Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I saw a lot of strong documentaries this year, including my two favorites AMERICAN TEEN and ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL, which I’ve already reviewed.

I figured this was a good two to pair up as they are both docs about well known pop culture personalities.

ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED

“People have the right to their own opinion of this case, but they don’t have the right to their own facts.” – Douglas Dalton, Roman Polanski’s Attorney.

No story about Roman Polanski can be posted on this site without hundreds of talkbackers debating back and forth about this infamous ‘70s rape case.

This doc does not sugar-coat the facts of the case, but it also shines a bright light on the circus it became, showcases the Judge’s incompetence and shows how unjustly Polanski was treated.

It’s difficult to stand fully behind Polanski after he had sex with a 13 year old girl. You can go into the details and find many ways to place the blame of what happened elsewhere, but the ultimate truth is that he did willfully have sex with an under-aged girl.

Does that make him a monster? Now that’s the question. He’s been vilified for three decades now because of this, but is it deserved?

That’s what the documentary explores. For the first time we get to hear from Polanski’s attorney as well as the DA that prosecuted the case, giving an insight into Polanski’s trial that we’ve never had before.

I think even the most ardent Polanski hater will admit that he didn’t get a fair trial and will see why he ultimately fled the country. It’s not like he got charged and ran. He spent a year working with the court before he couldn’t take it anymore. I found myself thinking, “Well, if I was in his shoes I don’t know if I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

When even the DA says Polanski was treated unfairly, when even the victim says he was treated unfairly, you have to question your stance on how this was handled.

This film is a fascinating look into this case and into the man himself. They never interview Polanski, but they do have footage of various interviews (usually BBC) with him after he fled and he speaks as honestly and open then as he would have now.

At the Q&A the director said she met with Polanski in France and he considered appearing, but ultimately thought it would be too much, that it would feel like he was asking the audience to pity him and his situation.

The doc is extremely entertaining and as someone who has read into this case before I found I didn’t know half of what went on.

Very fascinating look into a very troubled case.

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Holy Jesus! I love Hunter Thompson and in many ways Harry created this site as a sort of mixture of Thompson’s Gonzo style and Forry Ackerman’s cheeseball enthusiastic attitude. I love Thompson’s humor and wicked insight. Goddamn can that dude cut to the heart of a story.

Anyway, I saw FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS no less than 4 times when it first came out. That was my main introduction to Thompson and I have since read a good deal of his work (including a ton of collected letters he’s written).

I have to say there wasn’t much terribly new in GONZO, but it’s so entertainingly put together and thorough that I didn’t really care. You go from Hunter’s early work (a good deal focused on his time with the Hell’s Angels) all the way up through his eventual suicide and spectacular funeral.

The best parts of the doc were the interviews with people who knew, loved or hated Hunter. I never thought I’d say this, but Pat Buchanan was great. There’s a particularly fun insight to a moment when Buchanan allowed Thompson to sit with Nixon for an hour and a half as they drove to the airport together. Keep in mind Thompson hated Nixon more than any man can possibly hate a politician, yet he still talked his way into it.

There’s also a fascinating side to Thompson’s life after he did Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing (both in Las Vegas and On The Campaign Trail) where he kind of dried up. The reason they give in the documentary is that he became too famous. Thompson himself admitted it that once you get to be a celebrity of any sort you can’t be the same reporter because you’re automatically part of the story.

However I always thought Thompson’s ability to inject himself into his stories was what made them so interesting, so I don’t know if that theory is correct.

What’s also really interesting is the complete approval of the Thompson estate, so we get to hear a ton of Thompson’s audio recordings, including a good 4 or 5 minutes of one of the tapes that was recorded with Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta (Dr. Gonzo) in Vegas. Really great stuff there.

At any rate, the only negative things I have to say about the doc is that it needs to cut out all those goddamn shitty re-enactments. I hate those in documentaries… they always make real docs feel like cheap TV true-life-crime stories. And there are far too many of them in this doc.

Okay, I’m fading… still more Sundance to go… Holy shit! This will never end!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com