Virginia), an African American whose son survived a life-or-death medical crisis.
Thiago Queiroz (in Rio de Janeiro), a Brazilian who started a podcast and blog about fatherhood and who advocates for longer time for paternity leaves.
Shuichi Sakuma (in Tokyo), who is a Japanese homemaker.
Rob Scheer and Reece Scheer (in Darnestown, Maryland), a white gay couple who adopted four African American kids.
Glen Henry used to work as a sales clerk at men’s clothing store, but he was so unhappy in his job that his wife Yvette suggested that he quit his job and become a stay-at-home father. (At the time “Dads” was filmed, the Henrys had two sons and a daughter.) Glen Henry, who has a blog called Beleaf in Fatherhood, began making videos documenting his fatherhood experiences.
Glen admits that he thought at first that it would be easy to take care of the kids by himself, but he found out that he was very wrong about that. “I felt like an imposter,” he says of his early years as a homemaker. Even though his wife Yvette says she wasn’t thrilled about Glen putting their family’s life on display for everyone to see on the Internet, she says it’s worth it because Glen is a much happier person as a stay-at-home dad.
Echoing what many of the fathers say in the documentary, Glen Henry comments: “The role of father has shifted in a major way. We went from providing, being there for holidays and disciplining to being all the way involved—and you kind of look like a dork if you’re not.”
He continues, “I feel like being a father made me the man that I am. My children taught me to be authentic and honest with myself. Fatherhood has given me a whole new identity.”
Reed Howard, who was expecting his first child with his wife when this documentary was being filmed, talks about the home videos that his father Ron filmed of all of his children being born. (Clips of some of those videos are included in the documentary.) Reeds says half-jokingly that since all of Ron’s kids were forced to watch the videos, it was “traumatic” to see part of his mother’s body that he never wanted to see.
Ron Howard’s father Rance (who died in 2017) is also interviewed in “Dads.” Rance says that when Ron was a co-star on “The Andy Griffith Show,” Rance suggested to Andy Griffith to not have Ron’s character Opie written as a brat. Griffith took the advice, and the father-son relationship on the show was modeled after the relationship that Rance had with Ron in real life. (Rance Howard and Ron Howard are the only grandfathers interviewed in the movie, by the way.)
Most of the dads interviewed in the documentary get emotional and teary-eyed at some point in the film. Ron Howard’s crying moment comes when he says that his greatest fear as a father was that he wouldn’t be as good as his father was to him. Reed (who is Ron’s only son) expresses the same fear about not being able to live up to the great experiences that he had with Ron as his father.
Selby has perhaps the most compelling story, since his son RJ was born with a congenital heart defect. Selby describes years of stressful hospital visits and medical treatments in order to help RJ live as healthy of a life as possible. This dedicated dad had to make many sacrifices, such as taking unpaid time off from work and forgo paying some bills in order to pay for RJ’s medical expenses. “There was no doubt in mind: I would forever be his protector,” Selby says of his outlook on being RJ’s father.
Selby is also the only father interviewed in the film who isn’t financially privileged, since he says that he often didn’t have a car during his son’s ongoing medical crisis. And when he did have a car, it was repossessed multiple times because he couldn’t make the payments. He ended up working a night shift because it was the only way he could have a job (he doesn’t mention what he does for a living) while also going to school and taking care of RJ during the day.
Chantay Williams (who is RJ’s mother) and Selby were never married and didn’t have a serious relationship when she got pregnant with RJ. Selby breaks down and cries when he remembers that when he found out about the pregnancy, he didn’t want Williams to have the child and he didn’t talk to her for two months. But he changed his mind, asked for her forgiveness, and is now a very involved father.
However, Selby says that he still feels shame over his initial reaction to the pregnancy, and he comments that he’ll probably spend the rest of his life trying to make up for that mistake. Williams says in the documentary that Selby is proof that someone can change, and that he’s truly a devoted father and that his devotion isn’t just a show for the documentary cameras.
Quieroz (a married father of two sons and a daughter) knows what it’s like to not have a father raise him, since his dad wasn’t in his life for most of his childhood. He says that it’s one of the reasons why he vowed to always be there for his kids. Quieroz’s day job is as a mechanical engineer, but he also started a fatherhood podcast with two other Brazilian fathers, and he has a fatherhood blog. It’s through the blog that Quieroz’s estranged father got in touch with him. The outcome of that contact is revealed in the documentary.
Sakuma talks about how, in Japanese culture, men who don’t work outside the home are considered “society dropouts.” When he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder 20 years ago, Sakuma could no longer work outside the home. He became so depressed that he contemplated divorce and suicide, until his wife begged him: “Please continue living for me.”
After Sakuma regained his health, one of the first things he wanted to do was become a parent, but his wife didn’t want to have kids. He says in the documentary that he began a personal campaign that lasted two years to get his wife to change her mind. She changed her mind when he told her that men can do anything when it comes to raising a child, except for pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. He convinced her that he would make a great stay-at-home dad, which he is to their son.
Rob and Reece Scheer didn’t expect to become parents to four kids in a short period of time (less than a year), but that’s what happened when they fostered four children, whom they eventually ended up adopting. Rob and Reece have three sons and one daughter; two of the sons are biological brothers. Rob (the older husband) says he knew that he wanted to be a father since he was 6 years old. Rob describes how he grew up with an abusive father, but that traumatic experience helped him know that he wanted to be the opposite of abusive when he became a dad.
The four kids adopted by Reece and Rob also come from troubled backgrounds, so Rob believes surviving his own abusive childhood helps him relate to his kids in that way. As for Reece, he was working two jobs when he decided quit those jobs to be the couple’s stay-at-home partner. They had to make the sacrifice of having a lower household income, but now the family lives happily on a farm, which the dads say has been beneficial for the emotional well-being of their kids.
Rob Scheer says that sometimes people say unintentionally ignorant things about gay couples who are parents. “People ask, ‘Who’s the mom and who’s the dad?’ We’re both dads, but the one thing that we do is that we both partner. That’s what parents should be doing.”
One of the questions that Bryce Dallas Howard asks the celebrities is to define what a father is in one word. Fallon says “hero,” while Minhaj says “compass.” Many of the celebrity fathers in the documentary make obvious comments that are similar to each other, such as: “There’s no instruction manual/rulebook to being a father.”
And although Kimmel and Jeong briefly mention the medical scares they went through with their children (a heart defect for one of Kimmel’s sons, a premature birth for one of Jeong’s children), the documentary doesn’t show them opening up about these issues in a meaningful way. Instead, most of the celebrity soundbites are meant to elicit laughs. Several of the celebrities make references to their busy careers when they talk about how their work keeps them from spending more time with their kids, but they know that they’re working hard to provide very well for their children.
Although the non-famous fathers who are profiled in “Dads” seem to be a diverse group because they’re from different countries and racial groups, they actually have more in common with each other than not, because they’re all middle-class fathers with children who were under the age of 13 at the time this documentary was filmed. It seems like these fathers were selected because they have young children who are in the “cute” stages of life—no kids who are teenagers or adults—thereby creating more documentary footage that was likely to be “adorable.”
Apatow and Smith are the only fathers who talk about how fatherhood became less fun for them when their children became teenagers. They mention that they had to learn to give their teenage kids space, adjust to their kids’ growing independence, and allow them to make their own decisions on issues, even if those decisions turned out to be mistakes. But since the documentary doesn’t do any up-close profiles of non-famous fathers who have teenagers, the only commentaries about raising teenagers come from rich and famous guys, and it’s questionable how relatable these celebrity dads are to the rest of the public.
For example, Smith has said in other interviews (not in this documentary) that he and his wife Jada don’t believe that their kids should be punished in their household when they do something wrong, their kids never had to do household chores, and he and Jada allowed their kids to drop out of school when the kids didn’t feel like going anymore. Apatow admits in the documentary that he’s also a permissive dad who never really punished his kids if they did something wrong. Is it any wonder that many celebrities are perceived as raising spoiled kids who are out of touch with the real world?
One of the other shortcomings of “Dads” is that, except for Selby, the documentary completely ignores major financial strains that parenthood can cause. It’s as if the documentary wants to forget that financially poor fathers exist in this world too. And even though Minhaj is the only one in “Dads” to mention the immigrant experience, “Dads” could have used more fatherhood stories from an immigrant perspective.
However, if you want a heartwarming look at famous and non-famous dads who say that parenthood is the best thing that ever happened to them, “Dads” fulfills all those expectations. This documentary is more like a series of love letters instead of a thorough and inclusive investigation.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the various parts of the world (including the United States, South Sudan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, Australia), this biographical documentary of South Sudanese long-distance Olympian runner Guor Mading Maker features interviews with black, white and Asian people representing the poor to upper-middle-class.
Culture Clash: As a refugee of war-torn Sudan, Maker overcame numerous obstacles in his home country and elsewhere to get to the Olympics.
Culture Audience: “Runner” will appeal primarily to people who like real-life inspirational stories and sports documentaries.
Guor Mading Maker in “Runner” (Photo courtesy of Muse Production House and Lucky Hat Entertainment)
There have been many “triumphing against all odds” sports documentaries, but few will make as deep of an emotional impact on viewers as much “Runner.” The movie is the riveting biographical story of South Sudanese long-distance runner Guor Mading Maker (formerly known as Guor Marial) and his Olympic dreams. Along the way, he experienced horrific childhood trauma while growing up in war-torn Sudan, including being separated from his parents for 20 years, having most of his siblings killed during the war, and being captured and tortured by enemy soldiers.
“Runner” (directed by Bill Gallagher) was filmed over several years and includes interviews with Maker and several people who know him, as well as people involved in some way with helping Maker’s Olympic dreams come true. It’s never easy for any athlete to get to the Olympics, but most do not have the unique and daunting obstacles faced by Maker.
As a child in growing up in Sundan’s Pariang County during Sudan’s civil war, Maker’s parents feared that he would be killed in the war. So, in 1993, they sent him away to what they thought would be a safer place: the city of Bentiu, where he walked by himself and had to find ways to survive on his own. He sold nuts and mangos to make a living, but then he was captured by enemy soldiers, who forced him to become a thief for them. (The documentary effectively uses animation to illustrate his childhood.) He managed to escape with another kidnapped boy.
For the next four years, Maker drifted alone throughout southern Sudan. He then found his aunt (Zainab Mohagir), uncle and their daughter/Maker’s cousin (Ajok Majak) in a displacement camp. Together, they were all selected as part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and they moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 2001. (Mohagir and Majak are briefly interviewed in the documentary.)
While in the United States, Maker enrolled in high school and learned English. Pete Samuels, one of Maker’s former classmates from high school, remembers being immediately impressed by Maker’s unassuming but friendly demeanor: “He had a warm presence,” says Samuels. It wasn’t long before the athletic instructors at the school noticed that Maker was a superb runner.
Maker’s former gym teacher Eric Brown describes how he first got to know Maker: “The language barrier was a challenge at the time … He was tireless and had so much energy. When I saw him finally run, that’s when I saw something really special.”
Brown continues, “He didn’t even know what track was. He didn’t know running was a sport.” Maker concurs and says that the first time he heard the word “track” for running, he didn’t understand and thought people were saying “truck.”
Three days after trying out for the school’s track team, Maker was on the team as they went on state-level competitions. Samuels says of Maker: “He was a star on a state level immediately.” Tim Metcalfe, another former teammate from high school, also mentions how rapidly Maker outshone much of the competition. But things weren’t all smooth sailing for Maker during his new life in the United States.
Rusty Cofrin (Maker’s track and field coach from high school) and his wife Shirrill Cofrin noticed that Maker was very malnourished, as a result of his eating habits from his traumatic childhood. The Cofrins say in the documentary that they helped him have a healthier diet and also helped Maker get new front teeth, which were missing because they had been smashed out by a soldier’s gun when Maker was a child.
Even though Maker had found a better life for himself in the United States, he was still very much haunted by what happened to him and his family in Sudan. In the documentary, Maker describes the bold 1994 escape that he made from his abductors, who kept him tied up in a room where he was frequently tortured because he refused to join them on their killing sprees.
Maker says, with tears filling his eyes as he relives that horror of the experience, that he made up his mind to escape as soon as he could. He remembers what his thoughts were at the time: “I’d rather die running than die in this room.”
While living life as a high-school track star in New Hampshire, Maker received another devastating blow when one of his brothers died in Sudan. With eight of his nine siblings now dead, Maker said, “It made me feel powerless. I didn’t know what to do.” He was so distraught with grief that he wanted to quit track and field. However, Cofrin says he sternly told Maker that he couldn’t quit because his running talent would be his ticket to college and a better life so he could help his family left behind in Sudan.
In the end, Maker didn’t quit, and he eventually placed fifth in the New England High School Outdoor Track and Field Championships and enrolled at Iowa State University, where he continued to thrive as as runner. Corey Ihmels (who was his track and field coach at the university) and marathon runner Brad Poore both marvel in the documentary at how the first marathon that Maker participated in was the one that qualified Maker for the 2012 Olympics.
Maker, who says that his war-torn home country was always on his mind when he was competing in the track races, was qualified for the Olympics, but he didn’t have a country to represent at the time. South Sudan became a new nation in 2011, as part of a truce in Sudan’s civil war that split northern and southern Sudan. In 2012, the newly formed South Sudan did not have a National Olympic Committee, which each country is required to have to send athletes to the Olympics. Maker also wasn’t a U.S. citizen at the time. (He became a U.S. citizen in 2013.)
The news media found out about the story of an athlete being in this unique situation of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics but not having a nation to represent. The Chicago Tribune’s Peter Hersh, one of the first journalists to break the story, is interviewed in the documentary. International Olympics Committee director of communications Mark Adams also weighs in when talking about the special circumstance that led Maker to participate in the 2012 Olympics in London: Since he was not representing any country, Maker was allowed to compete by representing the Olympic flag.
Although he wasn’t officially representing any country at the 2012 Olympics, Maker still had plenty of South Sudanese people rallying around him with national pride. One such admirer interviewed in the documentary is Marina Ajith of the London South Sudanese Women’s Association, who helped organize enthusiastic events for Maker when he came to London for the Olympics. She’s also seen marching in a joyful parade procession holding a Sudanese flag that she made herself.
The last third of “Runner” is the best part of the documentary. The movie shows Maker going to South Sudan in 2013, to see his parents (mother Atheing Kon and father Miading Miaker) and his only surviving sibling (brother Monyjok Miaker) for the first time in 20 years. The reunion scenes are very emotional and will bring tears to many viewers’ eyes.
Even after accomplishing his goal of going to the 2012 Olympics, there was still more work ahead for Maker, who became passionately involved in helping people in South Sudan train for the 2016 Olympics. Maker was also involved in a nasty dispute with the South Sudan Athletic Federation (the documentary pretty much blames the federation for being corrupt and greedy), which caused the federation to suspend Maker, putting another obstacle in front of his Olympic dreams.
Fortunately, Maker was re-instated (which had to a lot to the immense public backlash against the the federation) and the documentary gives a candid look at Maker’s intense preparations to qualify for the 2016 Olympics, after South Sudan’s National Olympic Committee was approved by the International Olympic Committee. When Maker watches the approval proceedings on a live satellite TV feed with other Sudanese athletes, it’s another very emotional moment in the documentary.
Maker experiences many other setbacks, but his perseverance is truly inspiring not just because it’s about him achieving personal goals but also because he is a shining example of someone who selflessly gives back to the communities that represent his roots. His ability to overcome a traumatic past to uplift others who aren’t as lucky is something that is truly magnificent to behold. And now that South Sudan is embroiled in another civil war, the inspiration that comes from Maker is a legacy that goes beyond marathons and Olympic games.
Jacob Lagu, a South Sudanese activist, comments in the film: “If there’s one that unites a fractious country, it’s sporting heroes.” Lagu says of Maker: “He has taken all of that hurt and redirected it to positive energies.” You don’t have to be a sports fan or even a documentary fan to be moved by watching “Runner.” It’s not about winning Olympic medals. Long after Maker retires from the sport, his impact on the people he’s inspired will be felt for generations.
Muse Production House and Lucky Hat Entertainment released “Runner” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 19, 2020.
Culture Representation: The documentary “Disclosure” has a racially diverse group of entertainers and activists (white, black, Asian and Latino) discussing how transgender people are depicted in movies and television.
Culture Clash: The documentary examines damaging bigotry that leads to confusion, hatred and untrue or misleading stereotyping of transgender people.
Culture Audience: “Disclosure” will appeal mainly to people who care about the rights of transgender people, but the documentary is also worth viewing for people who need to be more educated on why movies and television have a major impact in how transgender people are treated by society.
Chaz Bono in “Disclosure” (Photo by Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix)
When the documentary “Disclosure” (directed by Sam Feder) premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, it was subtitled “Trans Lives on Screen.” That subtitle was removed when the film made its way to Netflix. And it’s too bad the movie no longer has this subtitle, since this description needed to be displayed loud and proud to announce the documentary’s subject matter. By stripping the documentary of its original subtitle, “Disclosure” just sounds like a generically vague movie, based on the title.
Title changes are usually made by the movie’s distributor for marketing reasons, in order to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. Perhaps whoever decided on this title change thought that having the word “trans” in any part of the documentary’s title would scare off potential viewers. If that was the main reason for dropping the subtitle “Trans Lives on Screen,” then it’s an ironic choice, since the entire movie is about de-stigmatizing and de-mystifying what it means to be a transgender person, as it relates to how trans people are portrayed in movies and on television.
“Disclosure” does a very good job overall of covering these issues by giving the entire narrative to trans people. Everyone interviewed in the documentary is a transgender entertainer and/or trans activist. (“Disclosure” director Feder is also transgender.) People interviewed in the movie include Laverne Cox, Angelica Ross, Brian Michael Smith, Yance Ford, Zeke Smith, Lilly Wachowski, Mj Rodriguez, Michael D. Cohen, Chaz Bono, Jamie Clayton, Alexandra Billings, Jen Richards, Tiq Milan, Nick Adams, Tre’Vell Anderson, Trace Lysette, Rain Valdez, Zackary Drucker, Marquis Vilson, Chase Strangio, Sandra Caldwell, Candis Cayne, Susan Stryker, Alexandra Grey, Jazzmun, Ser Anzoategui, Elliot Fletcher, Bianca Leigh, Leo Sheng, Mickey R. Mahoney and Hailie Sahar.
However, the documentary (which has a traditional format that blends interviews with archival footage) doesn’t do an adequate job of explaining variances along the gender spectrum. There are many people in society who get confused between being transgender and doing drag. It’s a confusion that the documentary further muddles by bringing up examples of drag impersonations in movies and television and putting them in the same category as transgender representation. Some of the documentary’s examples include Dustin Hoffman in 1982’s “Tootsie” and Robin Williams in 1993’s “Mrs. Doubtfire,” as well as female personas created by male comedians Milton Berle, Flip Wilson and Jamie Foxx on comedy TV series.
Here is what “Disclosure” should have done from the beginning before going into the flashy montages of film and TV clips: Educate people on the different identities in the gender spectrum.
The documentary assumes that people watching the film already know what “cisgender” means. The definition of “cisgender” is when someone identifies as the biological gender assigned at birth. The majority of people in the world are cisgender and use the pronouns “he/him” if they identify as male and “she/her” if they identify as female. Most cisgender people are heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex), while other cisgender people identify as “queer” (attracted to the same sex, both sexes or any gender) or “asexual” (not interested in any sex at all). It depends on the individual.
Transgender people are people who identify as the opposite of their biological gender they were assigned at birth. Transgender people have their own unique journeys on how and when they decide to present themselves as the gender they are. Many transgender people, for various reasons (usually pressures from society or family members), are forced to present themselves as the gender that is opposite of who they are.
Transgender people all over the world are fighting for the rights to be gendered correctly and to openly live their lives as the gender with which they identify, without being discriminated against for it. A transgender woman should have the pronouns “she/her” and a transgender man should have the pronouns “he/him.” Just like with cisgender people, sexuality for transgender people depends on an individual: Transgender people can be sexually attracted to any, all or no people on the gender spectrum.
Transgender people are often misidentified as doing drag. And that is a common misconception that the documentary really should have pointed out better. Drag is dressing up as the opposite sex. For transgender people, their gender identity isn’t “doing drag,” like a costume someone can put on and take off when they choose. The documentary really missed an opportunity to clarify between “doing drag” and “being transgender.”
Likewise, people can get confused over what “trans” means when there are transsexuals and transvestites. Transsexuals are transgender people who undergo gender confirmation surgery. Transvestites are cisgender people who dress up as the opposite sex. Transvestites are a subculture of drag culture, because transvestites are usually people who identify as straight or bisexual. None of that is explained in the documentary.
Also not mentioned in the documentary: There are some people who identify as “gender-fluid” and present themselves as male and female, depending on the situation. When gender-fluid people present as male, they want their pronouns to be “he/him,” and when they present as female, they want their pronouns to be “she/her.” Gender-fluid people are not to be confused with nonbinary people, who don’t identify as any gender and use the pronouns “they” and “them.”
Maybe the “Disclosure” filmmakers thought all of this information would be confusing to viewers. But a lot of people in the world don’t know that there is a gender difference between RuPaul (a cisgender gay man who does drag as a woman) and Laverne Cox (a transgender woman). A movie like “Disclosure” could have done a better job of educating people who are ignorant of these differences, instead of assuming that everyone who watches the film already knows what the differences are.
That being said, “Disclosure” has an impressive compilation of film/TV clips and personal stories from transgender entertainers who talk about how images on screen influenced (for better or worse) how they felt about themselves as transgender people. “Disclosure” also responsibly acknowledges the additional prejudice that transgender people can face from other members of the LGBTQ community.
There are also disproportionate levels of racism and sexism that transgender women of color experience, compared to cisgender queer white people. (Most hate crimes against transgender people are crimes against transgender women of color.) And because white transgender people get more representation on screen than transgender people of color, it causes limited stereotyping that can stifle the careers of transgender people of color. Actress/producer Valdez (who is of Filipino heritage and was raised in Guam) says in the documentary she’s spent her entire career trying to convince people that she can do roles other than the Asian “M. Butterfly” stereotype.
“Disclosure” offers a fairly comprehensive historical account of how transgender lives have been depicted in movies and television. The documentary includes examples of movies all the way back to the silent-film era. Two silent films released in 1914 are singled out in particular: director D.W. Griffith’s “Judith of Bethulia” and director Sidney Drew’s “A Florida Enchantment.”
But this is where “doing drag” and “being transgender” can get confused, since both films don’t really specify if the characters are really transgender or if the characters are cisgender people doing drag. For the first half of 20th century, the terminology just didn’t exist to make the distinction between the two types of identities.
Adding to the confusion is that many films from the silent-film era had shameful and degrading portrayals of women and people of color, with white men acting in those roles because white men were the ones usually allowed to get those roles in the first place. The practice of male actors dressing up as women goes back centuries before film was even invented, when women were not allowed to be actors.
Movies allowed roles for women, but early silent films still had a lot of men portraying women, simply because there weren’t enough women who were allowed to be actors. That doesn’t necessarily mean those characters were written as transgender or queer. It’s something that “Disclosure” should have put into better historical context.
However, actress/activist Cox (who is one of the executive producers of “Disclosure”) makes this noteworthy comment: “I think it’s fascinating that some of the earliest moving images were cross-dressed images. When you watch, it feels very much like womanhood is silly and is to be mocked.”
Oscar-nominated “Strong Island” director Ford says that he’s not surprised that movies from early filmmakers such as Griffith presented anyone who wasn’t a straight white male in a demeaning manner. Ford comments that he’s glad he didn’t go to film school because he would have walked out if they showed him Griffith’s pro-Ku Klux Klan film “Birth of a Nation,” which is often taught in films schools as one of the most influential movies of the silent-film era. “The Matrix” filmmaker Lilly Wachowski puts it bluntly when she says of Griffith: “You racist piece of shit.”
Transgender representation in films obviously became more pronounced in the latter half of the 20th century, when transgender identities and gender confirmation surgeries became more openly discussed in society. Some of the films mentioned as being influential for transgender representation include 1992’s “The Crying Game,” 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” 2013’s “Dallas Buyers Club” and 2015’s “The Danish Girl,” which were all nominees or winners of Academy Awards. For documentary films, 1990’s “Paris Is Burning” is praised as one of the most influential of all time for transgender representation.
However, even some of those films had problematic issues, according to some of the “Disclosure” interviewees. “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Dallas Buyers Club” and “The Danish Girl” all had cisgender actors portraying transgender people. Transgender activists have been advocating for filmmakers and TV showrunners to hire transgender people for transgender roles. “Dallas Buyers Club” (which was based on a true story) also got some criticism in “Disclosure” because some people think that Jared Leto’s fictional Rayon character (a transgender female) was written for the movie to make the straight male protagonist of the story, Ron Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey), look like the “heterosexual savior.”
In the “The Crying Game,” when transgender female character Dil (played by Jaye Davidson, who is transgender in real life) revealed that she has a penis, it caused her straight male love interest Fergus (played by Stephen Rea) to vomit. “Disclosure” criticizes films that resort to this negative and often unrealistic vomiting reaction whenever a cisgender person finds out that someone is transgender. The 1994 comedy “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” starring Jim Carrey, is cited as an example of this derogatory stereotyping.
The 1975 bank robbery film “Dog Day Afternoon,” starring Al Pacino, is mentioned as a mixed bag for transgender representation. This dramatic movie is based on a true story of a man who held a bank hostage in New York City so that he could get the money to pay for gender confirmation surgery for his transgender female lover. The documentary points out that in real life, the transgender lover definitely presented herself as a woman in the way she looked, acted and dressed. But in the movie, the transgender lover was played by a very cisgender male-looking Chris Sarandon, who wasn’t even dressed as a woman in the movie.
Many people in “Disclosure” point to the Buffalo Bill character from the 1991 Oscar-winning film “The Silence of the Lambs” as an even more distasteful and offensive representation of a transgender person. The Buffalo Bill character is named as the embodiment of the worst negative stereotypes that movies have in portraying transgender women as homicidal people who act as vultures to femininity and hate cisgender women. It’s part of a shameful legacy of many transgender people being written in movies and TV shows as either criminals or tragic figures with medical problems. It’s also why so many transgender characters end up dying in these movies and TV shows.
But once again, “Disclosure” confuses “transgender” with “drag” when it goes off on a tangent to have people discuss movies like 1982’s “Victoria/Victoria,” 1983’s “Yentl” and 1985’s “Just One of the Guys”— each film had the main character doing drag, not being transgender. Although it’s interesting that some of the interviewees in this documentary were influenced by these films, the cross-dressing characters in those movies were cisgender, not transgender. As the saying goes about not causing confusion: “Don’t get it twisted.”
Many of the interviewees say that the TV industry has been more progressive than the movie industry, when it comes to representing transgender people, but there is still room for improvement. Christine Jorgensen (the first widely known transgender American woman to have a gender confirmation operation) is considered a pioneer for transgender representation in the U.S. media, since her transgender journey was a big story in TV news in the 1950s, and she was a frequent guest on TV talk shows and news programs for years afterward.
And the LGBTQ activism of transgender women Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson that began in the 1960s—although not as frequently covered on TV as the activism of their white cisgender male counterparts—is mentioned as highly important and underrated. Some of the interviewees in “Disclosure” say that bigotry within the LGBTQ community has a lot to do with why transgender activists are often held back and overlooked in their own community.
The Emmy-winning FX drama series “Pose” (about New York City’s drag/trans ballroom culture in the late ’80s/early ’90s) is cited by many people as the gold standard of all transgender TV shows, in terms of accurate representation. But “Pose” (which debuted in 2018) is an anomaly, since it’s the first and so far only scripted TV series to have a transgender-majority cast. “Pose” co-star Rodriguez says that the show has had a tremendous positive impact in how people view the transgender community.
Janet Mock, who is a “Pose” writer/director, is not interviewed in “Disclosure,” but she’s mentioned as an important trailblazer for transgender people who work behind the scenes in television. In 2019, Mock signed an exclusive first-look deal with Netflix to be the showrunner of TV programs, becoming the first transgender person to get this type of TV deal. “Disclosure” includes some archival clips of TV interviews that Mock has done.
Other TV shows that are mentioned as having positive representations of transgender people are Netflix’s 2013-2019 dramedy series “Orange Is the New Black” (which had Cox as one of its cast members); Amazon Prime Video’s 2014-2019 comedy series “Transparent”; and the TLC reality show “I Am Jazz,” starring transgender female Jazz Jennings, who was 14 when the show premiered in 2015.
ABC’s 2007-2009 primetime TV soap opera “Dirty Sexy Money” had Cayne as the first openly transgender character in a U.S. primetime TV series, but she says that this milestone was marred when the decision was made to lower her voice octave in the show’s audio, to make her sound more “masculine.” Cayne says she was horrified when she saw the show’s premiere and found out that her voice was changed without her permission.
The documentary also points out that writers and producers are capable of evolving and improving representation of transgender people. “Pose” co-creator Ryan Murphy (an openly gay man) was also a showrunner of FX’s 2003-2009 drama series “Nip/Tuck,” which had a disturbing episode in 2004 that featured lead character Christian Troy (played by Julian McMahon) raping a transgender woman named Ava Moore (played by cisgender actress Famke Janssen) and finding out during the sexual assault that Ava is a post-operational transgender woman. In “Disclosure,” Cox gets emotional and teary-eyed when she remembers what it felt like to watch that “Nip/Tuck” rape episode.
The reason why Ava got the operation is also problematic: She previously lived life as a gay man, but got the operation to become a woman so that she could to try to get the love of a heterosexual man who wasn’t in love with her. It’s unlikely that Murphy would put that type of transgender storyline in any of his shows today.
“Disclosure” briefly mentions Caitlyn Jenner’s reality show “I Am Cait” and her coming-out journey on the reality show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” But the documentary also mentions that within the transgender community, Jenner is a controversial figure because she is an outspoken conservative Republican who supports political candidates who are against civil rights for the LGBTQ community.
TV talk shows are mentioned as being very important in showing transgender people on television. A transgender man named Reno, who was a guest on “The Jerry Springer Show” in 1998, is named as someone who was influential in particular to black transgender men, according to actor Vilson. “To see this image [of a black transgender man] on TV was really empowering,” Vilson says. “The Jerry Springer Show” was notorious for people revealing controversial “secrets” to their lovers, in the hopes of causing a fight on TV. On the show, Reno revealed to his girlfriend at the time that his true identity is being a transgender man.
Speaking of controversy, “Disclosure” seems to want distance itself from scandal-ridden actors who portrayed transgender people on screen. “Disclosure” doesn’t mention any of the sexual harassment allegations against award-winning “Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor (a cisgender man who played a transgender woman on the show), who was accused of sexually harassing women who worked on the show. Tambor denied the allegations but left the show in 2017.
Transgender actress Lysette (one of Tambor’s accusers, who guest-starred on the show) and “Transparent” co-star Billings (who is also transgender) are interviewed in the documentary but don’t mention the allegations. Either they talked about the scandal and it was cut out from the film or they didn’t talk about it all all. We might never know.
Also not mentioned at all in the documentary: the 2005 dramatic feature film “Transamerica,” starring Felicity Huffman as a transgender woman. Huffman (a cisgender actress) got an Oscar nomination for her role in “Transamerica,” but the “Disclosure” filmmakers probably don’t want people to be reminded that Huffman is part of transgender film history, because Huffman became a convicted felon in 2019, after she pleaded guilty in the college admissions scandal.
And speaking of transgender women on screen, “Disclosure” also mentions that there is disproportionately more representation of transgender women in American movies and TV than there are of transgender men, even though the number of transgender women and transgender men in the United States are about the same. Unfortunately, most of these transgender female roles in movies and TV are portraying sex workers, murder victims, sexual-assault victims or people going through some kind of medical drama. Transgender actor Smith has this theory: “I think we don’t see as much representation of trans men as trans women because people don’t think of trans men as sensational.”
The documentary points out that people’s attitudes toward trans people have a lot to do with traditional stereotyping of masculinity and femininity. Anything that challenges those stereotypes is often laughed at or despised. In 2011, transgender man Bono (whose famous mother is Cher) was the first transgender contestant on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” In “Disclosure,” he talks about how most people were accepting of him on the show, but there was still considerable backlash that he experienced from bigots.
Showtime’s 2004-2009 drama series “The L Word” was the first American primetime TV series to have a transgender male character as part of the show’s cast. The character Max Sweeney (played by nonbinary actor Daniela Sea) started out as a “butch” lesbian but then transitioned to living life as a transgender man. Max’s coming-out journey on the show highlighted the prejudices that cisgender people (straight and queer) can have toward transgender people, as Max found that some of his lesbian friends had a hard time accepting his identity as a transgender man.
Some people in “Disclosure” say that the lesbian team of writers and producers of “The L Word” did a disservice to the transgender community because the Max character was portrayed as confused, and the female characters’ bigotry against Max was acceptable. Transgender people say that if a transgender writer or producer had been part of the show at the time, Max would probably have been written as transgender from the start, since most transgender people are not confused about their identity but are often forced to hide it because of pressures from society.
“Disclosure” also mentions how gender roles and race can intersect when it comes to black men in comedy. Cox points out that many black male comedians dress up as women to emasculate themselves in a society that often demonizes the masculinity of black men. “Putting a black man in a dress, in some people’s minds, takes away the threat,” says Cox.
Although Cox says that the Geraldine character from “The Flip Wilson Show” had a big impact on her, as one of the first cross-dressing characters that she saw on TV, it’s an example of confusing “doing drag” with “being transgender.” A better example of an influential black transgender TV character mentioned by Cox is the Edie Stokes character on CBS’s 1975-1985 comedy series “The Jeffersons,” played by Veronica Redd (a cisgender actress) in a guest-starring role in 1978. Edie was a character who actually lived life as a transgender woman instead of just playing dress-up.
“Disclosure” also points out that transgender people are often at risk of being ridiculed in being represented on screen. Actress/writer Leigh says, “As a trans person, you have the most sensitive radar to tell if you’re laughing with us or laughing at us.” Media maker/writer Milan adds, “If I’m not laughing, is it a joke?”
Actress/writer Richards (who is known for her roles on the TV series “Better Things” and “Mrs. Fletcher”) says: “There is a one-word solution to almost all problems in trans media—’more.’ We just need more [representation].” But as many people point out in “Disclosure,” more representation should also mean better representation. And that should also include educating people better about what it means to be transgender, so that being transgender is not easily confused with people dressing up in drag.
Culture Representation: This intimate family documentary about country singer Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian, features interviews with only her four daughters: Rosanne Cash, Kathy Cash Tittle, Cindy Cash and Tara Cash Schwoebel.
Culture Clash: The four daughters claim that their mother’s legacy was overshadowed by Johnny’s relationship with his second wife, June Carter Cash, who might not or might not have deliberately tried to diminish Vivian’s importance in the family.
Culture Audience: “My Darling Vivian” will appeal primarily to fans of Johnny Cash and to people who are interested in “first wives of celebrities” stories.
Vivian Liberto Cash, Rosanne Cash, Kathy Cash and Johnny Cash in “My Darling Vivian” (Photo courtesy of Estate of Vivian Distin)
When country music legend Johnny Cash died in 2003, at the age of 71, much of the media coverage was about the fact the he died just four months after the death of June Carter Cash, who was his wife since 1968. What the media overlooked or barely mentioned was Johnny Cash’s life with his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash, who was married to him from 1954 to 1966, and who was the mother of his four eldest children (all daughters): Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara. The heartfelt and sentimental documentary “My Darling Vivian” is the daughters’ love letter to Vivian to honor their mother’s legacy.
Directed by Matt Riddlehoover, “My Darling Vivian” includes the expected archival footage and family photos, but what makes this documentary unusual is that the only people who are interviewed in the movie are Rosanne Cash, Kathy Cash Tittle, Cindy Cash and Tara Cash Schwoebel, who all make their comments in separate interviews. Riddlehoover produced “My Darling Vivian” with his husband, Dustin Tittle, who is Kathy’s son. Tara is a co-producer of the documentary.
With only family members as the filmmakers, does that make this documentary one-sided? Absolutely. But the Cash daughters say that they are the only living people who knew their mother best. And the daughters make it clear in the documentary that the movie is their way of taking back other people’s narratives that often caused their mother to be ignored or misunderstood.
The daughters point to the 2005 Oscar-winning film “Walk the Line” (starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash) as an example of an inaccurate portrayal of their mother Vivian, who was played by Ginnifer Goodwin in a fairly small role. “Walk the Line” (directed by James Mangold and written by Mangold and Gill Dennis) depicted Vivian as needy and shrewish, while June Carter Cash was depicted as Johnny Cash’s soul mate who “saved” Johnny from drug addiction and a bad marriage. “Walk the Line” was produced by Mangold’s then-wife Cathy Konrad and James Keach. Johnny and June’s son, John Carter Cash, was an executive producer of the film.
Tara (the youngest of the daughters) says of her mother Vivian: “My experience has been that people don’t really don’t know her. Ever since ‘Walk the Line’ came out, it did some damage and made her look bad.” She comments further on how “Walk the Line” affected her mother when the movie was released just two years after Johnny Cash’s death: “To experience a loss like that and have the whole world see, I think that was really hard for her.”
Cindy Cash adds, “I haven’t seen the movie and I don’t want to see the movie. I understand that the movie depicted her differently than she was. And honestly, I don’t think anyone had an impression of her before that. She had friends for 10 years who never knew that she was married to my dad.”
The daughters don’t really come right out and call June Carter Cash a “homewrecker” (perhaps because it wouldn’t look good if they spoke ill of the dead), but it’s clear that they believe that she had a lot to with breaking up their parents’ marriage and “erasing” Vivian from Johnny Cash’s public legacy. In addition to John Carter Cash (John and June’s son who was born in 1970), the Cash family includes June’s daughters Carlene and Rosie from her previous two marriages.
Rosanne (the eldest of Johnny Cash’s children) and Kathy (the second eldest) were born just one year apart (1955 for Rosanne, 1956 for Kathy) and were sometimes mistaken as fraternal twins when they were children. Rosanne says in the beginning of the documentary that all four daughters probably remember different versions of Vivian because their mother changed over time.
Because Rosanne and Kathy were close in age, their memories of Vivian are probably the most similar, while Cindy (born in 1959) has another perspective, and youngest daughter Tara (born in 1961) remembers their mother very differently from her older sisters. Rosanne says that the most emotionally challenging period of time for Vivian was when Vivian was in her 20s and 30s. “That was tough,” Rosanne comments.
“My Darling Vivian” starts out very much how the relationship of Vivian Liberto and Johnny Cash was in its early years: very romantic. In 1951, Vivian and Johnny met at a roller-skating rink in her hometown of San Antonio, Texas, when Vivian was 17 and Johnny was a 21-year-old Air Force enlistee in basic training. Three weeks after they met and began dating, he was sent to work in West Germany, where he was stationed for the next three years.
During that three-year separation, the couple exchanged hundreds of passionate love letters, some of which are shown and read in “My Darling Vivian.” After Johnny was honorably discharged from his Air Force duties in Germany, the couple got married in 1954 by Vivian’s uncle, who was a priest (she came from a strict Italian-American Catholic family), and started a new life in Memphis.
While in Memphis, Johnny began to pursue his dream of becoming a country singer/musician. Success and fame happened pretty quickly for him, not just because he was in the right place at the right time but also, as Rosanne tells it in the documentary, he was extremely persistent in his goals. And the daughters say that Vivian was very supportive of Johnny’s dreams and appreciated his talent, unlike the way Vivian was portrayed in “Walk the Line” as someone who had a negative attitude about Johnny being a musician.
Of course, being a touring musician comes with a lot of occupational hazards that can destroy relationships. Johnny had well-documented vices that included his addictions to amphetamines and alcohol. These addictions, as well as all the time that he spent away from home, took a toll on his marriage to Vivian.
But Vivian was no angel either. According to what Rosanne says in the documentary about Vivian: “She was damaged from the get-go.” Vivian grew up with a strict and demanding father, while Vivian’s mother was an alcoholic and very lenient. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that children of alcoholic/addicts often gravitate toward chaos in their personal lives. It might explain why Vivian tolerated many destructive and unhealthy things about her marriage when other people would have walked away.
Her daughters describe Vivian as someone who was very alone and isolated in a lot of ways. She spent a lot of time worrying about what Johnny was doing on tour. And even when he wasn’t on tour, he would often disappear for days without telling her where he was. As the eldest child, Rosanne remembers that her father’s drug use changed him (he had more irritable mood swings) and that it was traumatic for the whole family.
It’s mentioned in the documentary that Vivian because a close friend to Ella Grant, the wife of Marshall Grant, one of the musicians in Johnny’s band. But Vivian didn’t seem to have a close circle of friends or family to lean on for emotional support. For the most part, she was a wife and mother who was often alone to raise her four children and felt overwhelmed by it all. (The family didn’t have any nannies to help.)
When the Cash family moved from Memphis to a custom-built mansion in Casita Springs, California, the marriage began to further deteriorate. Johnny had a habit of bringing home stray animals and exotic pets—essentially turning their home into a menagerie—but it was Vivian who had to take of all of the animals and the children by herself.
Vivian was also constantly worried about her family’s safety. The house was located in the hills, where rattlesnakes and bobcats lived. And fans of Johnny Cash would randomly show up at the unprotected house, at all hours of the day and night.
To make matters worse, Vivian began to suspect that Johnny and his musical collaborator June Carter Cash were having an affair with each other. Rosanne remembers that after her mother discovered that Johnny was in fact cheating on her with June (he eventually left Vivian for June), Vivian still didn’t want her marriage to end. Her daughters say that Vivian remained in love with Johnny Cash for the rest of her life. Vivian kept almost all the mementos of their love affair, including the love letters and the rollerskates that she wore the day that she and Johnny met.
Vivian was also married to Johnny at a time when divorce was taboo, especially for people in certain religions such as Catholicism. She was also a homemaker who probably didn’t have any marketable skills to have a career outside the home. And most importantly, according to her daughters, Vivian really was in love with Johnny and was hoping that they could work out the problems in their marriage. But it wasn’t meant to be.
There were also some other major stresses on the marriage before it ended in divorce. Kathy got a bacterial disease and almost died. Johnny was arrested multiple times. And in 1965, Vivian was targeted by white supremacists, who accused her of being black. It was an accusation that she and Johnny vehemently denied.
The media spread the rumor that Johnny Cash was married to a black woman, thereby causing Johnny to be boycotted by certain places in the South. Vivian and Johnny had to get certified letters to prove that her race was white, in order for Johnny to be allowed to work in certain parts of the South again.
Rosanne remembers her mother being devastated by the failure of her marriage to Johnny. “She was grief-stricken, enraged … She had violent outbursts.” However, Rosanne also recalls being “relieved” by her parents’ divorce. “Divorce isn’t always bad,” says Rosanne.
However, Vivian felt so ashamed about the divorce that she temporarily went into hiding with her children. Rosanne says, “I remember her fearing her father’s judgment—and she got it.” Vivian was also harshly punished by the Catholic Church, which ex-communicated her because of the divorce. She was able to rejoin the Catholic Church only after Johnny Cash wrote a letter to the Catholic Church to declare that he, not Vivian, was to blame for the divorce.
Vivian’s marriage to second husband Dick Distin (a police officer turned businessman) isn’t remembered as fondly by her daughters. The marriage is described as a rebound relationship for Vivian and a marriage of convenience instead of true love. Perhaps not coincidentally, she and Johnny Cash married other people in the same year (1968).
Rosanne comments about her mother’s marriage to Distin: “It was a bargain: He got perks … She created a life for herself that made sense.” Vivian, who was a lifelong homemaker, liked to keep busy with hobbies such as dancing, painting and making homemade arts and crafts. Vivian and Dick Distin remained married until her death of complications from lung cancer in 2005.
Although the Cash daughters speak lovingly of their mother, “My Darling Vivian” isn’t a sugarcoated biography of her. In addition to her violent outbursts after her marriage to Johnny fell apart, Vivian also became very paranoid, by installing bells and alarms everywhere in her household. And just as Vivian’s had a demanding father, she was also demanding of her own children, according to Rosanne, who says: “It was hard to get her unmitigated approval.”
However, over time, Rosanne says that Vivian became a better mother. Vivian was more attentive to youngest child Tara than her other three daughters. According to Rosanne, Vivian was very loving and devoted to her grandchildren and a “better grandmother than she was a mother.” Rosanne shares a vivid, bittersweet memory of her mother on the day that Vivian died, which was on Rosanne’s 50th birthday: “I saw her become like a child. She was laughing.”
One thing is clear from watching this documentary: Even though she wasn’t perfect (no one is), Vivian was very much loved and respected by her children, and they believe she wasn’t given enough credit for being a good wife and mother. It’s impossible to know if Johnny and Vivian would have stayed married if he hadn’t fallen in love with June, but Johnny and Vivian’s daughters say that Vivian certainly gave Johnny a stable home life and loving support that allowed him to thrive early in his career.
One of the “wrongs” that the daughters want to correct is the rewriting of family history that seems to have been instigated by June Carter Cash and her supporters. June gave many interviews over the years that implied that she and Johnny had custody of his four daughters when the daughters were minors. (The documentary includes a clip from one of those TV interviews.)
In reality, Vivian had custody of the kids and they were primarily raised by Vivian. The documentary mentions that after Vivian’s death, her family found an unsent letter written to June that had Vivian asking June to stop misleading people into thinking that June was raising Vivian’s daughters.
Another part of the documentary shows footage from the 2003 all-star memorial tribute to the late Johnny Cash that was held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and later televised on CMT. Rosanne Cash’s ex-husband Rodney Crowell was one of the show’s performers in the musical tribute to Johnny Cash. Crowell dedicated his performance to Vivian, who was in the audience. It’s a dedication that was mysteriously edited out of the show when it was televised.
Years before she died, Vivian got Johnny Cash’s blessing to write her memoir. The book, titled “I Walked the Line: My Life With Johnny Cash,” was published posthumously in 2007. Many book critics were puzzled by the fact that much of the book’s content consisted of Johnny’s love letters to Vivian. Even in her own memoir, Vivian was overshadowed by Johnny Cash. With this documentary, Vivian’s family has succeeded in telling her story so that she is front and center where she belongs.
The Film Collaborative released “My Darling Vivian” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 19, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking primarily place in Mexico and the United States, this documentary about celebrity chef/author Diana Kennedy (a white British woman whose specialty is Mexican cuisine) features interviews with white and Latino people representing the wealthy and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Kennedy became a leading expert in Mexican cuisine, but she’s always at some risk of being accused of cultural appropriation.
Culture Audience: “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” will appeal primarily to foodies and people who like biographies of celebrity chefs.
Diana Kennedy in “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)
“Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” is a lot like the woman who is the subject of the documentary: matter-of-fact yet self-congratulatory and entrenched in tradition rather than experimentation. Born in 1923, British native Diana Kennedy (who participated in this film) is considered a leading expert in Mexican cuisine. This documentary that tells her life story follows the expected format of new interviews mixed with archival footage. If it weren’t for Kennedy’s sassy personality, the movie (which is the feature-film debut of director Elizabeth Carroll) would actually be pretty dull.
This is one of those laudatory celebrity documentaries where talking heads do nothing but praise the star of the movie. Celebrity chefs José Andrés, Rick Bayless, Gabriela Cámara, Pati Jinich, Alice Waters and Nick Zukin all gush about Kennedy in their separate soundbites featured the film. (Andrés and Zukin are two of the documentary’s executive producers.) The only real criticism of Kennedy actually comes from Kennedy herself, who describes herself as often being cranky, impatient and stubborn.
Cámara says about Kennedy: “I think she’s a legend. Many Mexicans are against admitting that she knows more than they do about their food.” Andrés comments, “You have to be Diana, to have the character she has, to achieve what she has achieved.”
Waters says of Kennedy’s influence on teaching Mexican cuisine: “She taught us the traditional ways and was not doing her own variation.” Bayless adds, “She’s the first person in the English-speaking world who first really mined the richness of regional Mexican cooking.”
Zukin gives this over-the-top compliment about Kennedy: “She’s a high prophet for Mexican food. Diana doesn’t care if people like her. She cares if Mexican food is evangelized … She’s going to tell you the truth.”
Jinich (the host of the PBS cooking show “Pati’s Mexican Table) has this to say: “I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts.” Abigail Mendoza, a chef and native of Mexico who has been a close friend of Kennedy’s since the 1980s, “Thanks to Diana, Mexican cuisine is where it is … And she’s very Mexican in her soul and heart.”
You get the idea. Fortunately, the documentary keeps these effusive soundbites to a minimum. “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” (which is named after one of her cookbooks) is at its best when it just lets the camera roll to show Kennedy living her life. As she says in the film: “I’ve had a funny life. Let’s face it.”
Although Kennedy undoubtedly has immense talent to earn all of this praise and respect, her cookbook editor Frances McCollough asks a question that this documentary attempts to answer: “How can it be that a white British woman knows more about Mexican food than anyone else?”
It’s pretty clear from watching the film that Kennedy is certainly an expert in her field, but she also had the privilege and connections to be handed a massive platform through the media and book deals. Perhaps equally talented native Mexican chefs haven’t reached the same level of success because of racial barriers in the culinary industry. Kennedy tells her version of her life story, which is edited in between scenes of her in the present day.
Born as Diana Southwood in Loughton, England, she doesn’t really talk about her childhood in the film. Instead, the documentary skips right to her tales of joining the Women’s Timber Corps during World War II. While in the Women’s Timber Corps, she learned to plant trees and developed her lifelong passion for the environment.
After World War II, she was invited to go to Jamaica. Kennedy comments on her decision to live in the Caribbean: “I was propelled by a lot of hormones.” She says that while she was in Jamaica, she was nearly kidnapped.
And then she moved on to Haiti, where she had a fateful stay at Hotel Olafsson in 1957. She checked into the hotel on the same day as a handsome stranger named Paul P. Kennedy, an older man who was a correspondent for The New York Times in Mexico. Diana moved to Mexico to be with Paul, and she says she fell in love with him just as she fell in love with Mexico. She says in the documentary that Paul will always be the love of her life.
She eventually married Paul, whom she describes as someone who was the life of the party and a person who had a warm and humorous personality that naturally drew other people to him. In her early years of living in Mexico, Diana developed a habit that she has continued throughout her life: She would go to village marketplaces to sample the local cuisine, find out how it was made, and ask the local merchants what kinds of food that they and their families were eating.
Diana says that most chefs who study other cultures’ cuisines don’t take the time to interview local people to find out what their families are eating. She gives herself a lot of praise in the film for taking that extra step, and she says that’s probably why she has more credibility in Mexican cuisine than other chefs of Mexican cuisine who aren’t natives of Mexico.
In her early years of living in Mexico, Diana says she didn’t have a car, so she would take a “third-class bus” (the type that lets chickens and other animals on board) to make these excursions to various marketplaces. She definitely has a car now. Some of the funniest scenes in the documentary are of Diana nimbly driving her Nissan SUV and showing mild signs of road rage, as she impatiently curses other drivers underneath her breath. Diana has a real fondness for the car, which she says has taken her through every imaginable terrain and weather.
Diana and Paul had a happy life in Mexico, and she says she was lucky that he accepted her for being “crazy.” She worked at the British Council, while he continued to work for The New York Times. Diana says, “I certainly wasn’t the traditional housewife. I never wanted children.” (Paul already had two daughters from a previous marriage. Diana’s stepdaughters are not seen or mentioned in the film.)
But then, tragedy struck when Paul was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1965. Diana and Paul moved to New York City so that he could get medical treatment. But by 1967, he was dead. The following years that Diana spent as a widow in New York City were some of the loneliest and saddest in her life, she says. Diana never remarried.
But when one door closes, another one opens. After Paul died, Craig Claiborne—who was The New York Times food editor from 1957 to 1986—set Diana on a path to become a world-renowned chef whose specialty is Mexican cuisine. Diana had always loved cooking, but she didn’t see herself as becoming a professional chef until she got the motivation and help from Claiborne.
Diana says that she once offered to get a Mexican cookbook for Claiborne, and his response was that he didn’t want a Mexican cookbook unless she wrote it herself. At the time, Diana had been giving private cooking classes in her home to privileged society women in New York. Thanks to Claiborne, The New York Times gave Diana a prominent feature article about her cooking classes. This media coverage led to other opportunities, and the rest is history.
Diana eventually moved back to Mexico, where she still teaches small, private cooking classes in her home, which is a spacious villa called Quinta Diana, in Michoacán, Mexico. The documentary includes footage of her teaching a class of a diverse group of people, ranging from experienced chefs who have multiple restaurants to a relative novice who’s only been cooking for three years.
There’s also archival footage of Diana on her TLC series “The Art of Mexican Cooking With Diana Kennedy,” which was on the air in the early 1990s. And there’s a clip of Diana as a guest on “The Martha Stewart Show,” with Diana making traditional Mexican tamales with Martha Stewart.
The documentary also shows Diana at industry events, such as when she was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame at the 2014 James Beard Awards, or when she was a panelist at The Los Angeles Times Food Bowl in 2018. During a Food Bowl studio photo session separately and together with fellow chef Cámara, the photographer comments to Diana about how feisty Diana is. At one point during the photo session, Diana jokes, “Thank God my black panties don’t show.”
The documentary takes such a reverential approach to Diana Kennedy that it doesn’t really have her reflect on all the opportunities that came her way because of her privileged situation. Yes, she’s undoubtedly talented, and she has many fans who are native Mexican chefs. But Diana came up at a time when white people were almost exclusively given the best opportunities for chefs to reach a worldwide audience through the media and book deals.
Diana says in the documentary that perhaps her biggest influence was Mexican cookbook author Josefina Velázquez de León. However, Velázquez de León would never have been given the same glamorous opportunities for fame and fortune that were given to Diana Kennedy. A lot more people know who Diana Kennedy is rather than the Mexican chef/author who was Diana Kennedy’s biggest influence.
Nowadays, culinary audiences are more attuned to giving cultural credit where credit is due. Cultural appropriation is not as acceptable as it was before the 21st century. Although the documentary hints that some very talented native Mexican chefs might have been overshadowed by Diana Kennedy, there is no further exploration of that subject, since the filmmakers only seem concerned with portraying Diana Kennedy as the best thing that ever happened to Mexican cuisine. It’s a “fan worship” mentality that’s a little off-putting to people who expect documentaries to have a more objective approach.
One thing that the documentary captures well is Diana’s tireless work ethic, since there are many scenes in the film that make it obvious that she has no intentions of retiring. Diana says, “One is never satisfied. There is so much more I’d like to do.” She also says, “You’ve got to realize that cooking is the biggest comeuppance.”
Diana is also very outspoken about her concerns about the environment and where the world is headed. She gives this rant in the documentary: “I think it’s shocking that the more we are connected electronically, the less we are united.”
She continues: “And then, in certain parts of the world, machos come along like [Vladimir] Putin and [Donald] Trump and all the rest of it and want to change it. They don’t see the beauty of this world. We’re destroying our planet. We’re destroying our environment, and it’s such a loss for young people today.”
Diana also shares her philosophy on life. “You can’t win them all.” She adds, “How horrible it is for people to go around wanting to be loved and liked. You just go on doing what you know what you want to do. And at some point, the tide will turn and you make your mark—or you may not.”
Although Diana is extremely confident about her abilities and accomplishments, she shows some humility when she says, “I’m very honored the way so many people look at my books and appreciate what I’ve done. That’s all you can do—and cook for them.”
The cooking scenes in the documentary are fairly good, but not outstanding. What’s actually more impressive is the documentary’s cinematography of Mexico’s gorgeous landscape. Some of the aerial shots are breathtaking. (Paul Mailman and Andrei Zakow are credited as the film’s cinematographers.)
“Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” is not a bad documentary. It’s just not a very insightful or revealing film. It’s the documentary equivalent of a Wikipedia page instead of an illuminating biography.
Greenwich Entertainment released “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on May 22, 2020. The movie’s digital/VOD release date is June 19, 2020, and the DVD release date is June 23, 2020.
Culture Representation: The documentary “Public Enemy Number One” takes a historical look at the “war on drugs” the United States, by interviewing several experts and commentators (who are mostly white male Americans), such activists, authors and past and present law enforcement.
Culture Clash: The documentary takes the position that the war on drugs has been an abysmal failure and that U.S. drug laws need major reforms.
Culture Audience: “Public Enemy Number One” will appeal primarily to people who believe that certain drugs (such as marijuana) should be decriminalized, but the movie also should be informative to people who aren’t aware of the long-term social impact of the war on drugs.
Keith Stroup in “Public Enemy Number One” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)
Several documentaries have been made in the 21st century about the U.S. government’s “war on drugs” and almost all of these documentaries come to the same conclusion: The war has failed and is a reflection of the racial inequality in the criminal justice system. Most people who buy and sell drugs in the United States are white, but most people who are in U.S. prisons (whose numbers are growing) on drug charges are black and Latino. “Public Enemy Number One” (directed by Robert Rippberger) takes a chronological look at how various U.S. presidential administrations handled the war on drugs, beginning with the administration of Richard Nixon to the administration of Barack Obama. There really isn’t anything new uncovered in “Public Enemy Number One,” but the documentary might be informative to a lot of people who are unaware of these issues.
“Public Enemy Number One” follows the traditional documentary format of mixing archival footage with new interviews. The movie has a clear agenda to advocate for decriminalization of certain drugs (particularly marijuana) and aims to shine a light on how the prison system has become a big business that relies on racism to thrive. (Ava DuVernay’s Emmy-winning 2016 Netflix documentary “13th” extensively covers this topic of racial inequality in the American criminal justice system.)
The Nixon administration was the first to formally declare a “war on drugs,” with Nixon’s notorious 1971 speech that drug abuse was “public enemy number one” for America. It was a way for the federal government to create a new law enforcement agency—the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which on the surface was supposed to enforce the illegal drug trade.
Drug Police Alliance founder Ethan Nadlemann says that the DEA was really just the Nixon administration’s way of trying to control civil unrest over the Vietnam War and race inequality, because the DEA disproportionately targeted black people and radical protesters of the war for arrests. Dan Baum, author of “Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure,” says in the documentary that the late John Ehrlichman, who was Nixon’s counsel and Assistant to the President for domestic Affairs, admitted this government targeting in a 1993 interview that Baum did with Ehrlichman.
Baum comments that the DEA is “half-law enforcement, half-Hollywood. They go out Elliott Ness-ing around the country and making sure that the cameras are there.” The arrests of black people and left-wing radicals during the Nixon administration were done for a show for the media. Those media images and reports then created negative stereotypes that radical left-wingers and black people were mainly responsible for the drug problem in the United States.
Dr. Robert Dupont, who was the U.S. Drug Czar from 1973 to 1977, says in the documentary that he was told he would be fired if he ever went against Nixon’s anti-marijuana agenda. Jack Cole, co-founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, remembers his days as an undercover agent in New Jersey, where he would bust small-time drug users who used drugs in small friend groups. Cole says that the biggest mistake that the government made back then was to classify all illegal drugs as the same.
It was during the Nixon administration that National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was formed in 1970. Most of the members were white people with professional jobs (such as lawyers), thereby contradicting the media’s untrue stereotype at the time that most marijuana advocates were radical hippie types. The main goals of NORML were to decriminalize or legalize marijuana in all 50 states, and not put marijuana in the same category as drugs such as heroin or cocaine. NORML founder Keith Stroup says in the documentary: “We thought we would be finished [with our goals] within five years of 1978.”
After Nixon was impeached and resigned in disgrace in 1974, U.S. culture during the rest of the 1970s (under the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) had a more relaxed and accepting attitude toward illegal drug use, particularly marijuana. The 1978 Cheech and Chong marijuana stoner movie “Up in Smoke” is named as an example of a mainstream movie that couldn’t have been made before the 1970s.
NORML founder Stroup admits that during the late 1970s, NORML took a hit in its credibility when Stroup began feuding with Dr. Peter Bourne (who was U.S. Drug Czar from 1977 to 1978) over paraquat, a toxic chemical that is mostly used as an herbicide. NORML accused the U.S. government and the Florida state government of deliberately spraying paraquat over marijuana plants, in order to poison marijuana users. The conspiracy theory was later debunked, and Stroup admits in the documentary that he was wrong. Bourne comments on the paraquat controversy: “I believe it was blatant nonsense.”
The U.S. administration eras of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush marked a return to stricter drug laws and less tolerant views on drugs in society. Nancy Reagan made the “Just Say No” campaign famous. More parents groups were formed as lobbyists to government to make stricter drug laws. The shocking cocaine-related death of rising basketball star Len Bias in 1986 is also mentioned in the documentary as an important milestone in American society’s backlash against illegal drugs during the 1980s. And, of course, the epidemic of crack cocaine began in the ’80s, destroying many families and communities.
Rapper/actor Ice-T (who is an executive producer of “Public Enemy Number One”) explains why drugs and poverty are intertwined in so many African American communities: “It all starts off with no hope, lack of education, not being able to actually enter the system.” He adds that many people in these communities think, “‘I can’t make a living wage, but over here is a way.’ And you try to do that, and you end up in prison or with your life devastated.”
Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, also attributes the increase in drug-related arrests in the 1980s to another factor: more money for law enforcement. Franklin says, “That’s why so many cops liked Ronald Reagan—because we got raises.” Franklin and others in the documentary point out that illegal drugs are the only type of crime in the U.S. were police officers get paid extra for arrests.
The Bill Clinton administration of the 1990s gets heavy criticism for implementing mandatory minimum sentences (also known as the “three strikes” law), where the punishments often don’t fit the crimes. Mandatory minimum sentences are usually cited as one of the biggest examples of why the war on drugs has failed. Nadlemann calls mandatory minimum sentences “McCarthyism on steroids.” In recent years, Clinton has admitted that the mandatory minimum sentencing law was a mistake.
People interviewed on the judicial side say the war on drugs has failed because of agendas and ambitions of government politicians. James Gray, a former California Supreme Court judge, calls the war on drugs: “Great politics, lousy government.” Gerry Goldstein, a U.S. Supreme Court trial attorney, says there’s little incentive to change most drug laws if the general public thinks these laws are working. “Politicians want to get re-elected, plain and simple.”
The 2000s (when the George W. Bush administration was in power for most of the decade) saw the continued rise of the U.S. prison population, due in large part to mandatory minimum sentences. Prisoners are essentially used as little more than slave labor. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition founder Cole doesn’t mince words: “The war on drugs is the new Jim Crow. It’s aimed at controlling black folks … and making money off of it.”
That doesn’t mean that all people in prison are innocent and don’t deserve to be there, say the experts in the documentary. It means that black people, more than any other racial group in America, tend to get arrested and punished more harshly for the same crimes that other racial groups also commit, according to Perry Tarrant of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement. Ice -T comments, “There’s a lot of money being spent to not solve the problem.”
“The easiest way for people to understand the absurdity of the war on drugs is to focus on marijuana,” says Nadlemann. Under the Obama administration, more states began to legalize marijuana. The Obama administration also made attempts to lower federal sentences for crimes involving marijuana. Because “Public Enemy Number One” only covers the war on drugs up until the Obama administration, the documentary unfortunately looks very dated.
However, the documentary does a good job of presenting both sides of the issue, by including viewpoints of anti-drug activists Those who are interviewed are “Parents, Peers and Pot” author Marsha “Keith” Schuchard; Parents/Pride Movement founder Thomas Gleaton; Dr. Howard Samuels of The Hills Treatment Center; Smart Approaches to Marijuana founder Kevin Sabet; and Ian McDonald, U.S. Drug Czar from 1987 to 1988, who says, “Marijuana’s risks and dangers were being ignored.”
“Public Enemy Number One” packs in a lot of information in its total running time of 70 minutes. People who’ve seen similar documentaries or news reports about the war on drugs probably won’t learn anything new. But for people who don’t know anything about this aspect of the U.S. criminal justice system, this documentary is a good place to start without having to make a big time commitment.
Gravitas Ventures released “Public Enemy Number One” on digital and VOD on June 12, 2020.
