Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from Copernicus and the Toronto International Film Festival. Here's that documentary that Ebert raved about, and well... seems that Copernicus isn't going against the word of Rog on this one. Sounds like a great documentary, can't wait to see it here!
Tell Them Who You Are
The hardest ticket to score so far at the festival for me is "Tell Them Who You Are," a wonderful documentary about cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler made by his son, documentarian Mark Wexler. The first public screening of the film created giant buzz - a filmmaker friend of mine who was there said it almost brought him to tears and subsequently commanded me to see it. Then Roger Ebert dried up the ticket supply by making it to be one of his first picks for Oscar documentary nomination this year. Before the screening I scoured the earth to try to get a ticket, even talking to Mark Wexler himself, but there just weren't any to be found. I won't reveal how we did it, but Anton Sirius and I had to resort to almost nefarious methods to get into the show. And I am happy to say that it was well worth the effort.
Now over 80, Haskell Wexler has had quite a successful, and storied career. He's won countless awards, including two Oscars - for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and "Bound for Glory," and is noted as a director for the groundbreaking "Medium Cool." And he's worked with plenty of industry giants over the years who show up in the film - Francis George Lucas, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Martin Sheen, Billy Crystal, Michael Douglas, and Julia Roberts are just a few.
But Haskell Wexler is just as famous for his outspoken nature and leftist politics. He has been fired from several shoots for being too hard to get along with, most famously from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." He risked being blackballed by making "Introduction to the Enemy" with Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War.
In fact, "Introduction to the Enemy" might well have been a good title for this film. Though it is clear they love each other, father and son have their differences - political and otherwise - and seem to rarely get along. Haskell is constantly telling his son that he is screwing up the movie -- from the framing and subject matter to the method, almost nothing Mark does is good enough for Haskell. They decided to do the project together as a kind of therapy, but it wasn't so easy. As they constantly bicker on screen, a picture emerges of a son struggling to define himself in the shadow of his overbearing father's brilliance, and of the father who seems incapable of true intimacy.
The reason this film succeeds is that Haskell Wexler is one goddamn hilarious cranky genius. After pitching a fit about some aspect of the way Mark was shooting the movie, Haskell reminds Mark that he is "the star of your fucking movie." He says that he could have directed every film he ever worked on better than the director himself did. I once heard Joseph Campbell say that we love people not because of how perfect they are, but because of their imperfections. Maybe that is why Haskell Wexler comes across so well. But it could also be because there is a certain charm in people that are savagely direct. Layer on the appeal of the well-intentioned rogue, and of the charisma of the genius with a few rough spots, and you start to see why even Haskell's shortcomings are also his strengths. He has some gut-busting one-liners in here that he delivers totally deadpan. He's usually not trying to make a joke, and we aren't laughing because we think he's a fool. On the contrary, his statements are so side-splitting because they are so caustic, and so over the top that they wonderfully illuminate his personality and define him as so refreshingly genuine and beautifully human.
To his credit, Mark Wexler avoids many of the pitfalls that often plague movies of this type. The film is doesn't have the traditional "struggle, success, downfall, triumphant return" arc common to seemingly all bios. And the father-son relationship is thoroughly explored without becoming cloying or predictable. What's more the stories of Haskell's career are hardly touched on. Instead, he just truly shows Haskell for who his is, and in the process both Wexlers, father and son, truly shine.
Copernicus
