2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Circus of Books’

May 3, 2019

by Carla Hay

Circus of Books
Rachel Mason with parents Barry and Karen Mason in “Circus of Books” (Photo by Gretchen Warthen)

“Circus of Books”

Directed by Rachel Mason

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 26, 2019.

“Circus of Books” is a truly unique documentary that tells the behind-the-scenes story of Circus of Books, the Los Angeles-based company that got most of its profits through gay male pornography and operated multiple stores and a production company. Circus of Books—which had the same owners from 1982 until the business closed in February 2019—was literally a “mom and pop” operation, since the business was owned by married couple Karen and Barry Mason, who are the parents of three children. Their middle child, Rachel, directed this film to chronicle the history of Circus of Books and the last days before the business shut down.

Rachel takes the Werner Herzog/Michael Moore documentarian approach of being the narrator, on-camera interviewer and one of the stars of the movie. The documentary begins by showing the history of the bookstore before the Masons owned it. The LGBTQ activist Black Cat demonstration in 1967 in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood preceded the Stonewall demonstrations in New York City by two years, but both were important events in gay civil rights that had similarities, because both were sparked by LGBTQ people fighting back against police harassment and raids of gay nightclubs.

The Black Cat nightclub and the New Faces nightclub were part of the Los Angeles gay nightlife scene in the 1960s. New Faces would eventually become the gay bookstore Book Circus. When Book Circus went out of business, the Masons took it over and renamed the space Circus of Books, which carried a wide array of family-friendly inventory, but it was outsold by what was in the adult section of the store. So how did this straight Jewish couple end up in the gay porn business?

Karen, whom many people in the documentary describe as bossy and domineering, started off as a criminal-justice journalist, who worked for publications such as the Wall Street Journal (in the Chicago bureau) and the Cincinnati Enquirer. Barry, who’s described as gentle and laid-back, used to work at the University of California at Los Angeles’ film department in the mid-1960s, when the Doors members Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were briefly students there, before the Doors became a world-famous rock band. Barry worked in special effects and had credits that included the original “Star Trek” TV series.

Barry applied his skills in special effects to invent dialysis equipment in the early years of his marriage to Karen. The couple then went into the business together to sell the equipment and were doing well financially. But then they made the mistake of selling the rights to the equipment, and they began to have financial hardships. It was during this challenging time in their marriage that Karen saw an ad seeking distributors for porn magazines. She answered the ad, thinking that it was a temporary way to make money until they could become more financially stable.

When the owner of the West Hollywood store Book Circus was facing eviction because he wasn’t paying his rent, Barry jumped at the chance to take over the business, and he and Karen changed the name of the store to Circus of Books. The business became so successful that they opened a second location in the Silver Lake neighborhood in 1985. (The Silver Lake location closed in 2016.) A third Circus of Books location opened in Sherman Oaks in the late 1980s, but lasted for only two years; it was shut down because of too many neighborhood complaints about the store’s adult content and the clientele it attracted. The Masons further expanded the business by starting a gay porn film-production company. Porn star Jeff Stryker, porn director Matt Sterling and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt are among the Masons’ former colleagues who are interviewed in the movie.

Karen describes herself as religious, while Barry says that he’s not. (Because of their differing views on religion, she calls their relationship a “mixed marriage.”) Even though she and Barry made their living from hardcore porn, Karen says she never really liked to see any of the porn that they sold. She also didn’t want to hear details about the cruising and sexual activities that were going on at Circus of Books. (In 1989, the city of West Hollywood ordered that the store shut down between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., in response to complaints about hustlers at Circus of Books.) Karen’s ability to separate her religious beliefs from her business activities is demonstrated in a scene where she goes to a convention for sex toys and looks over products in a sales-minded, detached manner. It’s almost like she’s the owner of a hardware store who’s shopping for tools and pondering the sales value of what she might buy.

Past and present store employees say that even though Karen never really watched the porn that she sold, what she did watch closely was the financial accounting for the business, and she was a strict “taskmaster” boss, while Barry was more likely to give their employees some slack if they made a mistake. In the years before the Internet changed the porn industry, business was booming for Circus of Books.

Things also began to change for Circus of Books in 1993, when the Masons were busted for transporting obscene material across state lines, due to the mail-order part of their business. The FBI got involved, but the parents kept their legal problems hidden from their three kids. Even though Bill Clinton’s election as U.S. president meant that new prosecutors were appointed to the Masons’ case, the case wasn’t dismissed until 1995. The legal turmoil that the Masons went through had repercussions on the business for many years to come.

As the director of the documentary, Rachel is shown on camera interviewing people, including Circus of Books employees; her parents; and her older and younger brothers. Viewers get to see some of their family dynamics, as Rachel (who describes herself as an artistic free spirit) tries to figure out how her parents’ unusual line of work might have affected their family. Rachel doesn’t really interrogate as much as have conversations with the people involved in the business.

On the one hand, the family is disappointed that they have to close Circus of Books—the rise of Internet porn and gay dating apps such as Grindr essentially made Circus of Books an obsolete business. On the other hand, the business was losing so much money in its last few years (plus, Karen and Barry Mason were getting ready to retire anyway) that shuttering the business is almost a relief for the family.

What viewers won’t be seeing in this documentary are explicit scenes of gay porn, nor will they see undercover video of people cruising at Circus of Books, although there are some people interviewed in the film who talk about their cruising experiences. What’s more surprising (and revealing) is how someone as conservative and religious as Karen lasted as long as she did in the gay porn business. It’s clear from watching the film that she saw the business only as a means to make money to provide a comfortable life for her family. She didn’t see the customers as “family,” only as part of the business.

That emotional detachment explains why Karen had a difficult time coming to terms with her homophobia when her youngest child, Josh (Rachel’s younger brother), came out as gay when he was in college. (By contrast, Barry was more accepting of Josh’s sexual orientation.) In the documentary, Josh talks about the anguish of keeping his sexuality a secret.

And in case anyone is ignorant enough to think his parents’ line of work made him gay, Josh reiterates that he would be gay regardless of what his parents did for a living. According to the documentary, when the Mason children were growing up, Karen and Barry apparently went to great lengths not to expose their children to the porn that Karen and Barry sold. The spouses kept the type of business they did a secret for many years from their children and people in their straight community. In the years before the Internet existed, it was easier to keep this type of secret.

Growing up, Josh was considered the “perfect” child who excelled in school, but he was afraid to come out as gay because he knew it would upset his mother. The irony is not lost on Rachel, who confronts her mother about the hypocrisy of making a living from gay customers and yet not be willing to accept that one of her children is part of the gay community too. The documentary points out that it took years for Karen to be at the place where she is now: a proud member of PFLAG, the organization for parents, families and friends of lesbians and gays.

“Circus of Books” is a low-budget film that keeps the production values very basic in telling the story. There’s no fancy editing or arty cinematography. The movie also strikes the right balance between showing touches humor but not at the expense of addressing serious topics, such as the effect that the AIDS crisis had on numerous Circus of Books customers and employees. On the surface, the movie is about a gay porn business and how it affected the gay social scene in Los Angeles. But underneath the surface, this documentary is really about how this “mom and pop” business affected the family who owned it.

Netflix will premiere “Circus of Books” on April 22, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Lucky Grandma’

May 3, 2019

by Carla Hay

Tsai Chin in "Lucky Grandma"
Tsai Chin in “Lucky Grandma” (Photo by Lyle Vincent)

“Lucky Grandma”

Directed by Sasie Sealy

Cantonese, Mandarin and English with subtitles

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

Things aren’t going so well for Grandma Wong, the title character in the crime dramedy “Lucky Grandma.” Grandma Wong (played by Tsai Chin) is a feisty, 80-year-old, chain-smoking resident of Manhattan’s Chinatown, and she hates that her son wants to take away her independence by having her move in with him and his family in Brooklyn. When a fortune teller says that Grandma Wong will have a rewarding day, she heads to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Queens to try her luck at gambling.

Grandma Wong wins thousands of dollars—but then she gets greedy and thinks she can win more, so she gambles some more, and she loses all the money. While on the bus to go back home, a defeated Grandma Wong notices that the sleeping man sitting next to her has a duffel bag full of cash. Even though she sees that the man has a gang tattoo on his neck, Grandma Wong can’t resist temptation, and she steals the money.

Flush with the cash, Grandma Wong goes on a spending spree, which apparently didn’t go unnoticed by the locals. In a short period of time, she arrives home and finds two gangsters in her apartment, demanding to know where the money is. She denies knowing anything about it. One of the thugs slices his tongue in front of her to show that he’s so tough, he can withstand the pain.

Grandma Wong might have made the impulsive decision to steal the money, but she’s not a complete fool. She’s hidden the money in a place where it would be difficult to find, and she knows that the gangsters won’t kill her as long as they need her to tell them where the money is. Grandma Wong quickly decides that she’s going to need protection in order to keep the money. She goes to a rival gang and asks the leader Lao Shei (played by Zilong Zee) to help her. Grandma Wong has to dip into her stolen loot to pay for these services.

And who does the rival gang send to protect her? Big Pong (played by Corey Ha, also known as former basketball player Hsiao-Yuan Ha), a very tall (6’7”) member of the gang. Big Pong isn’t exactly an ideal bodyguard. Even though his height can be intimidating, he’s out-of-shape and doesn’t have a lot of fighting skills.

The two gangsters who broke into Grandma Wong’s apartment return to her home and try again to get her to return the money. One of the gang members gets into a scuffle, hits his head on a table, and dies. Because Grandma Wong doesn’t want to go to the police about this matter, she’s now involved with covering up the death of the gang member.

What follows is a cat-and-mouse game that involves a kidnapping, lots of violence, and an unlikely friendship that develops between Grandma Wong and Big Pong. The movie sometimes veers into slapstick comedy, but there’s enough menacing mayhem to remind people that the characters’ lives are always in danger.

“Lucky Grandma,” which is the first feature film from writer/director Sasie Sealy has some entertaining moments, especially those involving the banter between Grandma Wong and Big Pong, although the movie’s ending isn’t very original. “Lucky Grandma” is not a deep or complicated film, but it does have an underlying message that people should not be quick to dismiss or underestimate the power of a very determined and stubborn elderly woman.

UPDATE: Good Deed Entertainment will release “Lucky Grandma” in select U.S. virtual theaters on May 22, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘American Woman’

May 3, 2019

by Carla Hay

Hong Chau and Sarah Gadon in "American Woman"
Hong Chau and Sarah Gadon in “American Woman” (Photo by Ken Woroner)

“American Woman”

Directed by Semi Chellas

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

The dramatic film “American Woman” (starring Hong Chau) has the unfortunate coincidence of having the same title as another dramatic film named “American Woman” (starring Sienna Miller), with both movies about females who’ve gone missing—although each movie has very different reasons for why these females have disappeared and why people are searching for them. The “American Woman” movie starring Hong Chau and directed by Semi Chellas is the one with the world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it will be released after the Miller-starring “American Woman” movie.

At the beginning of the “American Woman” movie starring Chau, Chau’s Jenny character is being interrogated by a law-enforcement officer for a serious crime. The rest of the movie is a flashback to what led to Jenny’s arrest. We find out that Jenny is a Japanese-American who has been living in 1970s upstate New York, doing renovation work for a racist retiree named Miss Dolly (played by Ellen Burstyn).

Jenny’s background is murky, but during the course of the movie, we find out that she’s no mild-mannered fixer-upper. She’s been heavily involved in radical, anti-government activities that include bombings and robberies in the name of protests against the Vietnam War and the establishment. And she’s an FBI outlaw. Miss Dolly suspects that Jenny is hiding from the law—but Miss Dolly isn’t quite sure what crime(s) Jenny has committed—and she uses that suspicion to take advantage of Jenny by making her work long hours for below the market wage.

We see that Jenny is writing to someone named Michael, who’s in prison. Michael is part of a mysterious underground network of radicals that has committed a series of bank robberies and bombings throughout the United States. Their crime spree includes kidnapping a newspaper heiress named Pauline (played by Sarah Gadon), who’s joined the group in their criminal activities and may or may not have been brainwashed. (The Pauline character is obviously inspired by the real-life Patty Hearst.)

In Jenny’s letter to Michael, she agrees to help hide and take care of three of the group’s fugitives while they write a book that explains their political beliefs and why they’ve committed extreme crimes. Jenny knows that the underground network is financed by criminal activities, so by taking care of these fugitives, she knows that she will have to commit other crimes too. We find out later that the mysterious “Michael” in the letter is Michael Fisher, one of the leaders of the underground network, and Jenny (who also uses the name Iris) is his girlfriend, and she has a history of making bombs.

Jenny quits her job, and she buys an old car from Miss Dolly before she leaves. The fugitives are staying in Monticello, New York, at an isolated farmhouse that they’ve rented under aliases. The outlaws whom Jenny has been tasked with caring for are heiress Pauline, who’s been nicknamed “Princess”; bossy Juan (played by John Gallagher Jr.), a domineering jerk; and Juan’s romantic partner Yvonne (played by Lola Kirke), who is very passive and somewhat afraid of Juan.

In one scene in the movie, we see why Yvonne might be afraid of Juan. When Juan orders Pauline to do something, and she responds, “Don’t tell me what to do,” he hits her in the face. Jenny also has an independent streak, so she naturally clashes with Juan too, but since Juan and the rest of the group are dependent on Jenny to do their grocery shopping and other outside activities, Juan doesn’t get physically abusive with Jenny. Pauline and Jenny’s mutual dislike of Juan bonds the two women in a budding friendship, which foreshadows what happens later in the movie.

“American Woman” is not as suspenseful as it could have been, simply because the movie reveals in the very beginning that Jenny has been arrested. The film often moves at a slow pace in order to depict the isolation and secrecy experienced by the people who are hiding out from the law. There’s a tension-filled scene in the film where the owner of the farmhouse—a middle-aged man named Bob (played Matt Gordon)— unexpectedly shows up, and Jenny has to quickly make up a lie for why she is there. Later in the story, Juan threatens Jenny at gunpoint to force her to commit a serious crime, and it sets off a chain of events in the third act of the film.

“American Woman” is based on Susan Choi’s novel of the same name. The Jenny character was inspired by the real-life Wendy Yoshimura; Jenny’s boyfriend Michael Fisher is inspired by the real-life Willie Brandt (leader of the Revolutionary Army); and Juan and Yvonne are inspired by the real-life couple Bill and Emily Harris, the members of the Symbionese Liberation Army who hid out with Patty Hearst in rural New Jersey, with the help of Yoshimura.

Because “American Woman” is told from Jenny’s perspective, the other characters (except for Pauline, whom Jenny befriends) are written as somewhat one-dimensional. Even though the actors handle their roles capably, there’s a disconnect in how “American Woman” writer/director Semi Challas depicts the outlaws on screen: These characters are supposed to be firebrand radicals, but they’re written as somewhat dull and soulless. Viewers watching this movie will have a hard time believing that these outlaws are so passionate about their cause that they want to write a book about it, because the movie portrays them as lethargic and un-creative.

As the protagonist, Jenny is an introverted character, so the movie might make some people impatient to see more action taking place. This is not the kind of movie that will satisfy people who want everything to be wrapped up neatly in a tidy bow, like a crime procedural TV episode. Because the main characters in the movie are deeply unhappy people, and because we know that it’s only a matter of time before the law catches up to them, there are no real winners here.

UPDATE: Elevation Pictures will release “American Woman” on digital and VOD in Canada on June 30, 2020. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release “American Woman” on digital and VOD in the U.S. on September 15, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘I Want My MTV’

May 3, 2019

by Carla Hay

Animation image from MTV in “I Want My MTV” (Photo by Candy Kugel)

“I Want My MTV”

Directed by Tyler Measom and Patrick Waldrop

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on May 1, 2019.

The documentary film “I Want My MTV” should come with a warning that the movie is primarily the story of MTV’s first decade in the 1980s. Even with that narrow view, the film misses the mark in many areas. The documentary relies too heavily on the words of the self-congratulatory executives who founded MTV, instead of taking a more responsible, investigative approach and seeking out a more diverse array of perspectives of people who are also part of MTV’s history. The film delivers if you want a predictable and superficial ride down memory lane—commentary on artists and old music videos are expected—but this documentary glosses over and ignores a lot of MTV’s real history.

The story of MTV (Music Television) has been already told in several books, news reports and articles. The network had humble beginnings, because it had a tiny start-up budget, and many people (including a few of its early executives) thought MTV was a bad idea that would fail. MTV’s early network-identification promo video that had NASA footage of the 1969 moon landing was prompted out of necessity because the footage was in the public domain (in other words, free), and MTV couldn’t really afford a fancy ad campaign at the time.  Launched on August 1, 1981, MTV started out as a 24-hour music network that initially wasn’t even available in a lot of big cities, such as New York, where MTV is headquartered.

MTV’s lack of availability on many cable systems was the impetus for the famous “I Want My MTV” ad campaign where major artists (such as Mick Jagger, Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George, The Police, David Bowie and The Who’s Pete Townshend) said the “I Want My MTV” slogan on camera, and urged people to call their local cable companies to add MTV to their channel lineups. Les Garland, who used to be a programming executive at MTV, takes credit for getting Jagger to do an “I Want My MTV” spot, by essentially convincing the money-minded Jagger that he would be filming a promotional video, not an ad. As a joke, Garland said he paid Jagger just $1 after the spot was filmed.

MTV’s music library also started off very small, as most of the initial videos available were from British artists (who were used to making music videos for shows like “Top of the Pops”) or American artists whose music videos usually consisted of cheaply filmed live performances with the studio recordings dubbed in post-production. The first two videos played on MTV exemplified these types of clips: the futuristic “Video Killed the Radio Star” from The Buggles (a British New Wave band) and the simple performance clip “You Better Run” from Pat Benatar, who was America’s top female rock star at the time.

Several artists who became popular on MTV in the early ‘80s are interviewed in the documentary, such as Benatar and her guitarist/husband Neil Geraldo; Idol; Sting (co-founder of The Police); Eurythmics members Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart; REO Speedwagon lead singer Kevin Cronin; and Devo lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh. Also interviewed are two of MTV’s original VJs: Mark Goodman (a radio vet who describes his MTV audition process as “a little creepy” because it was in a hotel room, not a TV studio) and Alan Hunter, a self-described failed actor who got the job, despite having a “terrible” audition and no experience in broadcasting or the music industry. (MTV’s other original VJs—Nina Blackwood and Martha Quinn—are not interviewed, although there is archival footage of all the original VJs in the documentary. J.J. Jackson, another original MTV VJ, died of a heart attack in 2004, at the age of 62.)

To its credit, the documentary does not shy away from the controversy over MTV’s programming decisions. In its first two years, the network was frequently accused of racism for not playing enough black artists. MTV’s all-white first executive team—which included John Lack, Bob Pittman, Gail Sparrow, Fred Seibert, Tom Freston, Judy McGrath, John Sykes and Andrew Setos (Garland joined MTV later, after he had a long stint in radio)—are all interviewed in this documentary. Various excuses are given for excluding top-selling black artists from MTV’s playlists in the network’s early years.

One frequently given excuse is that the original concept of MTV was that it was supposed to be a rock’n’roll music channel. However, it’s a weak excuse because among the few black artists played on MTV in its early years were non-rock acts such as Musical Youth, Eddy Grant and Herbie Hancock. Meanwhile, bigger artists such as Michael Jackson, Prince, Rick James and Earth, Wind & Fire were being ignored by MTV.

The documentary includes a clip from the notorious 1983 MTV interview that Bowie did with Goodman, where Bowie asks Goodman why so few black artists are played on MTV. Goodman uncomfortably explains that too many black artists on MTV might scare the audience, especially those in “middle America.” It’s an incredibly racist belief, not to mention a condescending insult that wrongfully stereotypes people in the Midwest as automatically more racist than people who live on the East Coast and West Coast. Bowie’s withering stare and curt response in the interview speak volumes of his disgust. In the documentary, a present-day Goodman admits to being embarrassed about the interview all these years later, and he offers a sheepish apology for it.

The Bowie/Goodman interview exposed the mentality of MTV executives at the time, but the former MTV executives interviewed for this documentary who were in charge of making those decisions are still indignant and in denial over their racism. It’s not too surprising, because people who want to be thought of as “liberal” and “open-minded” don’t want to admit on camera that they’ve been racist. The former MTV executives are quick to pat themselves on the back in this documentary (Sparrow calls herself and the other executives “trend-setters, risk-takers and rebels”), but they don’t properly acknowledge their old-fashioned bigoted beliefs that prevented a lot of people of color from being part of MTV in its early years.

One example of this hypocrisy is when Sparrow, with hatred still etched on her face, talks about how Rick James’ “Super Freak” video was unacceptable to MTV at the time because James reminded her of a pimp and she didn’t like the way women were portrayed in the video. Yet, she doesn’t mention that MTV was willing to play videos from numerous (white) heavy-metal bands that often showed women in much more degrading scenarios, such as barely clothed or locked up in cages. Maybe MTV executives like Sparrow just didn’t like to see a music video of a black man being a sex symbol with women of different races. James was an outspoken critic of MTV at the time for not playing enough black artists, so it’s likely that MTV also had an unofficial ban on James, out of spite.

One of the most irresponsible parts of the “I Want My MTV” documentary is how it fails to give the full story of how Michael Jackson broke the racial barrier at MTV. Pittman tries to rewrite MTV history in this documentary by saying about the racism accusations: “Michael Jackson single-handedly pulled us out of that controversy,” and that it was MTV’s idea to “start courting Michael Jackson.” He also makes it sound like MTV had the vision to play Jackson’s videos right when his “Thriller” album was hitting big. What Pittman and the documentary did not talk about was the well-documented fact that CBS/Epic Records (namely, record-label chief Walter Yetnikoff) demanded that MTV play Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video or else the record company would boycott MTV. When MTV caved in, and saw that Jackson became the network’s most-requested artist, that opened the doors for more black artists to be played on MTV.

Yetnikoff, who was not interviewed for this documentary, told more details about this controversy in his 2001 memoir, “Howling at the Moon,” as well as in several media interviews. His credible account of MTV playing Michael Jackson only after MTV was threatened with a boycott has also been verified by numerous non-MTV people in the music industry who were involved at the time, none of whom are interviewed in this documentary.

The movie mentions that as MTV’s popularity grew in the 1980s, tensions grew between MTV and record companies because the record companies eventually wanted MTV to pay licensing fees for the videos. However, this documentary did not interview anyone who worked at record companies at the time to give their perspective. Video-promotion executives, who were on the front lines of music-industry relations with MTV, are shamefully left out of this documentary. Unlike some big-name artists, these past and present record-company executives are not that hard to get for interviews, so not including them in this film just shows that these documentary filmmakers were too lazy to get this valuable insight or they just didn’t care.

And even though “I Want My MTV” addresses the issue of MTV excluding many top-selling black artists in the network’s early years, ironically, the documentary does some noticeable racial excluding of its own, since no women of color are interviewed in the documentary at all. The movie focuses primarily on MTV in the ‘80s, and gives a spotlight to a long list of artists from that era, so it’s mind-boggling that this documentary erases black female artists who had a big impact on MTV in the ‘80s—such as Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and Salt-N-Pepa—by not giving a spotlight to any of these women of color.

No disrespect to Tegan and Sara (who were never really big artists on MTV but are interviewed in this documentary anyway), but there are plenty of women of color who were more influential in MTV’s history who could have been interviewed for this documentary but weren’t. The few people of color in this film who are interviewed are black men who talk about hip-hop or “Yo! MTV Raps”: Fab 5 Freddy, Ed Lover and Run-DMC’s Darryl McDaniel, who says that Run-DMC was probably the first popular MTV rap act because Run-DMC incorporated a lot of rock music in its songs.

MTV’s influence in hard rock/heavy-metal’s popularity in the mid-to-late 1980s—as well as many of the genre’s sexist videos that got heavy airtime on MTV—are also addressed in the documentary. On the one hand, former MTV executive McGrath says that all that sexist content was “demoralizing.” On the other hand, she and other executives were responsible for choosing to give it so much airtime on MTV. Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” video (which shows model Bobbie Brown being blasted with a fire hose by members of the band wearing firefighter hats) is mentioned in the documentary as an example of the types of MTV-approved rock videos where women were frequently treated as nothing more than playthings and props. Poison lead singer Bret Michaels, who’s interviewed in the documentary, says the popular MTV videos that Poison made were all in good fun.

Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson offers a different perspective of how the testosterone-fueled, often-sexist hard rock videos that MTV favored had an effect on her own career. She and her lead-singer sister Ann Wilson (who co-founded the rock band Heart) became successful with Heart in the mid-‘70s, when they didn’t have to wear revealing clothing to sell records. But by the mid-‘80s, Heart’s record company was pressuring them to make sexpot videos with cleavage-baring outfits that the Wilson sisters say they now regret doing. Nancy Wilson says that a lot of that pressure was because of MTV’s preference of showing rock videos with scantily clad women.

Music-video directors are given minimal scrutiny in the documentary. Mark Pellington, an early MTV hire, is interviewed, and says he was hired even though he had no experience at the time. A few music-video directors who went on to become major film directors are barely mentioned in the documentary, such as David Fincher and Michael Bay. However, the film does talk about how Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video (directed by John Landis) was a game-changer that impacted how videos were made, as budgets became larger and concepts became more elaborate.

In addition to “Thriller,” other music videos that are mentioned as the most-influential of the 1980s include a-ha’s “Take on Me,” Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” and Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” And although there are numerous artists whose careers were boosted because their videos got played on MTV, the documentary mentions that a few artists had their careers damaged by this exposure. Billy Squier is singled out in particular, for his 1984 “Rock Me Tonite” video (in which he awkwardly dances and slithers around in a “Flashdance”-styled ripped tank top), which ruined his rock credibility, and his career was never the same.

The documentary shows that the end of MTV’s ’80s golden era was around 1987, when some of the original team of network executives and VJs began to leave. It was also around this time that MTV began introducing more non-music programs, such as the game show “Remote Control,” which had a then-unknown Adam Sandler as a cast member.

As former MTV executive Freston says in the documentary, reality TV was “a blessing and a curse” for MTV. Grammy-winning musician Jack Antonoff adds that he (just like many other people who grew up with MTV) became frustrated with the decrease in music content on MTV over the years. The documentary also interviews OK Go, Good Charlotte twins Benji and Joel Madden and indie rock twins Tegan and Sara to offer their perspectives of musicians who were toddlers or weren’t even born when MTV was launched. (By 2010, MTV removed the words “music television” from its logo.)

One of the biggest flaws in the documentary is how it barely mentions the impact of the annual MTV Video Music Awards, which launched in 1984. Many of MTV’s biggest pop-culture moments came from the MTV VMAs. Perhaps the filmmakers couldn’t get the rights to a lot of VMA footage, but that shouldn’t have prevented the documentary from giving more time to discuss the VMAs, other than a passing mention.

Because the focus of “I Want My MTV” is so heavily concentrated on 1980s-era MTV, the documentary breezes through mentions of MTV’s post-1980s programming, such as “The Real World,” “Singled Out” and “Jersey Shore.” Artists who became popular on MTV after the ‘80s are barely acknowledged, so don’t expect to see anything significant about Eminem, Nirvana, the Spice Girls, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Sean Combs, Jennifer Lopez, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears or any boy bands. Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell and Tori Amos are among the few ’90s-era artists who are interviewed in the documentary. It’s briefly mentioned at the end of the film that YouTube  (which launched in 2005) has significantly decreased MTV’s influence, and YouTube is now the main outlet where people see music videos.

“I Want My MTV” could have been a better documentary if directors Tyler Measom and Patrick Waldrop didn’t let the film be dominated by executives who haven’t worked at MTV in years, and if the filmmakers included a wider variety of people whose careers were also significantly impacted by MTV. In order to do a truly comprehensive history of MTV, the documentary probably should have been an episodic series instead of a feature-length film. “I Want My MTV” also comes at a time when a lot of people don’t want MTV, because the network just isn’t that relevant to pop culture as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. But for people nostalgic about MTV’s glory days and looking for a thorough examination of MTV’s history, this documentary is ultimately an incomplete disappointment with a lot of valuable perspectives shut out of the film.

UPDATE: A&E will premiere “I Want My MTV” as part of the “Biography” series on September 8, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘The Quiet One’

May 2, 2019

by Carla Hay

Bill Wyman in "The Quiet One"
Bill Wyman in “The Quiet One” (Photo by Bent Rej)

“The Quiet One”

Directed by Oliver Murray

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on May 2, 2019.

Bill Wyman, who was the bass player for the Rolling Stones from 1962 until he quit the band in 1993, has been a Rolling Stones archivist for decades. He has shared his mementos and memories in various ways, including in his 1990 memoir “Stone Alone” and his 2001 photo book “Rolling With the Stones.” The documentary “The Quiet One” is essentially an updated, movie version of Wyman’s books—there’s plenty of great stuff pulled from the archives, but if you’re looking for a truly revealing tell-all, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.

The movie’s title comes from the image that Wyman had of being “the quiet one” in the band. During his time in the Rolling Stones, Wyman was also known for being the most aloof in the band, and he says he was the only member of the Rolling Stones who didn’t abuse drugs. That’s not news to die-hard Rolling Stones fans or anyone who’s read “Stone Alone,” but it might come as a surprise to those who know very little about Wyman. Sex is the only addiction that Wyman confesses that he had during his heyday with the Rolling Stones, but “The Quiet One” doesn’t have the braggadocio that Wyman had in “Stone Alone,” where he claimed that he bedded many more women on tour than all of his bandmates. Not surprisingly, Wyman’s 10-year marriage to first wife Diane ended in divorce in 1969.

Although “The Quiet One” barely mentions Wyman’s first marriage, the documentary offers a little more insight into how Wyman was as a divorced dad who had full custody of his son Stephen, who was born in 1962. Being a divorced father with full custody was rare in the 1970s, and being a rock star in that family situation was even more unusual. As he did in “Stone Alone,” Wyman hints that he got full custody because Stephen showed signs of neglect when the child had been living with Diane. Through home movies and photos, Stephen is seen as a constant companion to Wyman and his then-partner Astrid Lundstrom, who was in a relationship with Wyman from 1967 to 1983. Unfortunately, Stephen was not interviewed for this documentary. However, it’s clear that when the Rolling Stones temporarily moved to France in the early 1970s for tax reasons, the reason why Wyman said he hated it was because he was separated from Stephen, who lived with Wyman’s parents in England during this time.

Some of the movie’s content has been seen before in Wyman’s books and in Rolling Stones documentaries such as “Charlie Is My Darling,” “The Stones in the Park” and “Gimme Shelter.” Most of the material from Wyman’s archives are photos, audio recordings and brief snippets of home movies and off-stage band footage, such as the Stones frolicking at a hotel pool in the mid-1960s or flying on a private jet in the early 1970s. New interviews with fellow music stars Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Mary Wilson (formerly of the Supremes), Bob Geldof and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts are not seen but are only heard in voiceovers. The other members of the Rolling Stones—lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood—did not give new interviews for this documentary. There are also many stylized closeups of someone pushing play or stop on an old audio cassette recorder, to add to the ambience of the retrospective footage.

During the first three-quarters of the movie, Wyman is shown mostly from behind, sitting in front of a computer in the Stones archive room of his home, with his voice heard in voiceovers. It isn’t until the last quarter of the movie that the present-day Wyman is fully shown on camera in new footage, whether it’s of him taking photos (one of his hobbies), puttering in his garden, or being interviewed with his third and current wife, Suzanne Acosta Wyman. (They’ve been married since 1992, and they have three daughters together.) The full reveal of Wyman in the latter part of the movie is a metaphor for how Wyman wasn’t able to fully open up until later in his life, when he was away from the Rolling Stones spotlight, and after he settled down with Acosta and started a new family with her. She’s the only romantic partner of Wyman’s who’s interviewed for this movie.

The best thing about “The Quiet One” is that it offers a thrilling journey through music history. Rolling Stones songs that are in the movie include “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Paint It Black,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Brown Sugar,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Miss You” and “Start Me Up.” There is also early footage of the Stones when they were primarily a blues covers band. Wyman’s solo career is briefly mentioned, as is his post-Stones work with the Rhythm Kings, a rotating group of musicians that play retro rock and blues. The documentary has a great selection of songs for its soundtrack, but the sound mixing is sometimes uneven. The movie also has some dramatic recreations with actors, as well as animated footage, which are production choices that sometimes annoy documentary purists.

“The Quiet One” offers a psychological explanation for Wyman’s ability to remain stoic in a mercurial, superstar band whose highs and lows have been well-documented. Wyman’s emotionally distant parents, especially his father, didn’t expect him to go beyond his financially disadvantaged working-class background. Wyman (who was born William Perks but changed his last name to Wyman after he decided to become a professional musician) says only his maternal grandmother had faith that he would become world-famous, and she was ridiculed in the family for believing in him. The combination of growing up poor and having most of his family members discouraging his dreams of being a musician led to Wyman often feeling emotionally “empty” and having lifelong insecurities over whether or not he deserved the success that came his way.

One of the most poignant moments in the movie is near the end when Wyman chokes up and tearfully remembers meeting his biggest musical hero, Ray Charles, who asked Wyman to play on his next album, but Wyman turned down the offer because he didn’t think we was “good enough” to work with Charles. Through the tears, you can feel how Wyman is reliving the experience and how he must have felt humbled, star-struck and inferior in the presence of his legendary idol. You can also sense that even though Wyman might have regretted turning down the offer, he probably would’ve had the same response if Charles were still alive and made the same offer today.

Authorized documentaries about celebrities have their pros and cons. The obvious advantage is the documentary will have exclusive access to interviews and other footage that an unauthorized documentary might be prevented from getting. The downside is that authorized documentaries often gloss over unflattering details.

The way “The Quiet One” describes Wyman’s ill-fated marriage to second wife Mandy Smith is one such example of how the documentary doesn’t adequately address the biggest controversy of Wyman’s life. Wyman says in “The Quiet One” that he fell in love with Smith at first sight, but she wasn’t old enough to date at the time. What he doesn’t mention in the documentary is that Smith was only 13 and he was almost 47 when they met. In past interviews, Smith admitted that she and Wyman secretly dated while she was underage, and they began having sex when she was 14. They got married in 1989, when Smith was 18, and they officially divorced in 1991. In the documentary, Wyman says of the marriage: “I was stupid to think it would actually work.”

Wyman’s pre-marital relationship with Smith was not only scandalous, it was also illegal for several years. In “The Quiet One” documentary, Wyman does not explain why he was sexually attracted to a barely pubescent girl, nor does director Oliver Murray acknowledge the disturbing and inappropriate aspects of that relationship, except for a brief flash of a newspaper article that mentions Wyman’s romantic interest in Smith began when she was 13. Even though Wyman appears to be an upstanding family man now, the way he pursued Smith when she was an underage child is the very definition of what a sexual predator does. Wyman’s excuse (which he’s given in his memoir “Stone Alone” and past interviews) was that Smith looked like an adult when she was 13.

Needless to say, Wyman and Smith’s illegal relationship would have absolutely had more serious consequences for him if it had been going on today. In this #MeToo era, society has been far less likely to overlook people’s misdeeds when it comes to the abuse of power and sex. Sheffield Doc/Fest in England dropped “The Quiet One” from its 2019 lineup, and canceled a post-screening Q&A with Wyman and Murray that would have taken place on June 7, after receiving numerous complaints that the movie irresponsibly covers up the serious issue of statutory rape. In its attempt to erase or minimize unsettling aspects of Wyman’s personal life, “The Quiet One” completely ignores another bizarre twist to Wyman’s relationship with Smith: In 1993, Wyman’s son Stephen got married to Mandy Smith’s mother, Patsy Smith, but the marriage ended two years later.

Wyman’s refusal to acknowledge the scandalous mess resulting from his relationship with Mandy Smith is not the only example of how Wyman may not be the most reliable narrator of his life story that he tells in this movie. The Rolling Stones famously headlined a free concert at London’s Hyde Park on July 5, 1969. The concert, which had an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people in attendance, took place just two days after former Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones had died in a mysterious drowning, which happened one month after Jones had left the band. It was also the first concert that the Rolling Stones performed with guitarist Mick Taylor, who had replaced Jones.

Unfortunately, it’s widely considered one of the worst high-profile concerts that the Rolling Stones ever performed. The Stones were ragged and out-of-tune, the band’s tribute to Jones was awkward (white butterflies were carted in to be released on stage, but most of the butterflies died in the boxes), and the death of Jones brought an air of sadness to the event. The way that Wyman describes the concert is certainly questionable. He says that it was a “wonderful concert” that went so smoothly that “it was like a dream” and there were “no drugs”—but it’s a description which simply isn’t true when it’s been well-documented that Richards and several members of the band’s entourage were strung out on drugs at the time. Fortunately, there was no real violence at the Hyde Park concert.

The same can’t be said for the Altamont festival that was held in the San Francisco area on December 6, 1969, when four people died, including a man who was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels gang members while the Rolling Stones were performing. So much has already been written, said, and revealed about the Altamont tragedy (including in the documentary “Gimme Shelter”), that “The Quiet One” offers no new insight. Wyman, who is more comfortable dealing with facts than emotions when discussing his life and the Rolling Stones, expresses the expected remorse over the concert, but he doesn’t talk about what it was really like to go through that trauma. As with many aspects of his life, Wyman will only admit that he pushed his feelings aside to get through the situation at hand.

And that’s probably why the documentary doesn’t mention two more recent things that are probably touchy subjects with Wyman: He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which he announced in 2016. Wyman also reunited with the Rolling Stones as a guest performer for the band’s 50th anniversary concerts in London in 2012, but the reunion ended on a sour note when Wyman gave post-concert interviews complaining the experience was “disappointing” for him because the band didn’t give him enough time on stage. Wyman was subsequently not invited to be a guest performer on the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary tour, but former Stones guitarist Taylor (who was also at the 2012 London shows) was included on the tour as a guest performer.

Wyman admitted in “Stone Alone,” as he does “The Quiet One,” that because he was so different from the other members of the Rolling Stones, he often distanced himself from their behind-the-scenes antics and drama. He was in the band, but he remained somewhat of an outsider within the group. His desire to have a more “normal” life was the main reason why he retired from the band, and it allowed him to lead a more content lifestyle with his current wife and family. “The Quiet One” shows that Wyman is indeed different from the rest of the Rolling Stones, who continue to tour the world for the millions in revenue and for the huge crowds. It’s the kind of money and adulation that Wyman says he doesn’t need to be happy, so he can live life and make music on his own terms.

IFC Films/Sundance Selects will release “The Quiet One” in select U.S. theaters on June 21, 2019.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘A Regular Woman’

May 2, 2019

by Carla Hay

Almila Bagriacik (pictured at left) in “A Regular Woman” (Photo courtesy of VincentTV)

“A Regular Woman” (“Nur Eine Frau”)

Directed by Sherry Hormann

German and Turkish with subtitles

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

So-called “honor killings” are part of an extremely conservative Muslim culture that teaches that it’s acceptable to murder a family member who brings shame upon the family. This type of killing is usually committed by a male against a female, and it usually has to do with the female’s sexuality. The German film “A Regular Woman” is the dramatic, scripted version of the real-life “honor killing” of 23-year-old Hatun “Aynur” Sürücü, a Turkish-Kurdish woman who was murdered by one of her brothers in 2005 in Berlin.

In the movie, she’s played by Almila Bagriacik as a woman who’s truly a victim of her circumstances. At 16, Aynur was forced into a marriage to a cousin who physically and emotionally abused her. She has a son named Can with her husband, but when Aynur can no longer take the abuse, she leaves her husband and flees with Can to Germany, where they start a new life.

It’s revealed in the beginning of the film that Aynur is a murder victim. The crime scene is shown with her dead body covered, and Aynur (who’s supposed to be speaking as a dead person in another dimension) narrates the film in voiceovers and tells the audience that one of her brothers murdered her. The rest of the movie is a series of flashbacks showing the events leading up to the murder and its aftermath.

Even though Aynur begins her new life in Berlin, she can’t really escape from her large, meddling family. Three of her brothers—Nuri (played by Rauand Taleb), Tarik (played by Aram Arami) and Sinan (played by Mehmet Atesci)—are especially offended that Aynur has rejected a traditional life as a subservient Muslim wife, and they keep tabs on what she’s been doing in Berlin. When the brothers see that Aynur has stopped wearing a hijab and has begun wearing Western clothes such as jeans and T-shirts, they feel scandalized. Youngest brother Nuri is the one who is the angriest with Aynur, especially when she begins dating a German man named Tim (played by Jacob Matschenz). Aynur and Tim end up living together, and it isn’t long before Aynur’s brothers start harassing him.

Aynur has a slightly better relationship with her brother Aram (played by Armin Wahedi Yeganeh), whom she trusts the most, and sister Shirin (played by Merve Askoy), but all of her siblings are still influenced by their extreme religious beliefs, and they have varying levels of disapproval of Aynur’s new lifestyle. Aynur has a love/hate relationship with her family. Although she knows that they think she’s an immoral harlot, she can’t quite cut herself off from them. A part of her knows they will never approve of her new life, but a part of her is in denial and thinks that they might eventually accept it.

Meanwhile, Aynur has jumped from one male-dominated environment into another. She enrolls in school to become an electrician, and she’s the only female in her class. She eventually decides to move from Berlin to Freiburg, shortly after she turns 23. Because “A Regular Woman” reveals in the beginning of the film that Aynur is going to be murdered by one of her brothers, the movie sacrifices a lot of suspense that could have been experienced by people who don’t know what happened in real life. (Her murder was big news in Germany, but not well-known in many other countries.) Therefore, the first and second acts of the film are basically a countdown to the heinous crime.

What the movie doesn’t reveal until the third act is what happened to the murderer, who else knew about the crime before it happened, and who ended up being punished for it. “A Regular Woman” director Sherry Hormann does a capable job of telling Aynur’s story, while actress Bagriacik does a believable and sympathetic portrayal of a young woman trying to find her identity in the midst of this family turmoil.

This movie is not a judgment against the Muslim religion but an unflinching critique of anyone who devalues women’s lives or treats women as always inferior to men. Unfortunately, there are so many movies and TV shows being made about women who are murdered, that “A Regular Woman” might get lost in this over-saturation. What’s even more tragic is that these stories are all too often based on what happened in real life.

UPDATE: Corinth Films will release “A Regular Woman” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 26, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘All I Can Say’

May 2, 2019

by Carla Hay

Shannon Hoon and daughter Nico Blue Hoon in “All I Can Say” (Photo by Shannon Hoon)

“All I Can Say”

Directed by Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, Colleen Hennessy and Shannon Hoon

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 26, 2019.

The documentary “All I Can Say” gets its title from the first line of “No Rain,” the biggest hit song from Blind Melon, the rock band that released only two studio albums when lead singer Shannon Hoon died of a cocaine overdose in 1995, at the age of 28. Unlike most documentaries, which combine archival footage with new interviews, “All I Can Say” consists entirely of footage that Hoon filmed of his life from 1990 to 1995, the years when Blind Melon existed with Hoon as lead singer. Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould and Colleen Hennessy (who are credited as co-directors) assembled the footage and made it into this film.

The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival has the world premieres of three documentaries about lead singers of rock bands who had untimely, tragic deaths in the 1990s, and all three men left behind a toddler or infant child to grow up without their father. The documentaries are “All I Can Say”; “Sublime” (whose lead singer Bradley Nowell died in 1996 of a heroin overdose); and “Mystify: Michael Hutchence” (about INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence, who committed suicide in 1997). “All I Can Say” is the most unique of this trio of movies, simply because it’s filmed from a first-person perspective with no outside commentary or current footage. There are voiceovers, but they are of interviews that Hoon did during the five-year period in which the documentary footage was filmed.

Almost all of the footage in “All I Can Say” is shown in chronological order, but it begins on a chilling note, with the last footage that Hoon filmed of himself. It shows him in a New Orleans hotel room, talking on the phone to an unidentified person, on October 21, 1995, the day that he died. Before this final footage can be seen in its entirety, the movie then rewinds to 1990, when Hoon was living in Los Angeles as a struggling musician, but also going back home to visit family in Indiana, where he grew up in the suburban cities of Lafayette and Dayton.

It’s clear from these first few scenes that even before he was famous, Hoon was a self-described troublemaking rebel who couldn’t wait to get out of Indiana to become a rock star. He had drug problems and arrests before he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his dream. He also had a high-school sweetheart named Lisa Crouse, who was in a relationship with him during the time all of this footage was filmed.

It was while in Los Angeles that Hoon met the musicians who would become the other members of Blind Melon: lead guitarist Rogers Stevens, rhythm guitarist Christopher Thorn, bassist Brad Smith and drummer Glen Graham. The band’s name was inspired by the nickname that stoner hippies gave themselves in Graham and Smith’s home state of Mississippi. But it was Hoon’s Indiana roots that proved to be a major factor in Blind Melon’s career, because Guns N’Roses lead singer Axl Rose, whose hometown was Lafayette, knew Hoon’s half-sister Anna from high school.

Guns N’Roses was one of the biggest bands in the world at the time, and Hoon became friends with Rose in Los Angeles. Hoon did guest backup vocals on several Guns N’Roses songs (including “Don’t Cry” and “The Garden”) that would be released on Guns N’Roses’ 1991 albums “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II.” There’s footage in the documentary of Hoon with Guns N’Roses at the Record Plant recording studio in Los Angeles.

Hoon’s prominent appearance in the “Don’t Cry” video catapulted him into the spotlight, and it became the catalyst for a quickie route to Blind Melon signing with Capitol Records, at a time when Blind Melon didn’t even have enough original songs for a showcase. The documentary has footage of Blind Melon recording the band’s 1992 self-titled debut album, including signature tune “No Rain.” There’s also footage of Hoon watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on TV.

The documentary shows that Hoon’s heavy drug use was ongoing throughout the period of time that this movie was filmed. In one scene, he holds up a bag of psychedelic mushrooms. In other scene, he and Stevens are seen doing cocaine on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. In other scene, a coked-out Hoon is talking about being awake for several days. There’s also a hint that Hoon’s substance-abuse problems were probably passed down from a previous generation, since there’s a scene of him on the phone with his father after his father was arrested for DUI.

Blind Melon’s self-titled debut album was a big hit (selling 4 million copies in the U.S. alone), and it remains the band’s best-selling album,  known for the singles “No Rain,” “Tones of Home,” “I Wonder” and “Change.” But that quick success came at a price, because Blind Melon became known as the “bee girl” band, which was an image the band ended up hating. First, the album cover was of drummer Graham’s younger sister Georgia as a child, dressed as a bee when she was in a school play. Then, Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video prominently featured another child—actress Heather DeLoach—dressed in a similar bee costume.

The “No Rain” video, directed by Samuel Bayer (who also directed Nirvana’s iconic “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video), has the concept of a lonely bee girl who is rejected and ridiculed by society until she walks into an open field where she finds that there are other bee people just like her. Blind Melon is shown performing in the field, but “Bee Girl” DeLoach actually ends up being a scene-stealer in the video. For a while, she became a minor celebrity in real life. It’s obvious that the “bee girl” image was starting to annoy the band, because Blind Melon was constantly asked about it in interviews. In one such interview that’s shown in the documentary, Hoon says with an exasperated voice, “The bee is bigger than the band.”

Another major fame-related issue that Blind Melon had was the lead singer got most of the attention—and that didn’t sit well with the rest of the band. (It’s a common issue with most famous bands.) Blind Melon was on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1993 (when being on the cover of Rolling Stone was still a big deal), and the documentary shows how that cover caused a lot of tension in the band behind the scenes. Rolling Stone originally wanted only Hoon on the cover, but the other band members insisted that they be on the cover too.

The documentary shows video footage that Hoon secretly recorded of the band members talking about him when he wasn’t in the room. “All I Can Say” also shows Blind Melon’s photo session for Rolling Stone—all the band members were completely naked—and the cover photo ended up showing Hoon, front and center, in pig-tailed braids. The documentary also shows Stevens’ giddy and happy reaction to seeing the magazine cover for the first time.

“All I Can Say” also shows a mischievous, devil-may-care side to Hoon, such as a scene of him delivering pizza on-stage naked, a scene of him trying to channel the Beatles while walking on London’s famous Abbey Road, and a full-frontal nude scene of him filming himself completely naked in front of a bathroom mirror. There are also a few rock-star diva moments, such as when Hoon taunts a security guard backstage at a concert for some real or perceived conflict. Hoon treats the guard in a condescending manner, essentially saying, “I dare you to pick a fight with me, but you won’t, because I’m untouchable.”

Hoon was arrested for indecent exposure in 1993 for urinating on a fan during a Blind Melon concert in Vancouver, but that footage isn’t in the documentary, although the arrest is briefly mentioned in a TV news report that Hoon filmed. Hoon was also arrested in 1995 in New Orleans for disorderly conduct. That arrest isn’t shown in the movie either.

Since most people watching this movie know how Hoon died, there’s a sense of impending doom when watching “All I Can Say”—and there are plenty of signs that despite the fame and success, Hoon was deeply troubled and immersed in drug addiction. In one scene, he has a spoon that looks like it’s dripping with melted heroin. In another scene, he openly talks about doing smack. Hoon’s drug addiction was well-known to people in the industry and to Blind Melon fans, and he had multiple stints in rehab. The rehab stints are obviously not in the movie, but the documentary includes footage of Hoon getting a message from Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready asking for Hoon’s advice on rehab.

Hoon’s emotional turmoil must have also been compounded by a suicide that he and other band members witnessed after one of Blind Melon’s shows at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, where a woman in her 20s jumped to her death at a nearby hotel. (Blind Melon’s song “St. Andrew’s Fall” on the band’s 1995 second album, “Soup,” is about that horrifying experience.) In the documentary, Hoon is seen confessing that witnessing the suicide was the hardest moment for him in the band.

Other haunting footage is of Hoon watching TV news about the suicide of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain (who died in 1994 at the age of 27), and later commenting about Cobain’s death in an interview: “A lot of people are hurting, including his little girl.” The irony is that one year later, Hoon would also leave his own little girl behind by tragically dying. Hoon and Crouse welcomed their daughter, Nico, on July 11, 1995. The documentary has footage of Hoon finding out he was going to be father, seeing ultrasounds, the birth of Nico, and Hoon being a loving and affectionate father to Nico.

One month after the birth of Nico, Blind Melon’s second album, “Soup,” was released, and it was the band’s sophomore slump. Even though there’s a scene where a band member jokes that Blind Melon isn’t that popular anymore, the band’s big decline in sales was obviously a blow to the band’s confidence. And although Hoon didn’t reveal on camera how this career decline affected him, there’s one scene in the movie that clearly shows how depressed he was.

At home celebrating his 28th birthday, Hoon is seen with Crouse and Nico, who are seated at a table with him. A birthday cake is on the table, and while Crouse is smiling and singing “Happy Birthday,” Hoon sits there sadly, deep in his own thoughts. It’s impossible to know if Hoon’s personal problems or career problems (or both) were weighing him down at that moment, but it’s obvious that being surrounded by his closest loved ones on his birthday wasn’t making him happy.

We’ll never know what Hoon would be doing if he were alive today. Blind Melon’s third album, “Nico,” was released in 1996, and featured songs the band had already recorded with Hoon. After going on hiatus, Blind Melon regrouped in 2006 with new lead singer Travis Warren. But in that five-year period when Hoon experienced his meteoric rise to stardom, we get to see his perspective in “All I Can Say” as a talented but self-destructive person who found out that fame wasn’t the answer to his problems.

Hoon might have escaped from Indiana, but he couldn’t escape from himself. The tragedy is that Hoon left behind a child who didn’t know what it was like to grow up with her father. But at least she can see from this footage that she was adored by him in the short time that he was in her life, and he left behind a musical legacy that affects people who are fans of Blind Melon’s early music.

UPDATE: Oscilloscope Laboratories will release “All I Can Say” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 26, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Devil’s Pie – D’Angelo’

May 2, 2019

by Carla Hay

D’Angelo in "Devil's Pie - D'Angelo
D’Angelo in “Devil’s Pie – D’Angelo” (Photo by Carine Bijlsma)

“Devil’s Pie – D’Angelo”

Directed by Carine Bjilsma

Back in the mid-to-late ‘90s, the media singled out a select number of rising R&B artists and labeled them as part of a “neo-soul” movement—artists releasing music that had something more interesting to say than bump’n’grind of acts like Bobby Brown or Jodeci or safe crossover acts like Boyz II Men or Brandy. The so-called “neo-soul” artists included D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Angie Stone and Macy Gray. D’Angelo’s first album, 1995’s “Brown Sugar,” was a critical and commercial success. His follow-up was even bigger and remains his best-selling album. By the time D’Angelo’s Grammy-winning, chart-topping second album, “Voodoo,” was released in 2000, he was on a hot streak. And he became a bona fide sex symbol, thanks largely to his naked “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” video.

But then, fame, alcohol and drugs took their toll on D’Angelo (whose real name is Michael Eugene Archer), and he went on a very long hiatus. It took 14 years before his third album (2014’s “Black Messiah”) was released. D’Angelo went on a world tour in 2015 called “The Second Coming” in support of the album. The documentary “Devil’s Pie – D’Angelo” is a chronicle of that tour.

The concert scenes are very good, but the main reason why people want to see this film is to hear D’Angelo answer this question: “What really happened when you disappeared from the spotlight for all those years?” You have to sit through the expected footage of tour rehearsals and concert performances before “Devil’s Pie” director Carine Bjilsma gets to the heart of the matter about halfway through the movie. Watching the film, it’s apparent that it took a while for D’Angelo to open up to her on camera.

D’Angelo talks about his downward spiral, which included a serious car accident and arrest for DUI and marijuana possession in 2005. He was devastated by the deaths of his beloved grandmother Alberta, his Uncle Cece, and a close friend (not mentioned by name in the film but it’s widely believed to be MTV executive Fred Jordan), who all passed away within a short period of time of each other in the early 2000s. In 2010, D’Angelo was arrested again, this time for soliciting an undercover cop posing as a prostitute. He doesn’t talk about those arrests in the film, but he does admit that his addictions were the main reasons why he faded from the public eye.

“I started going down a dark path,” D’Angelo says in the movie. “I started drinking and getting high. It was tough to get out of it.” He also says that the car accident was a “second chance” at life, and he went to rehab three times before he could get his life back in order. However, D’Angelo says with his eyes tearing up, he can’t talk about certain things because “they’re too deep.”

One of D’Angelo’s personal issues is dealing with anxiety, according to him and people interviewed in the documentary. Questlove, who was a drummer in D’Angelo’s band on the “Voodoo” tour, says of his longtime friend: “It’s a struggle for him to do simple stuff, like leave his apartment and coming somewhere to play. He has fears about being the chosen one.”

Through flashback archival footage, which is shown at different parts of this non-chronological story, we see what this “chosen one” description is all about. Raised in a strict, religious family in Richmond, Virginia, he was the son of a Pentecostal minister, and expectations were high for D’Angelo from a very early age. There is footage of him performing in church.

He was considered a musical prodigy by people close to him (he won The Apollo’s amateur contest three times in a row at the age of 13), and there was a lot of pressure put on him to pursue a religion-related career as a minister or a gospel singer. But D’Angelo chose R&B music, much to the disapproval of many of his family members. One of the key influences on him was his feisty grandmother Alberta Cox, who encouraged him to do his own thing, while other people in his family warned him not to do the “devil’s music.” (This movie’s title come from the D’Angelo’s song “Devil’s Pie” from the “Voodoo” album. “Devil’s pie” is also a phrase that can be found in the Bible’s Revelation 13 chapter describing the apocalypse.)

As for how he feels about religion now, D’Angelo says that “God, not religion” feeds his soul. We see early on in the film that he still prays (there’s the expected prayer session with his band), and he says of this ritual: “When we pray at night, it’s not a game.”

In addition to showing how religion still impacts D’Angelo’s life, this movie has a lot of talk (mostly from Questlove) about D’Angelo’s soul. Questlove says of D’Angelo: “He’s Superman, but a Kryptonite-filled Clark Kent is trapped in his soul.” In another scene, Questlove has this to say about D’Angelo’s sex-symbol status that began to overshadow the music: “Part of his soul was being consumed.” And then Questlove offers this explanation for D’Angelo’s tormented soul: “Survivor’s guilt is what every black genius wrestles with.” If D’Angelo needs someone to write a book about his soul, he might want to ask Questlove to do it.

There’s also some rare archival footage of D’Angelo in the studio recording his “Voodoo” album, with Questlove and Q-Tip hanging out in the background. Questlove says that it took a while for him to get used to D’Angelo’s avant-garde musical style: “He was blatantly, beautifully disrespectful of rhythm structure.”

Feeling emotionally paralyzed by intense pressure is a recurring theme in the story of D’Angelo, as he tells of wasted recording sessions in the years that people were expecting him to release the follow-up to “Voodoo.” There are also scenes of him backstage, usually accompanied by his hovering tour manager Alan Leeds, where it looks like D’Angelo is silently coping with stage fright before the concert starts.

There are a few signs that D’Angelo’s long hiatus means that he’s still catching up to a lot of the technological changes that affect how artists get feedback about their shows. After a concert, instead of waiting for critics’ reviews, his manager Kevin Liles explains to D’Angelo that he can just check out social-media comments about the show. Liles then shows the singer some of the comments on his phone.

The documentary also shows some of the famous guests who visited backstage during the tour, including Busta Rhymes, Dave Chappelle and Bobby Seale. Chappelle is seen asking D’Angelo how it feels to be back, which is somewhat ironic, since Chappelle took his own break from showbiz in the 2000s, after freaking out over being famous, and then made a comeback in the following decade.

Because D’Angelo has a reputation for being unpredictable, there’s a sense that his handlers are always on edge that he might disappear or be very late for a public appearance. Instead, toward the end of the movie, D’Angelo’s keyboardist Cleo “Pookie” Sample is the one who has a major flake-out, by disappearing right before D’Angelo is supposed to hit the stage at the high-profile Montreux Jazz Festival. A frantic search ensues, but they don’t find him before showtime, and D’Angelo and the band have to go on without him. The missing keyboardist isn’t seen for the rest of the movie, which means the split was not a good one.

“Devil’s Pie” ends with a mention that D’Angelo is working on his fourth studio album, but—D’Angelo fans are used to hearing this by now—no one knows yet when it will be completed or released. In the meantime, this movie will likely end up being a direct-to-video release, since a documentary about a faded R&B star’s tour from several years ago isn’t going to sell a lot of movie tickets. “Devil’s Pie” is what it is—a niche documentary made in a conventional (but not bad) way that might not have much appeal outside of die-hard D’Angelo fans.

Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong are wacky birds of a feather in ‘Tuca & Bertie’

May 1, 2019

by Carla Hay

Tiffany Haddish, Lisa Hanawalt and Ali Wong
Tiffany Haddish, Lisa Hanawalt and Ali Wong at the world premiere of “Tuca & Bertie” at the during 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in new York City. (Photo by Dominik Bindl/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

Netflix’s “Tuca & Bertie” is an animated comedy series, which the streaming service describes as being about the friendship between two bird women in their 30s who live in the same apartment building in Birdtown, a fictional place that is clearly inspired by New York City. Tuca (voiced by Tiffany Haddish) is “a cocky, care-free toucan” and Bertie (voiced by Ali Wong) is “an anxious, daydreaming songbird.”Among Tuca and Bertie’s friends, colleagues and neighbors are other animal creatures with human-like qualities. They include Speckles (voiced by Steven Yeun), a robin who is Bertie’s loving boyfriend; Pastry Pete (voiced by Reggie Watts), a baker penguin; Dapper T. Dog, a prissy neighbor; and Dirk (voiced by John Early), an arrogant rooster who works with Bertie at their job at a media company called Conde Nest—an obvious nod to Condé Nast.

“Tuca & Bertie” has several of the same executive producers as Netflix’s Emmy-winning animated series “BoJack Horseman,” including Lisa Hanawalt (who created “Tuca & Bertie), Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Noel Bright and Steven A. Cohen. Haddish and Wong are also executive producers of “Tuca & Bertie,” whose 10-episode first season premieres on Netflix on May 3, 2019. The first two episodes of “Tuca & Bertie” had their world premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, where Haddish, Wong and Hanawalt did a Q&A after the screening. Here is what they said:

“Tuca & Bertie” (Image courtesy of Netflix)

Lisa, how long were Tuca and Bertie in your head, and when did you realize they needed a TV show?

Hanawalt: I started making comics about Tuca about four years ago, and then I started making comics about Bertie a little bit later. When I was thinking of TV show ideas, they just seemed like two of my favorite characters I ever made up. They just basically write themselves. They know exactly who they are.

I just wanted to make a show about female friendship. I thought the two of them would go well together. They’re kind of opposites, but Bertie has Tuca qualities and Tuca has Bertie qualities. And you can kind of see why they’ve been friends for so long.

Tiffany and Ali, what did you first think when you heard about “Tuca & Bertie”?

Haddish: When first I heard about it, I was like, “OK, two friends. That’s what’s up. I’ve got friends. This is funny … Where do I sign up? Do I get an executive producer credit?”

Wong: I didn’t know much about it. The only things I had heard that Lisa Hanawalt created a show about two birds that were best friends, and that Tiffany Haddish, who I’ve known for a long time and hadn’t worked on anything yet, was attached to it. That’s all I needed to know. “Yes, I’ll do it right now!”

Ali and Tiffany have executive producer credits on the show, right?

Wong: We do, but we didn’t do that much to deserve it.

Hanawalt: Yeah, you did.

Haddish: Yes, we did. I don’t know about you, but my feet hurt. I deserve it.

“Tuca & Bertie” (Image courtesy of Netflix)

How are you like your Tuca and Bertie characters in real life?

Wong: I suffer from crushing anxiety, like everybody else.

Hanawalt: You hide it well. You’re fearless.

Wong: I try. Yeah. I didn’t even know what you guys were looking for. I just went in [for the audition], and it was really short. I was like, “Oh, I didn’t get [the role], because they kicked me out so fast.”

Haddish: I was like, “Y‘all better get my homegirl, or I ain’t playing with y’all.” And ta-dah! We’re working together! That’s how you do it. I’ve been watching Hollywood. I see what y’all do.

Wong: I met Tiffany 10 years ago in San Francisco. She was so positive and so sweet then, even though it was the shittiest time. We were struggling and everything.

And then I saw her the next time in New York, when she had auditioned for “SNL” [“Saturday Night Live”]. Everybody around town knew she killed it. She knew she killed it, and she was like, “If they don’t give it to me, it’s fucked up.”

Haddish: No, I said, “If they don’t give it to me, fuck them!” That’s what I said.

Wong: “Fuck them, until I host for them!

Haddish: Yep. I said, “Next time, I’ll be hosting.”

Wong: And she did it in that white dress she’s worn a million times to maximize the value out.

Haddish: That part. It’s about saving our dollars, girl.

Wong: And then after I saw her after she auditioned for “SNL,” she had just booked a role for this movie with Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith [2017’s “Girls Trip”].

Haddish: And then boo-yah. I told you we were going to do it, girl.

Tiffany and Ali, what qualities do each of you have that bring out the best in each other?

Haddish: We balance each other out. I can be really over-the-top sometimes. And I look in her eyes and I’m reminded that I can bring it back down a little bit. It just depends. [She says to Wong] I really value you a lot.

Wong: Thank you.

Haddish: I like having her around. I wish we could be in the studio together more often, like when we made that song.

Wong: Oh my God. That was so fun. Tiffany is a good singer. I had to some training in the studio.

Hanawalt: You’re both really good.

Wong: Please don’t make me sing. I’m an executive producer. I command you to not make me sing. Please don’t make me sing!

Hanawalt: Ali has a whole musical number in Episode 4. She sings about having an anxiety attack.

Wong: We [Haddish and I] have duet that’s very catchy. I wish I wrote it so I could get residuals for it. It’s amazing. Tiffany’s really busy, if you’ve noticed. She’s doing five movies a year, all the time.

Haddish: You’re really busy too. You’re raising human beings.

Wong: That is true. When we got to see each other and work together, it was great. I hope we get to work together again.

Haddish: Yeah, more often. Season 2! Let’s go!

[Haddish and Wong then led an audience chant saying, “Season 2! Let’s go!” Wong also got up on her chair and twerked to the chant.]

“Tuca & Bertie” (Image courtesy of Netflix)

“Tuca & Bertie” is one of the few adult animated series that was created by a woman. What did you want to do differently in this show that you don’t see in other animated shows?

Hanawalt: I just wanted to make a show that I’d want to watch. I love watching adult cartoons. I’ve always loved watching animation. I wanted to see one about women and female relationships and women in the world, with stupid jokes I would laugh at and spicy chips for lunch and the kind of stuff that I want to watch.

And a lot of animated shows don’t have characters in their 30s. The characters either under 30 or over 40, right?

Hanawalt: I wanted to make a show about me and my friends and what we’re going through and right now … When you’re in your 30s, people really start to split off in drastically different directions.

Suddenly, your friends have a bunch of kids, and they own their own home and they have a husband and they seem super-stable, but inside they’re still like, “Do I really want this? I don’t know. Am I doing the right thing?” Meanwhile, I still feel like a big, sloppy baby, but I’m sure I look like I might have my shit together on the outside.

“Tuca & Bertie” tackles some serious topics, like sexual harassment and Tuca’s struggle to stay sober. Tiffany and Ali, how much of this did you know in advance before signing on for the show?

Wong: I honestly knew nothing. Lisa and the [other] writers were breaking the stories on as we were coming in to read the script. We’d just show up at the table read, and that’s when I would find out what the story was. Some of the twists and turns—you’ll see in the season—they shocked me in a really cool way. It’s serialized. That’s something you don’t usually see a lot in animation.

Hanawalt:  It starts out light and fun, but there’s definitely some darker stuff that happens. I think overall though, the show is very optimistic and feels like safe place, but we go into some darker things.  I didn’t want to tell them, because I didn’t want to scare them away.

Haddish: Yeah. I was like reading it, and I was like, “What just happened? Oh, hell no! For real? Okay, then. Continue.”

Hanawalt: There were definitely things I wanted to tackle. I like shows that are really silly and surreal and then also have some very real, relatable moments and darker themes.

What were some of the things you were most excited about in the look and design of “Tuca & Bertie”?

Hanawalt: I was thinking about things I’m not allowed to do on “BoJack.” There’s going to make talking plants. Fuck it!

Haddish: I was most excited about Tuca’s ass. In Season 2, let’s see if she can get some titties! Just putting it out there, boss lady.

Wong: I was excited to see the scenes with Tuca and me together. Also, the scenes with Steven Yeun, who plays Speckles, my boyfriend.

What do you want people to get from watching “Tuca & Bertie?”

Hanawalt: I hope people find it funny and relatable. I hope women see themselves in these characters.

 

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘XY Chelsea’

May 1, 2019

by Carla Hay

Chelsea Manning in "XY Chelsea"
Chelsea Manning in “XY Chelsea” (Photo by Tim Travers Hawkins)

“XY Chelsea”

Directed by Tim Travers Hawkins

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on May 1, 2019.

Less than a month before the documentary “XY Chelsea” was supposed to have its world premiere at 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, controversial whistleblower Chelsea Manning (who’s the subject of the movie) was arrested on March 8, for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the classified U.S. government documents that she leaked to WikiLeaks in 2010. Before the arrest kept her in jail, Manning had been scheduled to attend the “XY Chelsea” premiere and to do an on-stage Q&A afterward. The filmmakers also had to redo the ending of the movie to include updates about the arrests of Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was taken into custody on April 11, 2019.

It’s one of many twists and turns to Manning’s saga that this revealing documentary chronicles with an unwavering purpose: to show viewers who she really is and how she has adjusted to life outside of prison. Manning was imprisoned from 2010 to 2017, the year that President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence. At a post-premiere Q&A, Manning’s criminal-defense attorney Nancy Hollander said that Manning’s refusal to testify is a protest against the system.

Back in 2010, when Manning was first arrested for the notorious case, she was Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army soldier and intelligence analyst with access to thousands of classified government documents. After being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other crimes in 2013, Manning announced that she was going to live her life as a transgender woman named Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. The “XY” in the documentary’s title refers to the chromosomes that determine if a human is male or female; males typically have the XY chromosome, while females usually have the XX chromosome.

Manning has given many interviews and speeches since her release from prison, and she also had a failed 2018 campaign for U.S. Senator to represent her home state of Maryland. But this documentary, which had unprecedented access to Manning, gives viewers a raw and unflinching look at her life behind the scenes.

The movie begins with the news that Manning was pardoned and is set to be released from prison. As a trans woman who was forced to dress like a man in prison, viewers see that Manning has already picked out the type of clothes she wants to wear after her prison release. There’s a phone conversation with Manning instructing her attorney Hollander on the exact pages of fashion magazines where she can find the clothes that Manning wants to wear. Stepping on the plane that will take her to her new home, it’s clear that Manning still can’t quite believe that she is no longer in prison. But Manning isn’t a typical ex-con, and it’s clear she can’t have a “normal” life because of her notoriety. She has to deal with a multitude of issues, including life after prison, life after the military, and life after coming out as a trans woman.

Viewers see that even though she’s no longer in prison, Manning can’t feel completely free because she believes that the government will always be out to get her, now that she’s been declared an enemy of the state. Her paranoia is palpable as she checks for hidden recording devices when she’s in a hotel room. And because Manning has admitted to suicide attempts while she was in prison, there’s an underlying sense that her mental health has varying degrees of fragility.

In the documentary’s interviews, Manning opens up about her unhappy childhood. She says both of her biological parents were heavy drinkers, her father was abusive, and she was hated so much by her stepmother that she was eventually kick out of their home. Manning also said that although her father had a problem with her living as a gay man, it didn’t bother him as much as when she revealed her true identity as a transgender woman.

As for why she joined the military in the first place, Manning said she did it “almost on a whim” because it was her way of trying to escape her trans identity. By joining an establishment that requires strict conformity, Manning said that she was hoping that the military could “cure” her sexual identity, much like “going cold turkey from a drug addiction.”

She is more guarded about what it was like to be a transgender woman in prison. Choosing her words carefully, and often pausing before she speaks, Manning said that she was constantly watched in prison, guards would do things such as walk in on her while she was changing clothes, and people’s reactions to her trans identity were “complicated” and “human.” Manning’s experience in solitary confinement has left emotional scars, since she said that a part of her died when she had to spend so much time in isolation.

While out of prison, the documentary shows Manning becoming very active on social media. In the photo shoot for her first post-prison portrait (which she uses as a social-media profile picture), she jokes that her low-cut blouse might show too much “boobage.” As Manning’s post-prison life evolves into very outspoken activism, particularly against Republicans, she experiences extreme reactions from the public: The people who love her think she’s an American hero, and they treat her almost like a rock star when she’s at political events. There people who hate her think she’s a traitor, and they treat her like a disgusting freak.

Manning’s mantra/political slogan has become “We Got This,” as a way of saying that whatever life throws her way, she can handle it. Her decision to run for U.S. Senate as a first-time political candidate speaks to how high her ambitions are and the groundswell of support that she felt from people. However, there’s a sense of loneliness that permeates Manning’s life—she’s estranged from her family and does not have very many close friends, since she understandably finds it difficult to trust people, and her fame causes a certain isolation. At one point in the documentary, Manning says, “I know I’m not the person that people think I am.”

The documentary also shows what happened behind the scenes during Manning’s Senate campaign and the moment that it all imploded in January 2018. In a misguided attempt at what Manning calls “rapport building,” she went to a right-wing political event called “A Night for Freedom” in New York City, where she was seen hobnobbing with pro-Trump supporters and people who express racist, sexist and homophobic viewpoints. As Manning described it on social media, she “crashed the fascist/white supremacist hate brigade party,” and that she “learned in prison that the best way to confront your enemies is face-to-face in their space.” But she got an immense amount from backlash from left-wing people, many of whom withdrew their support of her. (Manning lost the Senate primary by a landslide.)

In “XY Chelsea,” Manning is seen having a meltdown over the backlash, which she mistakenly thought would blow over in a few days. In a tension-filled scene, Manning shouts to spokesperson Janus Rose and campaign manager/communications director Kelly Wright, “This is driving us into the fucking ground!” Later, Manning fights back tears, as she says that going to the “Night for Freedom” event was “indefensible” and “wrong.” She adds, “I’m not a hero. I’ve just always been someone wanting to do something.”

And in a prophetic scene near the end of the movie, Manning has this to say about why she’s chosen to be a risk-taking activist speaking out against government corruption: “What are they going to do? Throw me in prison? Kill me? They’re going to do that anyway if we let them. I’d rather go down fighting.”

Showtime will premiere “XY Chelsea” on June 7, 2019.

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