Digital Dretzka

September 20, 2007

Digital Dretzka officially digs documentaries, and, each year, we like to welcome the start of Documentary Season. In fact, we much prefer watching documentaries at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday than attending prime-time screenings of 90 percent of all Hollywood movies on a Saturday night. We also enjoy watching non-fiction fare on cable television and PBS, whether it shines a light on ancient civilizations or the apprehension of serial killers.

We wish people who profess to love movies as much as we do would pay to see documentaries in theaters, or, if not there, at home on DVD. We have a similar fondness for indies and foreign titles. And, we’re firmly on the side of world peace and ending poverty … but, that’s another column.

Like you, we don’t trust members of the Motion Picture Academy to nominate -- let alone, award -- the finest examples of any year’s crop of films in any category, but especially those honoring documentaries. No matter how hard the academy attempts to reform itself, huge blunders invariably are made. Like those responsible for the quagmire in Iraq, no one in the academy feels it necessary to acknowledge such mistakes, explain how they might have occurred or, God forbid, apologize.

Others of you are just as passionate about perceived injustices in more glamorous categories, such as Best Picture, Best Director and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Good for you. We rarely have a rooting interest in those contests, and choose to direct our unhappiness elsewhere.

(Anyone who takes the Golden Globes or Peoples Choice Awards seriously enough to give a crap, one way or the other, ought to make an appointment with Dr. Phil.)

Being Documentary Season, art houses suddenly are playing documentaries people have been waiting to see since reading about them Sundance or some other long-ago festivals. It’s a brief period of time -- a veritable Brigadoon -- so pay careful attention to the listings for those mandatory one-week qualifying runs in a major city or college town. Here a few that are making the rounds right now.

Al Franken: God Spoke
The release of “Al Franken: God Spoke” -- Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus’s follow-ups to “Startup.com” and “The War Room” -- coincides both with the satirist’s drive to raise funds for his Midwest Values PAC and news that financially strapped Air America Radio was forced to hold back at least one of his paychecks. Franken always makes for good copy, especially in an election year, but even those who think bad publicity is better than no publicity would agree the timing was less than advantageous for the film. Even worse, it gave Franken’s many enemies on the right even more material for their liberal-baiting diatribes on talk radio.

Two years in the making, “God Spoke” describes the process that greased the longtime Minnesotan’s progression from “SNL” writer-comedian to fully engaged political activist. It wasn’t all that much of a stretch for the author of “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations” and “Why Not Me?,” as he was quickly emerging as one of the few loyal Democrats with something resembling a sense of humor. In October, 2002, that quality was severely tested by the untimely death of his friend, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, during a campaign trip to northern Minnesota.

That tragic event, in combination with the voters’ refusal to honor Wellstone’s memory by electing a like-minded Democrat, prompted Franken to pick up the baton and advance the cause of progressivism in a state that had elected Jesse Ventura governor. He would write another best-seller, this one targeting Fox News’ pet Neanderthal Bill O’Reilly, before the launch of Air America. A year later, in 2005, he launched the PAC, and has since hinted at a run for public office in 2008.

It’s difficult to imagine what Doob and Hegedus had in mind when they decided to focus on the 57-year-old Harvard grad. More than likely, they saw an opportunity to document the launch and possible meltdown of Air America … that, or the emergence of the new Great Liberal Hope.

In real life, Franken is no Stuart Smalley: he’s smart, well-read, industrious, dedicated, funny, charismatic and a non-Hollywood celebrity … everything most politicians aren’t. But, that much we already knew walking into the theater.

Inadvertently, perhaps, “God Spoke” also reveals just how smarmy the electoral process has become in this country, and how easy it is to succumb to the trappings of power. Franken emerges from the movie with his integrity intact, but it’s hard not to feel embarrassed for him as he makes nice with Henry Kissinger and other Republican swine at a cocktail party he’s just gate-crashed with camera crew in tow. Even worse are his bordering-on-childish exchanges -- they could hardly be called debates -- with such professional provocateurs as Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

By the end of the film, it’s impossible not to wonder how many compromises Franken might have to make to succeed as a candidate for offices higher than the ones provided him at Air America and “Saturday Night Live.” Or, at what point he’ll start pulling back from his more progressive beliefs and morph into a pragmatist, just as Bill and Hillary Clinton did when push came to shove.

You won’t find the answers to those questions in “God Spoke,” or many clues as to what kind of leader he would be. Still, for those voters disgusted by the gutlessness and greed demonstrated by our elected politicians, Franken could offer a ray of hope for the future. As a politician, he could probably do exponentially more good than as a host for a radio network that can’t even pay its employees.

Jesus Camp
It’s highly likely that most admirers of Al Franken and his brand of liberalism would view “Jesus Camp” with the same horror usually reserved for newsreel footage of World War II concentration camps and skull collections in Cambodia and Rwanda. Conservatives, however, might see in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s portrait of contemporary red-state Evangelism great hope for the future of the U.S. That’s how deeply the filmmakers have buried their own points of view in the film’s even-handed narrative.

On-screen graphics tell us that there are 100 million Evangelicals in this country, including a generation of kids raised on Christian-rock music, Christian cable networks, the well-publicized re-births of miscreants ranging from politicians to serial killers, and increasingly divisive public debates over abortion, evolution and Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic outbursts. The filmmakers were given so much access to Pentecostal Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp” that it’s possible to believe she was conned into thinking they were making an infomercial for it. Neither did any of the children or adults featured in “Jesus Camp” appear uptight about how it possibly could be used to make them look ridiculous.

Fears that “Jesus Camp” might be seen as leftist propaganda likely prompted the producers’ request to pull the film from Michael Moore’s film festival in Traverse City, Mich. Moore is so despised by conservatives, any connection could damage hopes for box-office success in the Heartland. Magnolia’s strategy was to open “Jesus Camp” in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Missouri, ahead of its Friday debut in New York and other major cities on September 29. It’s the rare documentary that will find admirers on both sides of the political and critical aisle, but for entirely different reasons.

Liberals’ worst fears will be realized, watching home-schooled kids being taught utter nonsense about globe warming, evolution, homosexuality, the Supreme Court and the godlessness of the “Harry Potter” novels. Some will go into shock listening to anti-abortion diatribes by pre-teens and hearing the war chants of kids wearing jungle-camouflage makeup in the war for souls. More disturbing, perhaps, is Pastor Fischer’s stated admiration for indoctrination techniques employed by militant Muslims “in Israel and Palestine.”

Any kids in the audience might wonder, too, if the campers were allowed to read any other book than the bible, or play games that didn‘t involve unborn fetuses, cardboard cut-outs of George W. Bush or talking in tongues. What ever happened to snipe hunts and frog bashing? Maybe that sort of thing is left for the kids of the snake-handling Pentecostals.

The one thing hard-core Evangelical audiences certainly will find suspect is the sporadic commentary of a liberal Christian talk-show host. Ostensibly, he’s there to balance the rhetoric and remind blue-staters than not all born-again Christians are consumed with inflicting their political opinions on children barely out of kindergarten.

The kids featured in “Jesus Camp” all seem intelligent, articulate, obedient and fun to be around, when they aren‘t politely asking strangers if they‘ve been “saved.“ The adults don’t look as if they might someday put on red armbands and march to City Hall demanding the detention of folks who were only born once, either.

But, you never know.

Vajra Sky Over Tibet
Filmed surreptitiously by writer-director John Bush while was on a pilgrimage to Tibet, “Vajra Sky Over Tibet” will be of great interest to lovers of travel and religious documentaries, as well as those folks who put “Free Tibet” stickers on their hybrid cars. By successfully avoiding the watchful eyes of Chinese authorities, Bush’s small team was able to capture images of daily life and religious ritual rarely seen by Western audiences … or anyone else, for that matter. To avoid the risk of exposing civilians to reprisal by police, Bush wisely elected to forgo on-location interviews and add the narration of fellow Buddhist Tenzin L. Choegyal in post-production.

Despite these limitations, “Vajra Sky Over Tibet” is a spectacularly beautiful and highly informative movie … remarkably well lit for the conditions and shot as if Bush had all the time in the world to set up his cameras. His Buddhist credentials allowed the team access to the inner sanctums of temples beyond the reach of most tourists and bear witness to the determination of the residents to practice their religion openly. Their strength and resolve are palpable.

Well beyond any political subtext are wondrous scenes of sky-piercing mountains, raging rivers, lakes with mirror surfaces and picture-postcard valleys. The religious art and architecture is magnificent, as well.

“Vajra Sky Over Tibet” is slowly making its way around the country. This week it‘s playing in the San Francisco area. -- G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 03:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 13, 2006

For the past dozen years, David Leaf and John Scheinfeld have made a pretty decent living churning out rockumentaries and video biographies of several generations worth of pop-culture icons, ranging from Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante to Brian Wilson and Jonathan Winters. Indeed, a scan of their resumes might suggest that cable television would be in deep trouble if they stopped collaborating on the kinds of celebrity profiles repeated endlessly on such networks as A&E, Bravo, TBS, TNT, CMT, TLC and National Geographic.

Their revelatory new documentary, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” breaks the mold by starting out in theaters, before touching down on VH1. It opens in Los Angeles and New York Friday, before moving into the hinterlands on Sept. 29.

Lennon’s contributions to pop music in the second half of the 20th Century have been exhaustively recorded, dissected and analyzed ever since the Beatles emerged as one of the greatest cultural phenomenon in recorded history. Likewise, his marriage to performance artist Yoko Ono has been scrutinized with the same intensity usually reserved for the tax returns of mob chieftains. Lennon’s untimely death assured that the mythologizing would continue apace for generations to come.

“The U.S. vs. John Lennon” focuses tightly on a relatively brief period in Lennon’s life, during which the Luvable Moptop became a prime target for the dirty tricksters of the Nixon White House. At a time when Republican lawmakers were in position to end the war in Vietnam and mend the economy, a pinhead potentate from South Carolina -- longtime senator Strom Thurmond -- convinced President Richard M. Nixon to worry, instead, about a musician whose rallying cry was, “Give Peace a Chance." The ability of such a well-known dove to appeal to newly enfranchised 18-year-olds was of great concern to the hawks in Washington.

“He was a high-profile figure, so his activities were monitored," reminds would-be Watergate fall-guy G. Gordon Liddy, whose testimony adds perspective to the more liberal musings of Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein, Ron Kovic, Noam Chomsky, George McGovern, Geraldo Rivera, Bobby Seale, John Sinclair and Tom Smothers.

“Liddy gave us a window into the White House,” said Scheinfeld. “Kovic (played by Tom Cruise, in ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ was the moral heart of the movie. Journalists Cronkite and Bernstein described how Lennon fit into what was happening in the streets.”

What got Thurmond’s attention was Lennon’s perceived ability to influence policy and public opinion, simply by singing a few songs and raising his clenched fist at political rallies. In 1971, at the height of civil rights and antiwar activism on campuses and inner cities, Lennon appeared at a benefit for a relatively obscure Ann Arbor radical and music manager who was doing hard time in prison, ostensibly for selling two joints to an undercover cop.

John Sinclair’s sentence was widely seen as a travesty of justice, and punishment for his promotion of the anarchic White Panther Party and the kick-out-the-jams band, the MC5. As long as Sinclair remained a local hero, Michigan lawmakers couldn’t be bothered with his case. Two days after Lennon’s appearance, Sinclair was released from prison.

Celebrities had yet to be taken seriously as forces for change in national political movements. Jane Fonda was more of an embarrassment to the Movement than a godsend, but Lennon was the real deal.

Leaders of the Yippies and Black Panthers saw in Lennon a marquee attraction for their rallies, and happily exploited his passion for the Movement. A series of similar events were planned to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the 1972 Democratic and Republican conventions.

Thurmond, who built his power base by pandering to segregationists, understood only too well the power of Lennon's appeal and wrote Nixon, suggesting that his visa be pulled and deportation hearings begun. The order would was based on a misdemeanor pot conviction, in 1968, in England. Few in Thurmond’s circle had forgotten, either, Lennon’s off-hand observation, made in 1966, “We're more popular than Jesus now.”

Instead of meekly giving in, Lennon hired immigration attorney Leon Wildes, who primarily employed delay tactics to buy time for his client and wait out the election. He also sued Attorney General John Mitchell, charging conspiracy.

Although the case for deportation eventually was dropped, Lennon paid a terrible toll in the emotional distress caused by having to deal daily with wiretaps, informers and a high-level smear campaign. He also was distressed about the hatred directed at Ono by fans, who blamed her for the break-up of the Beatles and the couple’s famously kooky Amsterdam “bed-in.”

“John grow up loving the America and was shocked that the government was going after him,” said Sheinfeld. “He also was blindsided by the vehemence of the response by religious groups to his comments about Jesus and the Beatles.”

Much of what’s described in “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” was first made public in Jon Wiener’s book, “Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.” It was the product of exhaustive research, intense legal maneuverings and a close perusal of 280 pages of FBI files kept secret until 1997. Leaf and Scheinfeld’s primary task was to illuminate the blocks of largely blacked-out text with archival news, concert and interview footage, and record new interviews to contextualize the material.

(The Smoking Gun has just published a more extensive sampling of Lennon-Ono files -- demonstating a range of FBI concerns that borders on the hysterical -- made available only through repeated FOIA requests http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1208051lennon1.html?link=rssfeed).

The FBI’s efforts to discredit leftists, counterculture figures and civil rights leaders was revealed to the public in the early ’70s, after files were stolen from an FBI field office and leaked to the press. The targets of dirty FBI tricks and misinformation campaigns ranged from Martin Luther King Jr. and actress Jean Seberg, and included the infiltration and manipulation of such groups as the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, American Indian Movement, Nation of Islam KKK and American Nazi Party. Suddenly, the prevailing mood of paranoia fostered by leftist, campus and other activist groups seemed, if anything, understated.

Leaf and Scheinfeld worked closely with Ono, who had access to much unseen material, and painstakingly scoured news archives for vintage photos, clips and newsreel footage. Especially poignant is the material shot on the very day -- Lennon’s birthday -- he not only was awarded his green card, but his son, Sean, also was born.

“We knew that pictures from that day existed, but no one could find them,” said Leaf. “John’s the best in the world at finding those sorts of things. Turns out, they were simply misfiled.”

There’s more to the story, of course, but the film pretty much ends there. Lennon would disappear from the public eye in the mid-’70s, a period during which he battled many personal demons and nearly destroyed his relationship with Ono. This would be followed by a retrenchment into home, family and music, and a career resurgence cut short by Mark David Chapman’s hollow-point bullets.

Although the filmmakers don’t bang viewers over the head with parallels between Lennon’s deportation drama and the Bush White House’s support of the Patriot Act, they’re impossible to miss and ignore.

Radicals of the ’60s and ’70s, who claimed their phones were tapped and their every move chronicled by federal agents or paid informers, were ridiculed as paranoid fools and dupes of the New Left. The disclosure of COINTELPRO demonstrated that, if anything, official misconduct was more extensive than anyone imagined.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that records of phone conversations between millions of Americans have been stored in one government computer or another, conceivably available to any number of agencies, hackers and private eyes. Like J. Edgar Hoover, Bush assured his constituents they have nothing to fear, unless, of course, they happened to be terrorists. But, the revelation almost certainly had a chilling effect on whistleblowers, anti-war activisits and other blabbermouths who might consider leaking information to reporters.

It’s also become clear, despite the President’s promise to prosecute anyone charged with leaking secrets to the press, that the worst offenders worked at the highest levels of the administration, and at the behest of Bush’s closest advisers. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the only people incarcerated over the revelation of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identit

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 04:16 PM | Permalink

September 05, 2006

Tonight, I did something I hadn’t done in years. Like millions of other obedient Americans, I tuned into “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” to see the face that launch’d a thousand sappy magazine and newspaper articles in the months since her departure from NBC in May.

Helen of Troy, Katie wasn’t. Not that she was trying to dazzle us with anything but her ability to navigate a set without stumbling or missing a cue.

Wisely, Couric elected to leave the party-hardy dresses and fuck-me pumps she favored on “Today” back home -- for the time-being, anyway -- and chose, instead, one of those generic ensembles women in New York and Washington don when they want to be taken seriously. (Henceforth, ratings will dictate the length of her skirts and height of her heels.)

Otherwise, Couric seemed as prepared, personable and articulate as anyone else who’s paid millions of dollars annually to write the news off a Teleprompter. Given the visibility accorded her in our celebrity-centric media, the 49-year-old Virginian -- I think CBS would prefer reporters to ignore Style Book protocol by referring to her as Katie in second reference -- will get more than her fair share of “exclusive” interviews, and the show will benefit from her rapt attention to the job at hand. Soon, however, the other network anchors will demand equal time from newsmakers, and CBS will weigh their new superstar down with corporate glad-handing, speaking engagements, prime-time assignments and on-site reporting.

By this time next week, Couric will be part of the television woodwork, and millions of fickle viewers -- myself included -- will return to their regular routines. These include watching DVDs and reruns on cable, surfing the web and, yes, even eating dinner with the tube turned off. Like newspapers, the nightly network newscasts have been in free-fall for years, and it will take more than the addition of a photogenic anchor to reverse the trend.

Truth is, the heads of the broadcast networks only give a crap about the nightly newscasts when ratings sag, budgets need to be trimmed or a naughty word or bare nipple manages to get on the air.

If the executives took their responsibilities to heart, one of them would bite the bullet and do the unthinkable, which is to add another half-hour (including another 10 minutes of commercials) to the newscast and insert it into a “day part” that better accommodates commuter schedules. This would mean, of course, asking affiliates to relinquish a half-hour of prime-time access usually reserved for such cash cows as “Wheel of Fortune,” “ET” or reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” And, since the networks own and operate stations in the most lucrative markets, that dog simply won’t hunt … as Dan Rather would have said.

It explains why Couric used precious seconds of airtime pimping for www.cbsnews.com, which looks exactly like a couple of hundred other websites and promotes CBS programming and personalities above real news. With such websites in their arsenal, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox already have an iron-clad excuse for not adding another half-hour of news to their broadcast arms.

Network executives also want viewers to seek out their cable operations as sources for more complete coverage. The personnel may represent the second team, but it’s there … 24 hours a day … just like Time Warner’s CNN, which has been the network of choice for breaking news for most of the last 25 years. A half-hour doesn’t provide Couric, Brian William and Charles Gibson enough time to be more than a headline and sound-bite service, similar to those pages in big-city newspapers that encapsulate the material inside, so you don’t have to bother reading it.

Apparently, this is all the news most Americans want, anyway. Just consider the recent Harris survey that revealed half of all Americans now think that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction before our last invasion, up from 35 percent in 2005. It’s also been widely reported that a staggering number of people -- teens and college students, mostly -- list Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” as their primary source for news. This, even though Stewart has widely acknowledged that he reads “fake news” and never fails to point out that his program is on the Comedy Channel. (Fooled the folks who give out Peabody Awards, too.)

Judging solely by the first broadcast of “The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,” the show is likely to be fast-paced and at least as informative as the other nightly newscasts. Couric’s natural perkiness will be exploited by producers -- probably to a fault -- but she isn’t likely to embarrass herself or her network, linguistically or otherwise. One hopes she has the gumption to say “no,” when one of her bosses asks her to verify the strength of a hurricane by tying herself to a tree, or don elaborate costumes to score dubious “beats.”

Tuesday night’s broadcast led with a fairly interesting visit to a Taliban camp within 10 miles of a platoon of American troops. (Reporter Lara Logan wore a chadur with a striking blaze of red fabric on her chest … nice touch.) This was followed by video footage of President Bush lying to his constituents about terrorism, and a knee-jerk interview with the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that also contradicted Bush. Apparently, Ford has a new boss and Chevron located a bunch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, but Americans shouldn’t expect to reap the benefits because hurricanes can be mighty tough on oil rigs.

Instead of an in-depth discussion of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin’s methodology and its impact on the environmental movement -- pro and con -- viewers were directed to the website and pictures of mourning Aussies. Fast-food alarmist Morgan Spurlock was accorded the privilege of presenting the first “Free Speech” video column, and, while it didn’t suck, the segment was a luxury that half-hour newscasts shouldn’t afford.

There was other stuff, including a nice feature on a native Cheesehead who brightens the life of Nicaraguan orphans with portraits drawn by their American counterparts. The coup de’grace would come in the most obvious and cheesy way possible … when in doubt, play the celebrity card.

The big scoop came with the revelation of tightly held photos taken for Vanity Fair by Annie Liebovitz -- yes, THAT Annie Liebovitz -- of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ baby, Suri … or a child purporting to be Suri. No mention of any deal cut between the magazine and the stars, or between CBS News and Vanity Fair, for that matter. Neither did Couric question Cruise’s bizarre obsession with secrecy, or whether his connection to the Church of Scientology might have had something to do with the shielding of Suri from public view. Nope, just a cutesy-pie hand-out photo disguised as news.

Couric closed the show by encouraging her audience to go to the website, once again, to help her come up with a sign-off phrase, a la Walter Cronkite’s famous “And, that’s the way it is …” She probably got the idea from USA Today and AOL, organizations that poll their readers everyday on all manner of dopey subjects, but wouldn’t in a million years base any decisions on the results.

Let’s hope it’s something better than “Courage,” which Dan Rather adopted when things got too dark in his life, and, by extension, our’s. Maybe something like, “Now, don’t forget to go to www.cbsnews.com for the rest of the news, commercials and plugs for other CBS programming … ya’hear.”

Let me know what they come up with. I get all the news I can stand via “Naked News.” Now, that‘s infotainment. -- G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)