Doc Watch: The Ashley Madison Affair (2023)

Watched:  07/22/2024

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  ABC News?

Uh.  Yeah.  If I was ABC News (this doc lives on Hulu), I'd be looking into whether suing Netflix were a possibility.  This series interviews a stunning number of the same subjects, and even pulls the same quotes as the Netflix doc, but is from several months to a year before.

But this is "news" or "documentary", so a legal case can't probably be made.  

Anyway - of the two docs, this one is the less juicy way to deliver exactly the same information.  It does seem they interviewed real users of the site, male and female, and then had actors re-create the transcript so as not to expose the users - and while it's a bit clunky and has an "I'm ACTING!" vibe from time to time at least you're not stuck with morons.  

There's also interviews with real users like a journalist who started doing a story on Ashley Madison and then found himself about to fulfill the site's promise.  And a bit about a near-miss of a case that would have exposed Ashley Madison's fake profiles well before the data hack - which I can't sort why Netflix didn't get into that.

There's also a name named for who was a suspect, until that trail reaches a literal dead end.  And a suggestion that maybe the guy's online pals may have been behind this.  

Of the two, I don't really have an opinion which one I'd recommend.  This feels like - had they worried more about a complete picture - getting more former employees on camera, etc...  it would feel more complete.   But this one also feels marginally more interested in trying to look like the product of a news organization and I suspect that has a lot to do with how it's managed.  But at the same time, feels maybe more... naive?

I dunno.  Neither of these are great.  

Doc Watch: Ashley Madison - Sex, Lies and Scandal (2024)

Watched: 07/18/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Toby Paton, Zoe Hutton, Gagan Rehill

I didn't notice til I went to do this write-up that Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal (2024) is the second docuseries on the topic of the very real hook-up site for married people seeking discreet extramarital affairs, AND the 2015 security breach/ data dump that filled headlines for a few days.  

This docseries is on Netflix (more on that in a minute), but there's one on Hulu that I suppose I'll watch, the same way I watched all the Fyre Fest documentary stuff.

This docuseries breaks into three parts 

• setting up Ashely Madison, who might be interested and why they'd be into, and how the company achieved success
• operating as a success, the initial media reaction, and then... realizing they've been hacked
• impact of the hack on the company, users, revelations and fallout

(Everything below is going to be "spoilers" I guess, for something you can Google if you don't remember it happening)

Doc Watch: Burden of Dreams (1982)

Watched:  07/03/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Les Blank

As I mentioned when discussing Fitzcarraldo, as good as the movie is, it's probably more famous for the impossible conditions around the production of the movie - which was shot on location in the Amazon with a crew and cast comprised of indigenous locals and Klaus Kinski, famously one of the least agreeable actors to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Burden of Dreams (1982) documents the production.  

I won't say the documentary fails to convey the catastrophe that was the production, but if you also saw Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, a documentary chronicling the epically horrendous filming of Apocalypse Now, everything else is going to suffer by comparison.

Hearts of Darkness was originally captured by Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola, and so there's an intimacy to the conversations and scenes shown that Burden of Dreams is unable to achieve.   Burden of Dreams seems shot like a respectful third-party observing with the good-graces of Herzog and crew, and while it's a catalog of many of the miseries of the set - and there were innumerable setbacks and problems - it's not a camera rolling during conversations that feel private or raw, until maybe the end, where Herzog is clearly at his breaking point.

And while the emotional intensity and feeling of creeping dread is not there while watching Burden of Dreams, it's still an absolute ride watching events unfold, and the very obvious problems baked into what Herzog seemed hellbent on doing, against reason and logic.  And I wish the movie had been willing to be less dispassionate about how Herzog's weird hubris fucked with the lives of thousands of people, and got people injured and killed and disrupted multiple native tribes and the massive impact he had during his relatively short stay.  

Part of the problem is that a lot of what happened seems to have happened when the filmmakers weren't around, and so it's being reported to them when there's spats with or amongst the locals.  We never really see the rainy season, and they missed the whole part where Jason Robards shot weeks of film before taking ill and quitting the movie - meaning the movie also lost Mick Jagger.

Equally odd about the doc is that only Herzog and a few locals get real interviews.  We don't hear from Kinski, co-star Claudia Cardinale (I would love her version of events) or Miguel Angel Fuentes, who seems like he'd have plenty to say as a young actor.  

But what is abundantly clear is the recklessness and naivete with which the film was mounted, and the trust and hope the locals put in Herzog that doesn't seem to really pay off.  They're not dumb, and they know that, for example, if the boat's pulley system breaks and people are hurt of killed, it will not be Herzog who gets hurt - and they seem very unsure why they're supposed to be taking this risk.

Managing the long shoot - which has full stretches where nothing is shot - is insane, and it seems like a lot of trouble could have been managed with a better producer or production manager to ensure boats were where they needed to be, people were where they needed to be - but it's also clear if anyone tried to control this chaos, they'd have gone crazy while failing.  This is a movie that went up against the jungle and - much like Fitzcarraldo - maybe barely got what it wanted out of all the trouble it went through.

But, yeah, when you see Herzog sort of shrugging off his discomfort about hiring a prostitute for his film set to keep the peace - on the advice of a priest - you've gone through a rabbit hole.

Further - you may have seen memes or clips of Herzog's meditation on the jungle and what it represents, but it is - by far - the most powerful moment in the film, and by that time, you're inclined to agree with Herzog's take.

Anyway - I do feel like Fitzcarraldo is a richer experience for having had seen the doc and having some "how did they do that?" questions answered in this film.  I just wish they'd been able to get some better access.  

Doc Watch: Brats (2024)

Watched:  06/13/2024

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrew McCarthy

I can remember a time in my life when I was weird about the non-John Hughes movies by "The Brat Pack".  I can't remember why.  I do remember people would say "oh, that's a Brat Pack movie" and I'd say "oh, then I won't watch that", but it was so long ago, I don't even remember what the reasoning was.  

When I figured out who was *in* the Brat Pack, I realized I was really not the market for those movies.  I was too young for the stuff produced before 1985 or so, and we didn't have HBO for me to watch those movies.  Add in whatever that vibe was, and I just never circled back to see them.  Anyway - the concept of the Brat Pack is pretty loosey goosey, with no exact filmography or even common understanding of who is in it.  We can debate that in the comments.

This doc is written and directed by former Brat Packer Andrew McCarthy, who is a writer these days, and a pretty good one.  He's digging into the fall-out and feelings of the clutch of actors discussed in a 1985 New York Magazine front page article called "The Brat Pack", written by then-young journalist David Blum.   

The article followed Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson as they went about a night-in-the-life of young Hollywood during a period when there had been a spike in movies starring, and aimed at, younger people.  It is largely considered to be a hit piece, and by 1980's standards, I guess it is.  Now it just reads like a jealous dork seeing how these extraordinarily fortunate young people spend their time.  It lumps in other actors and co-stars not in attendance and slaps the sobriquet upon them.

Doc Watch: Jim Henson - Idea Man (2024)

Watched:  06/05/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ron Howard

Selection:  Jamie

I watched The Muppet Show as a kid, knowing who maybe a 1/5th of the guests were.  I saw The Muppet Movie, Great Muppet Caper, Muppets Take Manhattan, Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in the theater.  I even remember as a kid wondering how Jim Henson and Frank Oz found the time - "how do they find time to do these things?"   Later, I watched The Storyteller and Jim Henson Hour - which were both given terrible timeslots (Fridays!), if memory serves.

And then one morning I woke up and someone in my house told me Jim Henson was dead.  It's one of my first moments of being shocked by a celebrity death.  It's not wrong to think of Henson in the same mold as Walt Disney, and I understand how the world reeled from his abrupt departure.  

The Henson family has never been terribly secretive, and I've read articles over the years, seen exhibits at the Smithsonian, etc...  so I'd pieced together a rough notion of Henson's life, but it really started with a puppet on one hand.  

It turns out Ron Howard, who directed this film, has a good sense for documentary.  If the movie is a bit of pro-Henson propaganda, there's literally nothing wrong with that.  If Jim Henson had a human side which was imperfect, fine.  The movie does try to give us an idea of some of his blindspots and foibles, courtesy his family and co-workers.  But this film is about how he got to where he was, what his work was like - and how it was done.  And, of course, the impact, which is hard to measure.

With so much time since Henson's death, which was in May of 1990, it's amazing to see so many of his collaborators able to come speak about him, from Muppet costumers to Jennifer Connolly.  And to be taken on the journey from Missouri to DC to London, via clips and video of various efforts.  

I'm not sure there's a ton here for the person who is deeply into The Muppets and appreciates them on a much deeper level than I do, but it's a terrific document.  And for folks who only have heard the name Henson, and did not know him as a friendly face on talk shows or media presence that was generally well-liked across the board - this is a great way to know the man.  And, you'll get a great experience seeing Henson's material all in one place, from his first work on DC to his funeral, which he choreographed.

It's a wonder seeing the Henson kids, now all older than their dad when he passed.  And to hear them speak about him lovingly, but honestly - and I think it's in this realm that I felt Howard's hand.  He knows how to craft the image on a genuine hero.

The documentary is currently available on Disney+.

 

Doc Watch: Lolla - The Story of Lollapalooza (2024)

Watched:  05/24/2024

Format:  Paramount+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael John Warren

I just recently wound up writing about Lollapalooza and music festivals over on my more "personal journal" blog, League of Melbotis.  Originally the post was about ACL Fest and fading interest in festivals, but I was half-way through with the post when I saw an ad for Lolla (2024), a documentary tracking Lollapalooza from it's late-80's origins to today and into tomorrow.  I'd started the post talking about that festival as well as ACL Fest, so it's all of a piece.

This evening we went ahead and blasted through the three sections of the doc, each about 50 minutes, for our Friday night viewing.  

For a fuller picture, do check out that post at LoM.  But the key points include the fact I was a fresh-faced 16 year old when I attended the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991, and attended the first four years. 

To begin with: The doc has a lot of constraints.  It needs the involvement of the people who were there in the past, it needs the partnership of the people who currently work with and own Lollapalooza (Austin's own C3 Entertainment), and it's distributed by MTV parent company, Paramount, who lent a lot of material to the film.  For all those shackles, I think they *mostly* do a solid job of painting at least an interesting and accurate historical portrait.  It's just when you get to the modern era that I kind of side-eye the doc as propaganda.  

Doc Watch: Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces (2024)

Watched:  03/30/2024

Format:  Apple+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Morgan Neville

Selection:  Jamie

I remember back in high school going to see L.A. Story, written by and starring Steve Martin, and getting that Steve Martin was going through some sort of sea-change in what he wanted to be in as an actor.  I'd always known him as a movie star, but certainly associated him with silly/ smart movies like The Jerk, but I'd also seen Roxanne and got that maybe he was doing something with his career now that was less goofy (but, arguably, pretty smart) than Three Amigos.  

And then I think it was around the release of Novocaine that I heard him on the radio (NPR) and got the idea that, oh...  Steve Martin is a weirdly smart guy.  And he's smart in that way that I think he probably just doesn't really connect well to a lot of people - which is the thesis of the doc, one supposes.

If you generally like Steve Martin, I think this is a good way to spend some time.  I'm not overly interested in the personal lives of most modern entertainers, and this is definitely a curated peek into Martin's life, including interviews with friends and his current wife.  It's a collection of showbiz personalities - and you get the feeling Tina Fey really was holding herself back - and then artists, poets and others in Martins orbit who do seem to be his actual friends.  Which is, frankly, unusual for one of these types of docs.  

Doc Watch: Hell on Earth - the Desecration and Resurrection of "The Devils" (2002)

Watched:  03/21/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Paul Joyce

So, I posted on the 1971 Ken Russell film, The Devils, and old college chum and podcast contributor, Ryan M popped into my social media to recommend this documentary (I'll link to his letterboxd review).  

I'm glad he did.  The movie is not your usual US or British cinema offering, and hearing what the thinking was, and what happened in production and upon release was fascinating.  The doc captures several of the folks involved in the picture 30 years on, still vibrant, and with clear memories of what they all considered a massively important film that was brutalized by a few critics and rejected by audiences.  

Were this Holy Mountain, I'd get some of the rejection by audiences and critics - Jodorowsky is brilliant, but his films are straight work to watch.  The Devils challenges a lot, but is not a puzzlebox to view.  As can happen, it seems The Devils may have simply spoken right past the critics who were concerned with "taste" and a lot of external factors rather than the film in front of them.  Which I absolutely understand, but that doesn't mean it isn't a failure of the critic or reviewer if you can't meet the film where it lives (and this is something even at this dumb ol' blog I try to do, and I know I still fail routinely).  

So, I'll leave it to you to read what Ryan M has to say on the key scene that was cut, it's re-discovery, and how it's handled over at his review (I agree with every word he writes).  I'll add in that if you think that scene is a blaspheme, you're missing the point of the film, and it would have been an absolute exclamation point on the film's major themes to keep it in.  

But also I'll chime in with how pompous the reviewer was and remains who dismissed the film.  And I deeply enjoyed watching him absolutely get owned by the documentary while refusing to give an inch.  

Not many movies get to enjoy this kind of retrospective or get to return to what amounts to the scene of a crime as it were, and get a chance to see something they thought lost.  I have 100,000 words on the complications of art and commerce, anti-censorship, et al.  But if you've been kicking around the blog long enough, you can probably guess my stance on these things (art and commerce is complicated!  Censorship = bad!).  Add in the peculiarities of 1970's British censorship, US-based censorship, dumb people and poor media literacy, and it makes for an interesting confluence of events vis-a-vis The Devils.  

If I have one last note - and the doc came out before the show, there's some real Garth Marenghi's Darkplace energy to the host and his presentation style.  I am guessing this was just a BBC thing at the time.

Doc Watch: A Disturbance in the Force (2023)

Watched:  12/28/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jeremy Coon, Steve Kozak

I don't remember exactly when I became aware of the Star Wars Holiday Special.  I vaguely remember hearing Boba Fett had appeared in something on television back in the day, maybe back in high school (pre-1993), but while I was a fan of the 3 movies (and back then, there were only 3), I wasn't someone who read the books or obsessively read about the movies.  

Everything that wasn't the movies kind of didn't work out, in my opinion.  The Marvel Comics were not great, the live-action Endor movies were a weird combo of depressing and bad, and the Ewoks and Droids cartoons were oddly clunky.  

But by college I was well aware of the special existing, and its reputation.  And a couple years after college, right after Jamie and I got married, I was at Vulcan Video and they had the bootleg of the Star Wars Holiday Special on the shelf.  

We put it on, and for two, long, hours (it included the commercials) we groaned our way through the thing.  I've since seen it another time or three, at least once with Rifftrax.  

But if you're here, you're at least aware of the Special.  If not, here you go.  Behold.

Material Watch: Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)

Watched:  07/22/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Alek Kesheshian

It's probably a cultural bellwether that the biggest name in music right now is Taylor Swift, who is a fine singer/ songwriter and who is about as challenging as a pair of fuzzy socks.  Like, I get that she speaks to the suburban experience like no one's business, but she's not exactly out there getting angry notes from the Pope.

But not so Madonna circa 1990 when this documentary was shot and subsequently released.  The Material Girl was not poking anyone in the eye, but she was giddily pushing the envelope enough that she was constantly getting free publicity from outraged pearl clutchers.

I was something of a secret Madonna fan around the time this movie came out.  Attempting a persona as a fan of music which sat outside of pop and the Top 40, I didn't advertise that I knew all the words to La Isla Bonita.  That said, it was expected you'd seen Madonna's videos and knew her songs as both were inescapable through the mid 80's to the mid-90's.  And I wasn't avoiding Madonna.  She, uh, was not funny looking, and her songs were catchy, and on the radio, fairly non-threatening.  And, right out of the gate, she started with Like a Virgin, which always felt like it should be dirty, but you had to make it so, and so it landed on regular MTV rotation.  

Doc Watch: Deepsea Challenge (2014)

Watched:  06/23/2023

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director(s):  John Bruno, Ray Quint, Andrew Wight

Like everyone else, I spent last week keeping up with the story of the Titan, the submersible that was designed by a California firm who seemed to play pretty fast and loose with fairly common knowledge about the ways in which one usually plans and develops a vehicle intended for use 3800 meters below the ocean's surface.  As details about the Titan came out, as well as photos, my eyebrows were raised as I saw how the vehicle worked and how it looked.

Look, I'm no engineer, but you couldn't have gotten me in that thing for love or money.  I'm modestly aware of how submarines look, the need for redundancy and failsafe systems that are as robust as possible when one is not going to be in a position to be rescued should something go wrong.  And while I agree that Playstation controllers are a marvel, I also don't want to lose connectivity to my controller whilst being pulled by ocean currents.  And, really, those game paddles were seen as a sign of the clear hubris suggested by the ship's design and thumbing of the nose at well-established standards of engineering, and, in fact, physics, that I think some of us were responding to.  It was less a lack of respect for other engineers and more of a lack of respect for the danger.*

Doc Watch: Money Shot: The Pornhub Story (2023)

Watched:  03/19/2023

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Suzanne Hillinger

This was.... fine.  

Like it or not, Pornhub was the 12th most visited site in January 2023 (as of this writing), and when people had some time off, maybe the 3rd most visited site in December 2022.  In an era where we've shattered the monoculture, it's possible Pornhub is the great denominator.

A few years ago, I listened to a podcast that discussed the history of Pornhub, how it impacted pornography distribution, how that impacted performers, etc...  I won't get into it here, but that podcast was 2017, and this doc more or less blows past *all* of that in about twenty seconds to cover more recent history.  Given the title and stated agenda of the doc, it's a wild choice.  This doc is in no way a complete history of Pornhub, it's a dissection of a specific moment for Pornhub that is already fairly well known, was covered in the press, and which receives minimal new insight into the events probed, the inner workings of Pornhub, or much else.

Doc Watch: Harlan County, USA (1976)

Watched:  01/14/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Barbara Kopple

One of the things I wonder about as The Kids have decided that labor movements are a fine idea and that they should unionize is if they're well educated on the incredibly bloody history of labor movements in the US.  I'm not recommending one path or the other (I am, but this isn't that blog) but things tend to get really dark when the operators see the minions getting organized.  

To a 20-something working at Starbucks in 2022 or 2023, it may seem like the good fight, but in the places Starbucks tends to exist, you can usually just pick up and go work somewhere else if the deal isn't what you want.  And, of course, 1972 is ancient history when old-timey things happened.  Like the events of the documentary, Harlan County, USA (1976) a film about striking coal minors in Kentucky and the various factors at play and persons involved. And it's as far removed from today's labor conversations and the way work once worked in the US as the Pullman Strike is to organizing baristas.

Doc Watch: Call Me Miss Cleo (2022)

except, literally everyone knew she was a fraud and the network a scam?

Watched:  12/28/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:   

Celia Aniskovich, 

Jennifer Brea

I dunno.  

This doc is weirdly under-developed and under-researched for something that's getting a fairly well-promoted release on HBOmax.  If I was Perry White to this team's Lois Lane, I'd say "you have a lot of facts.  You haven't proven anything and there's no story.  Get back out there."  The doc feels like it's something handed in at a deadline, not something actually something complete, and the final bit that tries to give Miss Cleo absolution feels like the last great con a successful con-artist pulled from beyond the grave.

Maybe the spirits DO talk to us!

But you'll get more facts without any of the tediously dramatic build up out of the anemic Miss Cleo Wikipedia article.  Somehow the doc misses that she had a child?  

Doc Watch: Idina Menzel - Which Way to the Stage? (2022)

...i guess she found it

Watched:  12/15/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Anne McCabe/ Eric Maldin

This is a thing I watched.  I guess it's a documentary?  It's 90 minutes (which I missed when I turned it on, thinking it would be short) and that's movie length.  So here we are.

The film follows Broadway, movie, recording, etc... star Idina Menzel as she tours across the US, heading toward what the movie posits is a lifelong goal of Menzel to perform at Madison Square Garden.  The tension is a bit undercut by:  She will absolutely do this show.  And:  We see her do the same show in 30 cities before hitting NYC.  But, no, I get it.  She's a New Yorker from birth.  That's a big deal.  It's like me getting to, uh...  blog at a coffee shop in Austin?  I have no idea.  

Doc Watch: Santa Camp (2022)

Watched:  12/3/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nick Sweeney

The basic concept for Santa Camp (2022) contains all the volatility you'd expect of a movie that decides to use the familiar cultural touchstone of Santa Claus and the people who play him in malls, parades, personal appearances, etc...  to explore modern social wars and challenges of diversity and inclusivity.  

The movie clearly has a POV, but it's also one that is never stated directly by the filmmakers - this is a doc that lets people be themselves for good or ill on camera.  So, it lives in editorial choices.  Who knows what was left on the cutting room floor?  Maybe some stuff was worse?  Maybe items that were innocuous are cherry picked for context?  But when you're letting Proud Boys speak for themselves, it's hard to say how much nuance you're losing.  

Opening with a meeting of a grand council of Santa's of New England, a role and career choice for aging white men who have a very certain look, we get an idea of who has been a Santa - who embodies jolly ol' St. Nick in our physical space rather than paintings and cartoons.  To my surprise, this group of very similar older guys have already decided that maybe Santa needs more options for the public than just older, white, paunchy men, and they're in agreement that they need to start diversifying by inviting new recruits to their annual weekend retreat known as "Santa Camp".  

Doc Watch: Paris is Burning (1990)

Watched:  08/20/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jennie Livingston

I remember seeing the trailer for Paris is Burning (1990) when we went to see Slacker at the River Oaks in Houston in summer of 1990.  A straight white 15-year-old from the suburbs of Austin, recently transplanted to the suburbs of Houston, the world of gender-bending queer Black culture was - you will be shocked to learn - not on my radar.  It was so utterly alien to my experience that I was wildly curious - but I also was not going to have a ride back down to the River Oaks and asking to be taken to such a movie would be wildly transgressive, no matter how open minded my mom was.

I remember seeking out the doc a few times in college and being unable to find it, but mostly I'd forget about it except when it was mentioned in cultural touchstone moments, like pretty much anything having to do with Madonna post Vogue.  But by and large, I just forgot about trying to watch it until I saw Alicia Malone was hosting it on TCM as part of the style-centric "Follow the Thread" programming series, and I set the DVR.

Doc Watch: Closed For Storm (2020)

Watched:  06/07/2022

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jake Williams

While I've been sick, I've been watching some urban explorer videos and whatnot, and one of the videos I was watching pitched a full documentary the team had put together about the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans.  It's one thing to make a YouTube video with some footage of derelict buildings and combine it with found images and video, and whatever history you can piece together from the internet (which is often shockingly in-depth), so I was curious to see what a full doc looked like when these same folks put in some doc-style labor.  

Closed for Storm (2020) is a solid feature-length-ish effort.  Like the short-form videos by the same team, it chronicles the intentions, financial big movements that impacted the development of the facility, the actual use of the facility, and the factors that led to the decline.  In prior shorter videos, those factors are usually directly economic paired with bad luck and one or two other things, forseeable and otherwise.

Closed for Storm has to grapple with 2005's hurricane Katrina and the impact on New Orleans and the rise and abrupt end to Six Flags New Orleans.  It documents the bizarre purgatory of the property as it sits, rotting more every year, no one making any moves to level the place or do something with it.  The film winds up being a microcosm of the well-documented perfect storm that is Louisiana politics, callowness of big business, economic disparity in action, and the undealt with trauma of a region

As a micro-budget production by folks doing their best, not all of the film feels as polished as it could be.  I was expecting as much.  But it shows promise for the filmmakers if they can continue to elevate this core concept of using something as crazy as an abandoned theme park as a story telling device to illustrate how shit kinda really works/ doesn't work.  

Unlike Astroworld, which was apparently simply financially failing (news to me), Six Flags New Orleans was lost to the storm and given up on by new owners of Six Flags.  From 2005 to the release of this film, the city of New Orleans, never famous for its decision-making, has left the remains of the park to simply rot, rejecting all proposals.  And if you've ever sat through a bureaucratic process like an RFQ proposal, you know there's intense disinterest and misunderstanding by the persons involved.  So, instead of having literally anything else there, the park has just rotted.

Interviews include attendees, former employees, and the folks trying to find ways to revive the property.  Everyone is deeply sincere, and it's a layer to the usual "why it failed" and "urban explorer" videos you see all over YouTube.  We're not just guessing, the video is talking to people who were there, who lost jobs and who saw a good thing for the community abandoned rather than rebuilt, like so much of New Orleans.  But it seems they couldn't get any of the city-folks who so cavalierly dismiss the park year after year.

If I felt like one major point roughly implied, but not directly stated:  the kinds of people who are making decisions about the future of the amusement park shown in the video are not the kind of people who would give one much thought.  I'm not saying they need to be amusement park nerds, but.  They strike me as the sorts of folks who can take days of vacation and jump on a jet and go to Disney if they want to see an amusement park, or go skiing or do whatever.  But vast parts of the population can't afford to and don't do those things.  In a city like New Orleans, which is largely aimed at adult entertainment or expensive pro sports, an amusement park is no small thing.   

Anyway - I hope these folks keep working on their films.  It feels like there's a lot here to consider, and using specific examples of entertainment properties and resorts is fascinating way to consider economic and cultural forces.

Doc Watch: American Grindhouse (2010)

Watched:  04/08/2022

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2010

Director:  Elijah Drenner

This doc felt weirdly slight, and I see now it was 80 minutes.  It traces the history of film from its origins to what sorts of theaters carried schlocky, sexy, or violent films not produced by the studios.  

But... it's weirdly focused on just New York and LA, forgetting these movies had audiences all over, and never curious about how they were (or were not) seen in the rest of the country.  I'm not sure I buy of the main theses of the film, that the studios started making "grindhouse" movies because of the end of the vertical integration of studios and theaters that dissolved post WWII.  But I would agree that eventually studios got involved with content formerly reserved for the grindhouse market.  I'd just point to studios trying to differentiate from what was on TV once the Hays Code fell apart and the rating system came to be.  

There are pretty good interviews, including Eddie Muller, and some creators of some classic schlock, much of which I haven't gotten around to seeing (pitching a 'Women in Cages' movie to Jamie is not as easy as one would believe).  And I've never come across availability of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.  But I was pleased with which ones I'd seen.  I think they gave Russ Meyers and his real legacy basically no consideration, and it's weird.  There's no mention of kung-fu or other genre.  Instead, they seem to want to follow a thread to porn that I'm not sure works if you remember actual porn theaters existing and that was an adjacent but not entirely related thing.  

In short - it's fine, but feels... debatable?  Like the narratives only work if you aren't thinking too hard.

Doc Watch: Summer of Soul (2021)

Watched:  03/30/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Questlove

I started watching Summer of Soul (2021) last year on Hulu, but got in trouble with Jamie for starting it without her.  But somehow we never circled back and watched it.  

Well, I guess it won an Academy Award, so that's a feather in Questlove's cap.  And well deserved.  But it also means there's no real reason for me to further discuss or sell you on this movie.  Or even explain it.  

It's a really beautiful, amazing thing.  Watch it.