Watched: 09/15/2026
Format: TCM on DVR
Viewing: First
Director: Richard Shepard
It's always weird to watch a documentary about someone talking about themselves and their family. In this way, the recent award winning doc by Mariska Hargitay My Mom Jayne absolutely works. As her mother Jayne Mansfield passed when she was so very young, it's really about her learning about her own mother decades after the fact. She just happens to have the best possible access to Mansfield's history. But she also is clear eyed about remaining objective and talking about it when she isn't and what it means to live with that legacy.
Film Geek (2023) tosses anything like objectivity out the window in the first minute of the film, and you're just along for the ride as film maker Richard Shepard recounts his youth in 1970's and 1980's Manhattan, which was a whirlwind of movie mania and NY-based Gen-X childhood. This is paired with our director/narrator trying to unpack how movies tied him to a father he wants to present as a romantic rogue and bon vivant and his mother as a saint.