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