Tag Archives: documentary

Musical Documentary Review: Woodstock ’94 (dir by Bruce Gowers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Woodstock ’94 is the forgotten Woodstock.

Taking place in a field in Saugerties, New York, Woodstock ’94 opened on August 12 and it ended two days later.  Officially, it was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock and it was produced and promoted largely by the same people who were behind the original festival.  They were hoping to actually make some money this time but that plan failed when the fence surrounding the concert area was torn down by people who wanted to see the bands and hear the music without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for tickets.  In all, 164,000 tickets were sold for Woodstock ’94 but it’s estimated that 350,000 attended.  To be honest, that sounds like a good example of the Woodstock spirit to me.  The people in charge of the festival disagreed, which is what led to the disaster that was Woodstock ’99.

Woodstock ’94 tends to be overlooked, precisely because it was neither the spontaneous celebration of the first Woodstock nor the epic trainwreck of the third Woodstock.  Instead, the second Woodstock was a largely peaceful festival that featured a good mix of older and, at the time, newer acts.  The original Woodstock featured open love and the third Woodstock featured random acts of arson.  The second Woodstock, on the other hand, featured a lot of rain.  Apparently, Green Day got pelted with mud.  Maybe a time traveler went back to 1994 and told everyone about American Idiot before the band started playing.  It makes sense if you think about it.

The first Woodstock lives forever as an epic documentary.  The third Woodstock has inspired at least two docuseries, both of which examine the festival with the grim weariness of a true crime recreation.  Earlier today, I discovered that the second Woodstock actually was filmed as well, though apparently Bruce Gowers’s Woodstock ’94 was never released in theaters and instead went straight to video.  It’s a sign of how forgotten Woodstock ’94 is that the film has never even been released on DVD or Blu-ray.  That said, after I learned of the film’s existence, I really did want to see it.  (I’m a completist at heart.)  I discovered that, fortunately, it’s been uploaded to YouTube.

From the start, Woodstock ’94 sets out to duplicate the style of the first Woodstock.  There’s plenty of split screens.  We open with people working hard to get the festival grounds ready.  There are interviews with concert goers.  There’s an interview with a guy selling food.  We get a few random announcements from the stage.  There’s a hint of nudity, though nowhere near as much as in the first film.  Probably the funniest moment in the documentary is when we see a sign telling us that a certain area has been reserved for those wanting to watch the concert nude.  During the first Woodstock, the nudity was spontaneous.  For the second one, it was prepared for.  The main thing that I noticed was how pleasant everyone seemed to be.  There was none of the anger that defined Woodstock ’99.  There was none of the bad brown acid that inspired so many warnings at the first Woodstock.  Instead, everyone appeared to be having a good time.  Even with Green Day getting pelted with mud, the Woodstock ’94 audience appeared to be rather mild-mannered.  Most of them seemed like they probably play golf now.

The majority of the documentary is devoted to the music.  We see tightly edited performances from, amongst others, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Aerosmith, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, The Cranberries, Green Day (though we don’t really get to see the incident with the mud, which is a shame), and Primus.  The festival had a good lineup.  Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a bit on the dull side but Primus more than makes up for it.  My only real complaint is that we only get to hear one song from each featured group.

Woodstock ’94 was surprisingly pleasant.  It’s too bad that, five years later, the whole idea of Woodstock fell apart.

Musical Documentary Review: Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (dir by Jamie Crawford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In August of 2022, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary about Woodstock  ’99.

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 took a look at how the third Woodstock musical festival went from being the most highly anticipated event of the summer of 1999 to being a total disaster.  I started watching the documentary the week that it premiered.  I was halfway through the first episode when I realized that I needed to make sure that my car insurance had been renewed.  I stopped the program, hopped online, made sure that my payment had been received and then….

Well, I don’t exactly remember what I did but I do know that I did not return to Woodstock ’99.  Indeed, I kind of forgot about Woodstock ’99.  It wasn’t until last night, when Jeff and I were looking for something to watch on Netflix, that I saw Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 listed under “continue watching.”  I did the math.  I decided that, given that it had been nearly four years since I watched the opening 30 minutes of the first episode, it was perhaps to finally see what Woodstock ’99 was all about.

The three-part documentary features archival footage from the concert and also interviews with the people behind Woodstock ’99, a few people who attended, and some of the artists who performed.  To be honest, I wish that more of the performers had been interviewed.  Considering that one of the festival’s organizers literally blamed Fred Durst for the rioting, it’s a shame that Durst didn’t share his side of the story.  I’m not a huge fan of Fred Durst but the decision to blame him for the crowd getting out of control has always seem to be a bit too convenient to me.  As the documentary shows (sometimes unintentionally), people had reason to be angry long before Fred Durst stepped out on stage and told them to “break shit.”  As a once popular performer who has since come to be seen as a bit of a self-parody, Durst makes for an easy scapegoat.

For all the talk about what Woodstock has represented throughout the years, all three of the festivals were ultimately about making money for the organizers.  Michael Lang may have been a hippie who said the first Woodstock was about ending the war in Vietnam and that the third Woodstock was about promoting gun control but he was also a businessman.  The first Woodstock only made money because of the success of the famous documentary.  Woodstock ’94 lost money because the fence surrounding the festival was torn down and people were able to get in without buying tickets.  Woodstock ’99 was designed to be secure and impenetrable.  Instead of being held in a field, it was held on a deserted air force base where the asphalt made the summer heat unbearable and where the empty hangars helped to create a dystopian atmosphere.  Woodstock ’99 was designed to be village.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a village where bottled water eventually ended up costing $14.00 and the toilets ended up overflowing.  (One interviewee discusses waking up on the third day and discovering that she was suffering from something called “trench mouth.”  Even the name sounds terrifying.)

The documentary features a few people who rightly point out that the festival’s organizers created a situation where the third night’s riot was almost inevitable.  Michael Lang apparently had not listened to any new music since the 70s and, hence, didn’t understand that there was a world of difference between the mellow hippies of 1969 and the fans of Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock.  Amazingly, Lang thought it would be a good idea to hand out candles so that the festival could end with a candlelight vigil against gun violence.  The candles were instead used to start fires.  As the festival grounds burned, the fence was finally torn down, a sound tower was pulled to the ground, and eventually the national guard showed up.  The organizers of the Festival, including Lang, put the blame on almost everyone but themselves.

I’ve often said that movie and documentaries made between 2019 and 2024 often feel as if they are artifacts from a different age.  That’s how quickly the culture shifted after the election of 2024.  That’s the case with Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.  The final thirty minutes of the documentary are spent classifying Woodstock ’99 as being an example of white privilege  and it seems a little performative today but that was pretty much the prism through which everything was viewed and discussed in 2022.  The truth of the matter is that there were a lot of reasons why Woodstock ’99 was a disaster and almost all of them come down to the greed at the heart of the enterprise.  It was greed that led to festival being held in the worst possible location.  It was greed that led to cutting corners when it came to security and the hiring of the half-assed “Peace Patrol,” a group of amateur security guards who failed to protect the most vulnerable people at the festival.  (At least five rapes and numerous other sexual assaults occurred a the concert.)  And it was ultimately Michael Lang’s desire to pretend that the concert was about something other than greed that led to a bunch of angry, tired, and intoxicated people being handed candles.

This documentary shows why Woodstock ’99 was the final Woodstock.  (There was an attempt to put together a 50th anniversary festival in 2019 but, perhaps thankfully, it fell apart.)  It’s a shame that Woodstock ended the way it did.  It could have been a great American tradition.  Instead, the festival of peace and love ended with fire and destruction.

Musical Film Review: Freebird…. The Movie (dir by Jeff G. Waxman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

My Dad was a huge Skynard fan.

When I was little, I didn’t really know that there was any controversy about the lyrics of Sweet Home Alabama or the fact that Lynard Skynard’s stage show usually featured a Confederate flag.  I didn’t know what Tuesday’s Gone was about.  I didn’t know that Free Bird was considered to be a classic by anyone other than my father.  I didn’t even know about the tragic 1977 airplane crash.  I just knew that when my Dad was driving he liked the Eagles, he enjoyed the Steve Miller Band, and he loved Lynard Skynard.  Even today, whenever I hear Sweet Home Alabama, I imagine my Dad driving his big rig across this beautiful country of ours.  The song may have been about Alabama and it may have been an answer song to a very specific song written by a Canadian (of all people) but it was still a song that could be listened to and enjoyed anywhere.  It was a song about Alabama but it was also a song that uniquely American.

At least, that’s what I always thought.  When I was in college, my friend Jen absolutely hated Sweet Home, Alabama (both the song and, believe it or  not, the film) and she would always start going, “No, don’t do it!” whenever she saw that I was about to play it.  That just made me play it louder.

By that time, of course, I knew that there was some controversy about both the song and the band.  Because Lynard Skynard was proudly and defiantly Southern, there were quite a few people who interpreted Sweet Home, Alabama as being a defense of everything that was going on in Alabama during the early 70s.  Of course, that’s not the case of all.  The song was defending a group of people against other people who, like Mr. Young, looked down on Alabama while ignoring or excusing the very similar things that were happening in their own backyard.  Massachusetts, for instance, was the scene of a good deal of violent racial strife throughout the 70s but Neil Young was never tempted to write Boston Man.  While Alabama was finally starting to move away from Jim Crow, people in Boston were rioting about busing.  The appeal of Lynard Skynard, at least as far as the original 70s version, was that they were tough, they were loud, and they didn’t apologize for being who they were. They weren’t going to apologize for being from the South and speaking with Southern accents.  They were defiant in a way that brought together both hippies and rednecks.

1996’s Freebird…. The Movie was one of the last films that my Dad watched before he died.  The film is a mix of archival concert footage and interviews with the members of Lynard Skynard, all of whom are rather worshipful of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.  Van Zant emerges as such a charismatic performer and frontman that it’s easy to see why the members of the band and the audience would follow him just about anywhere.  Of course, the main appeal of the film is the music.  Sweet Home Alabama is performed with a blast of pure energetic Southern rock that stands in contrast to some of the band’s more mellow songs.  Freebird is performed beautifully and Billy Powell’s piano solo remains amazing.  As always, it probably helps to already be a fan of the band when watching a film like this.  All I can say is that, on July 31st, 2024, my Dad smiled as he watched it and I cried as I watched it with him.

Documentary Review: 15 Days: The Real Story of America’s Pandemic School Closures (dir by Natalya Murakhver)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In December of 2021, I was nearly attacked in a Target.

This was nearly two years into the COVID pandemic and the world was slowly reopening.  (Since I live in Texas, my world reopened earlier than everyone else’s.  Despite the predictions of folks up north, who were almost gleeful in their predictions that Texas would be wiped out by people coughing on each other at football games, we survived.)  In 2020, my sisters and I couldn’t really celebrate Christmas the way we usually did because everything was closed.  In 2021, we were l0oking forward to making up for lost time.

What I was not looking forward to was wearing a mask.  Due to an ambitious politician named Clay Jenkins who was hoping to ride the COVID pandemic into the governor’s mansion, Dallas County still had a mask mandate.  The mandate was unenforceable due to Governor Abbott’s executive order but still, a lot of people in Dallas were masking up.  Sitting in the parking lot of Target, I told my three older sisters that I was not going to wear a mask inside the store.  I have asthma.  Having to wear a mask was more than just an inconvenience for me.  Wearing a mask made it difficult for me to breathe and, given that more and more health authorities were starting to admit that masks didn’t make any difference as far as the spread of the disease was concerned, I didn’t see why I should have to unnecessarily suffer.  My sisters said that they understood and that they would have my back if anyone said anything to me about my maskless state.  “But no one will,” my sister Megan assured me.

As soon as I stepped into the store, I heard it.

“GET A MASK ON HER!”

It wasn’t a store manager or a cop or any other sort of authority figure yelling.  It was an overweight, middle-aged woman riding around the store on her little scooter.  Apparently, she spotted me as soon as I entered the store and immediately started driving herself in my direction, yelling the entire time.  I couldn’t really understand the majority of what she yelled but I did manage to make out words like “Mask,” “kill all of us,” “selfish,” and a few others that I can’t repeat during Lent.

Again, because of Lent, I can’t tell you what my older sister Melissa said in response to her.  My sisters, all three of whom had been masked up, removed their masks in solidarity.  I wish I could say that the entire store applauded but most people were just trying to avoid looking at the fat banshee on her scooter.

Even after my sisters removed their masks, the woman continued to focus her anger on me, still yelling as I walked past her.  (I attempted to smile politely at her, which did not help the situation.)  Eventually, her voice faded away.  She either left the store or found someone else to yell at.

I tell this story to illustrate one point.  The COVID pandemic was a very strange time.  One can both acknowledge the very real tragedy of COVID while also acknowledging that quite a few people fell down the doom rabbit hole and allowed themselves to be driven mad by the constant drumbeat of government officials, members of the media, and other commentators telling us that everyone was going to die unless we wore masks and maintained a distance of 6 feet from each other.  Due to the COVID pandemic, businesses were forced to shut down.  People lost their jobs.  Families were not allowed to comfort each other.  In many states, students were not allowed to go to school.  To doubt any element of the government’s response to COVID meant running the risk of being listed as a “conspiracy theorist.”  Blue states started to gleefully keep track of how many died in red states.  Red states started to keep track of how many civil liberties were suspended by the blue states.  (We all should have been keeping track of their number of politicians who violated their own mandates and simply shrugged off the outrage.)  We were constantly told that we were in a war against the virus but if felt more as if the country was actually at war with itself and a lot of people seemed to be happy with that.

The documentary 15 Days opens with clips from a zoom meeting, in which Jane Fonda, Randi Weingarten, and a host of others discuss the pandemic as an opportunity to bring about social change.  The documentary goes on to document how the school shutdowns went from being “15 days to slow the spread,” to nearly two years of remote learning.  Parents discuss going from trusting the government and wanting to do the right thing to the growing disillusionment of realizing that “15 Days to Slow The Spread” was, from the start, an empty slogan.  Epidemiologists who opposed the school closings discuss being censored and dismissed as “fringe extremists.”  Student athletes talk about losing out on college scholarships.  We learn about the struggles of doing remote learning.  We learn how some students merely disappeared from the system.

As you probably already guessed, 15 Days has a political agenda and, as such, it won’t be for everyone.  Certain parts of it were certainly not for me.  (Personally, I think the film lets the Trump administration off too easily when it comes to the federal government’s COVID response.)  But that doesn’t change the fact that 15 Days shows just how much damage was done to an entire generation by the senseless and largely partisan-driven decision to shut down the schools in so many states.  In between clips of people claiming that “kids are resilient,” we get interviews with actual kids who lost two years of not just education but also social development to the shutdowns.  The contrast between what we were told was happening with remote learning and what actually happened is stark.  The director, a disillusioned and self-described “progressive Democrat” named Natalya Murakhver compares America during the pandemic to the totalitarian government that her family fled when she was a child and it’s hard not to feel that she has a point.

You may or may not agree with the film’s politics but, with each passing day, it becomes more and more obvious how screwed up the federal government’s response to the COVID pandemic truly was. Documentaries like this are important because right now, the gaslighting we’re seeing about what really happened in 2020 and 2021 is incredible.  Neighbors turned against neighbor (or shopper, as they case may be).  And an entire generation lost two of the most important developmental years of their lives.

 

Documentary Review: I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not (dir by Marina Zenovich)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2024’s Saturday Night, there’s a scene where the president of NBC (played by Willem DaFoe) tells a young and arrogant Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) that, if he plays his cards right, he might someday replace Johnny Carson as America’s most popular talk show host.  When Chase brags about this to one of the writers of Saturday Night Live, the writer — who is portrayed as being a weary industry veteran — tells Chase that he will never replace Johnny Carson.  In exacting detail, he predicts that Chase will start strong.  He’ll be one of the early stars of Saturday Night Live but then he’ll let the adulation go to his head and his arrogance will alienate everyone who once believed in him and, in the end, Chevy Chase will end up a faded, nearly forgotten star.

The film obviously meant for this scene to be a crowd-pleaser.  Personally, I found it to be gratuitously cruel.  While watching Saturday Night, we all know what the future holds for Chevy Chase but having a fictional character show up for just one scene so that he can say it to Chase’s face feels excessive.  It’s not only a bit too on-the-nose but it’s also not necessary.  However, the scene does speak to a larger truth.  It’s socially acceptable to hate Chevy Chase.

The stories of Chase’s bad behavior are legendary.  People have heard the stories about him being difficult to work with on the set of Community.  They’ve heard about him suggesting a skit in which Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay member of the Saturday Night Live cast, would announce that he had AIDS.  Everyone can visualize the famous brawl that occurred between Bill Murry and Chase when the latter first returned to host SNL and I think nearly everyone agrees that they’d rather have Bill Murray crash their wedding than Chevy.  Chase is famous for being rude and for snapping at people in interviews.  It’s not only socially acceptable to hate Chevy Chase but it’s kind of expected, especially if you’re an extremely online comedy nerd.

Myself, I have to admit that I wonder why Chase’s personality is the business of anyone other than the people who have work with him.  Does the fact that he’s not lovable in real life somehow make Christmas Vacation less entertaining to watch in December and if so, why?  One might be tempted to wonder if some grace can be given to an 82 year-old man who is obviously in frail health and whose ideas about comedy were developed in a time very different from today.

That many people would answer that question with a resounding “no,” is evidence of just how bad of a reputation Chevy Chase has.  Marina Zenovich, the director of I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not, described Chevy Chase as being the “rudest” person that she has ever interviewed and you can see more than a little of that while watching the documentary.  He replies to one question with, “You b*tch.”  (I gave up cursing for Lent and I’m not going back on my word just to quote Chevy Chase.)  Another question leads to him telling the interviewer that she’s stupid.  When asked about Terry Sweeney, Chase’s first reaction is to laugh and his second reaction is to say that he had heard Sweeney was dead.  (Sweeney is alive and, like many of the people who have worked with Chase in the past, declined to be interviewed for the documentary.  We can probably learn more from so many of them not wanting to talk about working Chase than we could from any of their interviews.)

And yet, there are scenes where you can see evidence of the aging and very human person hiding underneath all of the rudeness and the bluster.  When Zenovich mentions that a lot of people dislike Chase, the pain in his eyes will take you by surprise.  When he meets a fan in a diner, he seems to be genuinely touched.  Chase’s love for his family comes through, as does their love for him.  His daughter talks about a time when Chase nearly died and the viewer is reminded that, regardless of all the stories, he’s still a father and a husband.  There’s a moment where Chase seems to forget the name of his first wife.  Is he being a jerk or is he an 80-something man with memory issues?  It’s far too easy to make assumptions, both good and bad, about famous people who we don’t actually know.

The first fourth of the documentary discusses the early days of Chase’s career while the second fourth deals with his declining stardom and his reputation for being difficult.  Performers like Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D’Angelo, and Goldie Hawn all appear to defend him while others are a bit less charitable.  And yet, the most important part of the documentary comes towards the end, when Chase attends a showing a Christmas Vacation and takes questions from people in the audience.  Even then, Chase is a profane smart-aleck and the audience loves it.

And, for at least a little while, Chevy Chase seems to love it too.

Documentary Review: Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy (dir by Robert Palumbo)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s rare that I ever feel like I should apologize for having watched a documentary but that was the feeling I had after watching Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy.

This documentary examined the career and death of actor Matthew Perry, with most of the emphasis being put on Perry’s struggle with addiction.  Excerpts were read from his book.  Lots of clips were shared from Friends.  People in the industry talked about what a charming actor Perry was and they also talked about how hard it is to free oneself from addiction.  This is especially true when you’re rich enough to have a bunch of people around you who will literally respond to your every whim and not take a second to ask, “Are you sure?”  One of the worst things about celebrity culture is that we tend to root for the worst until it actually happens.  When an actor is publicly struggling with addiction or their mental health, it’s treated as entertainment  It’s only after that actor dies that we talk about how tragic it was and people hop on social media to talk about how addiction is a disease and no one should be shamed for their struggle.

And that brings me to documentaries like this one.  There’s something really hypocritical about these documentaries that take a real life tragedy and turn it into entertainment while pretending to be a tribute or a serious examination of the addiction crisis in America.  For instance, this documentary tells you absolutely nothing that you didn’t already know about Matthew Perry and his tragic death and it really doesn’t do a good job of paying tribute to him as an actor either.  Those clips from Friends are the same clips that you’ve seen on every other special about the life of Matthew Perry.  There’s really no reason for this documentary to exist, other than to appeal to the desire of viewers to learn something sordid about a well-known figure.  It’s a documentary that exploits Perry’s death while claiming to mourn it.

And I’m not saying anything that you haven’t already heard or which hasn’t been said by hundred other people.  Nearly every review that I’ve read of this documentary says basically the same thing that I just said.  It’s exploitive and doesn’t have much to add to our overall understanding of how someone with so much talent and so many fans could also be so self-destructive.  And yet, while we all criticize documentaries like this, many of us still watch them.  I still watch them.  I watched this one.  I learned absolutely nothing new and I felt fairly guilty afterwards.  Matthew Perry’s death was a tragedy and a cautionary tale and, at the same time, it should take nothing away from the happiness that he brought his fans.  He deserved better than this.  For that matter, he deserved better than all of the speculative stories that came out after his appearance on the Friends Reunion Special.

But I can’t get self-righteous or too quick to condemn.  Because I did watch this.  I was bored, I saw that it was streaming, and I watched it.  And I’ll probably watch the next trashy celebrity documentary that come out.  I won’t feel good about it but I’ll probably do it.  I doubt I’ll be alone.

Documentary Review: William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods (dir by Harald Reinl and Charlie Romine)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1976, the German documentary Mysteries of the Gods raises the same questions that were asked by Chariots of the Gods and it offers up the same answers.  How did ancient man build the pyramids?  Aliens!  How were the giant statues of Easter Island moved to their final resting place?  Aliens!  Who created Stonehenge?  Aliens!  Who drew the South American ley lines?  Aliens!  Who took Elijah, Gilgamesh, and Enoch up into the sky?  Aliens!  Who is responsible for religion?  Aliens!

Mysteries of the Gods was made by the same people who did Chariots of the Gods but it’s less a continuation and more of a remake.  The only new thing that Mysteries of the Gods brought to the table was the suggestion that the governments of the world knew about the aliens and that they were, in some cases, working with the aliens.  I’ve already made my feelings about those theories clear.  I’m a skeptic and I’m proud of it.  Still, it’s interesting to wonder what type of advice the aliens would have given the world leaders.  I mean, considering everything that has happened over the past 66 years, it doesn’t appear to be very good advice!

Seriously, tell those dumbass aliens to go home and mess around with their own planet.

When Mysteries of the Gods came over to the United States, it was decided that the film needed a bit more of an American feel to it.  The original’s German narrator would have to go.  But who could replace him?  Who had the gravitas necessary to seriously discuss the theory of ancient astronauts?  Who would draw in the science fiction crowd while possibly still appealing to people who didn’t know much about the history of UFO sightings?  Who would have the proper enthusiasm for the project?  Who was reasonably famous but still enough in need of a paycheck that they would agree to be associated with something as shoddy as Mysteries of the Gods?

We all know the answer to that question.

And if the American distributors were going to pay William Shatner to re-record the film’s narration, why not take full advantage of his presence and film some scenes of him interviewing various psychics and scientists?  Why not have him wax rhapsodic about a crystal skull while actually holding the artifact?  Why not have him actually visiting the locations described in the documentary?  Why not put him in a green turtleneck and a black jacket and present him as being the hip face of pseudo-science?  And why not change the title of the film to William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods, implying that Shatner himself had something substantial to do with the making of the film?

And let’s give credit where credit is due.  Mysteries of the Gods is a ludicrous documentary that provides even less evidence for its fantastical claim than Chariot of the Gods did.  But the American version of the film is worth watching, just to see William Shatner trying to repress his natural smirk while reciting the film’s overwrought narration.  Shatner appears to be amused by the whole thing and he definitely comes across as being a good sport as he gamely interview a series of crackpots who are all convinced they’ve cracked some sort of alien code.  The film ends on a triumphant note, with psychic Jeanne Dixon telling an excited Shatner that aliens will visit Earth in April of 1977.

Now, you may say that Dixon was incorrect.  There’s no record of aliens coming to Earth in 1977.  Maybe that’s just what they want you to believe!  To quote the Amazing Criswell, can you prove it didn’t happen?

Documentary Review: Chariots of the Gods (dir by Harald Reinl)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1970, the German documentary Chariots of the Gods tests the proposition that you can prove anything with stock footage and a narrator.

Chariots of the Gods takes viewers on a tour through some of the most visually impressive locations ever seen by human eyes.  Look at the ruins of the Aztec and Inca civilizations!  Behold a Mayan observatory!  Marvel at Egypt’s pyramids!  Trace the amazing Nazca Lines of South America!  View the amazing “heads” of Easter Island!  Be amazed that an ancient civilization was able to create a primitive battery!  Feast your eyes upon colorful cave drawings of mythic beasts and powerful wizards!  Examine this skull of a 200,000 year-old bison and think about just how long living things have inhabited this amazing planet!

And then read the ancient texts and consider how every civilization wrote of certain shared events, suggesting that the legendary cataclysms of mythology were based on things that actually happened.  Read the words of men and women who lived centuries ago and consider that humans have always been trying to figure out how things work.  Humans have always been curious and imaginative creatures and the fact that, from the beginning of time, they were inspired to record their stories indicates that we have an instinctual understanding of the importance of history.

It takes your breath away but, according to this documentary, it shouldn’t.

All of those things that you think humans did?  According to Chariots of the Gods, it was the aliens.  The aliens built the pyramids.  The aliens inspired the cave drawings.  All of those ancient texts are actually about spaceships landing on Earth and the aliens saying, “Hi.”  The great flood that appears in both the Bible and the epic of Gilgamesh?  Aliens!  Enoch’s journey into Heaven?  Aliens!  Elijah’s ascension?  Aliens!  The Nazca lines?  An alien airport!  The statues of Easter Island?  Alien robots!  Chariots of the Gods opens by suggesting that the human race is basically just a big cargo cult, worshipping stuff left behind by the aliens.

Seriously, what a depressing way to look at the world!  Instead of marveling at the determination of ancient man, this documentary says that the whole thing was done by aliens and the humans were apparently just standing off to the side.  Forget about celebrating ingenuity and imagination.  The aliens did it all and all of the ancient stories and all of the cave drawings should be taken very literally because it’s not like the ancient artists could have just been really talented or creative.  Instead, when the authors of the Epic of Gilgamesh wrote about Gilgamesh floating over the Earth, it was because it really happened!  Imagination had nothing to do with it.

In the tradition of most pseudoscience documents, Chariots of the Gods is one of those documentaries that makes its point by basically refusing to accept that any other viable theories exist.  Repeatedly, we’re flatly told that “scientists agree….,” as if every scientist has signed off on the idea of ancient aliens.  The documentary’s narrator often informs us that there’s no way ancient people could have constructed and moved giant statues or monuments but he fails to mention that numerous studies that have argued and demonstrated that actually ancient people could very well have done all of that.  Essentially, Chariots of the Gods is a travelogue in which we are shown stock footage of some really cool sights while the narrator says, “I bet an alien did that!”

Silly as it was, Chariots of the Gods was still a box office hit and it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature.  It’s pseudoscientific legacy lives on today.

The Films of 2024: Gary (dir by Robin Dashwood)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow, what a depressing documentary!

I’m taking about Gary, which is currently streaming on Peacock.  Gary tells the story of former child actor-turned-security guard Gary Coleman, who went from being one of the top stars in television to eventually struggling to pay the bills.  The documentary tells the story of Coleman’s life, from his start as a cute kid with a mischievous smile to his stardom, his health struggles, and the controversy over why all the money that he made as a child eventually disappeared.  Gary blamed his parents.  His parents blamed Gary’s managers.  The woman who eventually married Gary blamed everyone.  Gary, himself, ended up as tabloid fodder, in which he was treated as not only being the poster child for the problems that young stars encounter but in which he was also regularly ridiculed for having those exact same problems.  Watching the documentary, one gets the feeling that the world took an odd joy in Gary Coleman’s downfall.  Coleman himself died under mysterious circumstances and the documentary, though even-handed, leaves one feeling that there’s definitely a lot about his death that could stand to be examined.

Gary Coleman’s stardom was a bit before my time, though I have seen a few episodes of Diff’rent Strokes online.  The show, to be honest, always seems a bit cringey to me but, still, it’s obvious that Coleman was a capable actor even when he was having to repeat the catch phrases that he came to hate.  Unfortunately, his kidney problem stunted his growth and, as he got older, the acting opportunities dried up.  He was reduced to parodying his former stardom, appearing on talk shows and sitcoms and repeating, “What you talkin’ about” to anyone who asked.  The documentary was painfully sad to watch.  Gary Coleman definitely comes across as being a bit of an eccentric but it’s hard not to feel that he never allowed to grow up and that the people who should have been looking out for him, like his parents and his manager and his wife, were only looking out for themselves.

The film features interviews with the people who failed Coleman.  None of them really take any sort of responsibility for their actions.  At first, his wife comes across like she really cared about him but, as the documentary progresses, we hear too many stories about her abusing and manipulating him to take anything she says at face value.  When she sells a picture of Coleman on his death bed to a tabloid, that’s pretty much last straw as far as any sympathy for her is concerned.  Coleman’s business manager also initially comes across as being genuine and sincere but, again, there are just too many stories of misusing Coleman’s money.  If he doesn’t seem to be as ruthlessly mercenary as Coleman’s wife, it’s still obvious that he shouldn’t have been managing Coleman’s career.  As for Coleman’s parents, the less said about them the better.  Everyone that is interviewed is very good at blaming someone else for what happened after Coleman’s stardom ended.

Again, this was depressing documentary.  Watching this, I really felt bad about Gary Coleman.  It’s hard to know what to do about child stars.  On the one hand, there are child stars who grow up to lead what appear to be perfectly normal and stable lives.  But, there’s also a lot like Gary Coleman, whose lives are pretty much destroyed by their early success.  No kid should be supporting their family.  And no family should be paying their bills exclusively with their kid’s salary.  To me, it all comes down to the parents.  You can’t depend on an industry to raise your child for you.  In the end, though, Coleman was let down by a lot of people.  There’s more than enough blame to go around.

“Documentary” Review: Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison? (dir by Joel Gilbert)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a reason why I put the word Documentary is scare quotes when I titled this review.

Yes, 2010’s Paul McCartney Really Is Dead is listed as a documentary on Tubi, Prime, and probably every other streaming site in which it has appeared.

Yes, the film is full of archival footage of the Beatles and it opens with a lengthy discussion about the time that John Lennon said that group was bigger than Jesus.

And yes, the film does present itself as being a documentary.

That said, I don’t believe any of the claims made in this film and I doubt the filmmakers do either.  Much like that time travel documentary that I reviewed a few years ago, this film is obviously a mockumentary, a hoax that a few people online have taken seriously.  Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that as many people have taken this film seriously as they did with that Man From 3036 film.  I guess that counts as progress.

(I should note that, after writing the paragraph above, I looked up Joel Gilbert’s YouTube profile and saw that he has specifically stated that the film is a mockumentary.  So, good for Gilbert!)

As for Paul McCartney Is Really Dead, it opens with director Joel Gilbert explaining that his production company received several mysterious cassette tapes.  They were mailed from the UK.  The man on the tapes claims to be George Harrison and says that he’s recording the tapes on his death bed.  He explains that, in 1966, Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash.  A fake Paul (nicknamed Faul) was brought into the group and, for the next four years, the Beatles recorded with this imposter.  John Lennon, fearing that the fans would turn on the band if they ever learned of the deception, inserted clues throughout the Beatles’s album covers and in their songs.  A lot of those clues were only evident to those who played the song backwards.  Turn me on, dead man!

The conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was decapitated in a car accident and was replaced by a man named William Campbell has been around for a while.  It’s generally agreed that the rumor first started to circulate way back in 1966 and it’s been theorized that the Beatles themselves were aware of the rumor and they occasionally made references to it as a private joke.  Of course, it’s just as possible that the Beatles knew nothing of the rumor and all of the “clues’ were actually just coincidences that were overanalyzed by conspiracy theorists with too much free time on their hands.  For instance, one widely cited clue was a picture of Paul McCartney wearing a patch that apparently said “OPD.”  The theorists decided that OPD stood for “Officially Pronounced Dead,” whereas the patch was actually one worn by members of the Ontario Provincial Police and it actually read “OPP.”

Paul McCartney Is Really Dead features someone pretending to be George Harrison going over all of the clues on the album covers and in the songs.  He hits all the major points, including the famous Abbey Road cover.  However, the faux Harrison goes on to claim that the Beatles were forced to pretend that Paul was alive by a sinister MI5 agent named Maxwell.  Maxwell explained that word of Paul’s death would lead to a suicide epidemic amongst young British woman and it would also leave the UK vulnerable to the communists.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Of course, as unbelievable as that sounds, it’s really not that much different from a lot of “real” conspiracy theories that can currently find circulating online.  A spoof works best when its credible.  While the theory that Paul is dead may not be credible, the fact that people will believe the dumbest things is.

It’s easy to laugh at first, largely because the guy doing George Harrison’s voice doesn’t even seem to have a British accent.  While the Beatles looked at the dead Paul, Maxwell commented that the injuries Paul had sustained in the car crash had left him looking like a walrus.  “I AM THE WALRUS!” John supposedly shouted at Maxwell.  If you can’t smile at that, what can you smile at?  But then, towards the end of the documentary, it’s suggested that John’s assassination and the near fatal attack that George Harrison suffered in 1999 were actually due to John and George threatening to reveal the truth about Faul.  At that point, the whole thing gets rather offensive.  This could have been an enjoyably daft hoax if the filmmakers hadn’t tried to pass the tapes off as being from George Harrison.  (Personally, I would have used either Maxwell or Rita, the girl in blue who was supposedly with Paul at the time of the accident, as the narrator.)

As for myself, I love conspiracy theories but I don’t believe 99% of them.