Synopsis
Sunday, August 20, 1972. Memphis-based Stax Records descended on the L.A. Coliseum with most of their recording roster – Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas and many more – for an eight hour concert to benefit the annual Watts Summer Festival, the observation of the “rebellion” that burned through the community only seven years previous, claiming 34 lives. Passing through the turnstiles were 112,000 people, the largest assembly of African Americans at a non-civil rights event up to that point in history. To record the day, Stax contracted award winning documentary producer David Wolper, and under the direction of Mel Stuart, supplemented the groundbreaking concert with “man on the street” interviews with the people of South Central L.A. and staged performances in the community. Narrating the film and providing his own commentary was a rising comedian named Richard Pryor.

Production history
In the early 1970s, a record company in Tennessee was looking to expand. Cinematographer Larry Clark recalled, “Stax Records – you know – they came out of Memphis and they were kind of like this underground company. They didn’t have the same kind of promotional machine that other record companies had like Motown. But people did identify with the type of music that Stax was putting out there. They could identify with it culturally. Motown was more crossover, whereas Stax was really that down home kind of sound. The mindset of the African American community across the country had changed and we were at that place where Stax Records was. People were lookin’ more towards the African roots, more towards our musical roots. That’s just where we were politically, culturally.”

Concert promoter Forest Hamilton was in Los Angeles to establish a film division – Stax West – when he met writer Richard Dedeaux. Hamilton’s collaboration with Dedeaux on a movie script produced the idea of a benefit concert. Stax president Al Bell seized on donating the proceeds to the Watts Summer Festival, observing the anniversary of the “rebellion” – as it was known in the community – that ignited in the summer of 1965. Most of Stax’s recording roster signed on to perform for free and Bell booked the Los Angeles Coliseum. Stax underwrote most of the expenses and Schlitz Brewing Company stepped up as sponsor. With tickets going for $1, the 90,000-seat arena – home field of the Los Angeles Rams – completely sold out. Wattstax was on its way to becoming the biggest assembly of African Americans ever in one place for a non-civil rights event.

Al Bell recalled, “As it evolved though, the idea emerged, well, you know, when we pull this off, we’ll have pulled something off that hasn’t been done before, but we really ought to consider doing a documentary. Well, then if we do a documentary, what kind of documentary should it be? Well, it should be about something that demonstrates to the world that the music that we sing is a reflection of what goes on in our lives and in our lifestyle. We gotta pull that off. I told Forest, ‘I want to go and find out who the finest documentary producer is in Hollywood.’ We want the very best. And he came back and said: ‘David Wolper.’” The contract between Stax and Wolper gave the producer creative control, with one major exception: Stax retained the right of approval on content relating to Black relationships or feeling, as well as the narration and music contained in the picture.

A budget of $480,000 was set. To direct, New Yorker Mel Stuart was brought into the project. “I got involved with Wattstax because I had done many films for Dave Wolper. I had just finished directing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and was at liberty. I had some mixed feelings, because I felt I wasn’t that familiar with the Black experience, so this was the condition. I met the staff of Stax: Larry Shaw (who became co-producer of the picture with me), Forest Hamilton and others and said, this is the way I want to do it. I am the only White person on the creative staff. Everything will be siphoned through your feelings, ‘cause I don’t know enough about the Black experience. I can interpret it, but I don’t know it.”

Isaac Hayes recalled, “I thought about the commemoration of what happened, with the Watts riots. We were not celebrating the devastation that went on there. We were commemorating lives that were lost and the coming together of a people that had been suppressed. That’s why all the violence broke out. We were suppressed. You know, police brutality, all those things added up. All that pent up frustration from a people, it just came out. So, somebody struck a match. I don’t know how it started. But I think the society we were livin’ in bred that, gave rise to it. You know, you can suppress a person for so long and they will rise up.” To keep tensions cool, Al Bell lobbied the city to keep the LAPD out of the stadium. Security was all Black and was not permitted to carry firearms. With an estimated 112,000 turning out for the eight-hour concert, no violent incidents were reported.

Reviewing the concert footage, Stuart was disappointed with what he found. “It was like a newsreel, a performance. And I knew we needed more. I knew for the film to be important, it just couldn’t be a record of a concert. And I came to the realization that it’s not the music, it’s how the people feel about the music that’s important, how the people feel about their lives that’s important, if this film is going to have any substance.” Stuart, Larry Shaw and Forest Hamilton turned to the Stax acts unable to make the concert and staged them performing throughout Watts. The Emotions did a gospel song at a small church. Johnnie Taylor tore the roof off The Summit Club singing “Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone”. Little Milton was filmed in the shadow of the Watts Towers lip synching “Walking the Back Streets and Crying”.

The filmmakers still didn’t feel they had a movie. Larry Clark recalled, “So then we had this assignment: go out into the community and ask people about the blues. So we went out and we found people on the stoop, we found people sitting in front of grocery stores, wherever we could, and we started asking about the blues. Part of it was we would start talkin’ to people, all right, and, just talkin’. Camera’s not even rollin’. Eventually, you kind of get a sense – when people are gettin’ relaxed – and then very quietly you turn on the camera, so that the person talking is not actually aware that you’re shooting.” In search of a narrator – someone to serve as the voice of the community – Forest Hamilton took Mel Stuart to a club to a see a comedian named Richard Pryor. The next night, Stuart returned with a camera crew and sat down at the bar for two hours with Pryor, who gave an improvisational tour-de-force on racial relations, the police or whatever else flew through his mind.

Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute Wattstax and held a world premiere February 1973 in Los Angeles. The film climaxed with Isaac Hayes performing his monumental hit “Theme From Shaft”, and “Soulsville”, songs from the movie Shaft. MGM immediately filed a lawsuit. In order for Hayes to appear in the movie at all, he was called back to pen a new song – “Rolling Down the Mountainside” – and lip synch it on a soundstage, as if it had been performed at Wattstax. The original ending was buried for 30 years. Hayes recalled, “I was angry. I was angry at MGM. Why would they do that? Makin’ money’s one thing, monetarily speaking, but it would have been a contribution to allow that to go just like it was, ‘cause it meant so much to so many people. It was insensitive of them to do that. But – you know – they had control of it. So I don’t know who made that decision, I don’t know if attorneys or what. Again, they were representing that same kind of suppression that caused them riots in the first place. It’s always a struggle.”

Wattstax was generally dismissed in the mainstream press. Vincent Canby, the New York Times: “I don’t mean that the film is in any way fake; it just has the air of something too carefully laid out in advance. It’s so busy being glossy and optimistic that it doesn’t even allow its performers time to create on screen a measure of the excitement they might have created in person.” Though Wattstax was invited to open the Cannes Film Festival in May 1973 and according to Stuart “did very well in Black neighborhoods”, within a year, the film was a memory. An arcane financing deal dividing the film’s rights between Columbia and Fantasy Inc. – the record label that purchased much of the Stax library in 1977 – prevented Wattstax from being broadcast on TV or released on VHS. For decades, Wattstax practically disappeared.

In 2001, film restoration expert Tom Christopher was on the Warner Bros. lot working on a director’s cut of Amadeus. He stumbled into a palette of boxes that hadn’t even been checked into the film storage facility and discovered the original 16mm negative of Wattstax. After some investigating, Christopher also tracked down the missing ending. Fantasy Inc. joined with Columbia and Warner Bros. to restore Wattstax to its original theatrical condition, cleaning the negative and remastering the soundtrack. A 35mm print of Wattstax: The Special Edition screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was re-released in 12 theaters that June. A long overdue DVD emerged later that year. Fantasy facility manager Scott Roberts commented, “We realized that the performances were really brilliant and quite a cultural find. So we coordinated with Warner Brothers and Columbia to get the film seen by the public as it was originally intended. The feedback we get is that it’s an important cultural document for African-Americans. It was a major event.”

Opinion
To get an idea of how epic the lineup of performers assembled at the L.A. Coliseum in August 1972 was, Isaac Hayes is nearly blown off the stage twice; first by cosmic bad assedness of The Bar-Kays laying down “Son of Shaft” and later in the afternoon, Rufus Thomas – the world’s oldest teenager – busting out “The Breakdown” and “Funky Chicken” and having enough energy left to coax hundreds of festival goers off the football field and back into the stands. It’s one hell of a show, but what makes Wattstax one of the top five concert films of all time is how poetically it weaves the music into the real world of the community surrounding the venue. Interspersed between the delicious drum beats and funky rhythm guitars, the filmmakers give the people a voice. Opening up about their experiences – hopes, fears, relationships – is more even more powerful than what takes place on the stage.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
Official Site Wattstax – The Special Edition Restoration

DGA Interview with Wattstax Director Mel Stuart

“Loud and proud” By James Maycock. The Guardian, July 20, 2002

“Wattstax back: Forgotten film revived with slot in Sundance” By Tommy Perkins. Memphis Business Journal, January 17, 2003

“Sound For Wattstax Concert Film” By Blair Jackson. Mix, June 2003

Wattstax (30th Anniversary Special Edition). Warner Home Video (2003)

Synopsis
In December 1983, acclaimed art rockers Talking Heads concluded their “Stop Making Sense” tour, documenting the event by filming three shows at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Ambling onto a completely empty stage in a pair of white tennis shoes and carrying an acoustic guitar, singer/ songwriter David Byrne performs “Psycho Killer.” As the show progresses, Byrne’s band mates – bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, keyboardist Jerry Harrison – join him on stage one at a time, one song at a time, while roadies assemble amps, instruments and an entire stage around them.

By the performance of “Burning Down The House,” the band has been joined by guitarist Alex Reid of The Brothers Johnson, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, and backup singers Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry. For the entirety of the film, focus is kept squarely on the performances taking place on stage. Highlights include Byrne doing jogging laps during “Life During Wartime,” and appearing in an oversized gray suit for the song “Girlfriend Is Better.” Only near the end of the show is the packed audience finally revealed, most of them up out of their seats and dancing.

Production history
After turning in his cut of the film Swing Shift in the summer of 1983, director Jonathan Demme was notified by Warner Bros. that they were bringing in Robert Towne to rewrite several scenes, steering the film away from the quirky period drama that had been scripted and turning it into a light romance, playing off the chemistry Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell had developed. “We had this hard-nosed feminist, all women together thing, and Kurt Russell was supposed to be a bastard, and suddenly all these scenes were being rewritten, and I found myself in a very awkward position because I had to cooperate with these new scenes.”

Demme and producer Gary Goetzman had seen Talking Heads perform at the Greek Theatre that summer as part of the “Stop Making Sense” tour the band had launched to promote their latest album. The way David Byrne had staged the show and sequenced the songs – evolving his demeanor as the evening progressed – floored the director. He felt that it was a movie waiting to be filmed. Equally enthused for any opportunity to hang out with Byrne, a mutual friend introduced Demme to the musician “to see if he’d be interested in putting a film together of the concert.”

The prospect of a movie intrigued Byrne in part because of technical challenges he’d encountered on the tour. Demme recalls, “He designed the lighting for the live show with a lighting director and found it very frustrating that he could never get the right lighting. He realized that on film he would finally get the chance to get the lighting right.” Demme had collaborated with Jordan Cronenweth on Handle With Care and suggested the master cinematographer – who had recently shot Blade Runner – to light the concert. A week later, Byrne got back to Demme with $1.2 million the band had agreed to put up themselves to bankroll a film.

While Robert Towne labored over rewrites for Swing Shift, Demme sought refuge on the road with Talking Heads. Byrne kept after him about how Stop Making Sense would be different from other concert films. The director approached each member of the band for input. Tina Weymouth recalls, “So, we said ‘We’re not crazy about split screen images and flashing images.’ There was always one camera straight on. The format was very flat. It was always like a painting – sort of like a Robert Wilson design in two dimensions, but also with four moving cameras. And even though there were cranes that would be observing things, a lot of the time we weren’t even aware we were being filmed. It comes across as being real.”

A great deal of what separated Stop Making Sense from other concert films was already in place on the tour. Chris Frantz recalls, “The whole staging of the show seemed to be the most obvious idea in the world: to construct a show where you saw what it took to construct a show, in the show. And you start with an empty stage with absolutely nothing on it, and you put the stuff on the stage during the show that it takes to make a show: the lights, the amps, the instruments, the players, everything, and then you proceed to use that stuff. So everybody sees what it takes to make a show when they see that stuff put into action.”

At the time, Demme stated, “There’s been a kind of curse on concert movies. They almost never do well commercially, and I’m very rarely excited by them. I wanted to eliminate two things that I don’t like about them: shots of the audience and backstage interviews with the singers.” Filmed over three nights in December 1983 on the tour’s last stop – the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood – the set ran two hours and fifteen minutes. Acknowledging the movie should play nowhere near that length, Demme left four songs on the cutting room floor. Editing the picture in six weeks, mixing the sound in another two, Stop Making Sense was completed only ninety days after Demme wrapped photography.

The movie was put before an audience for the first time in April 1984 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The response was overwhelming. Demme recalls, “Very quickly, people started leaving their seats and moving up closer to the screen and also standing up in their seats. By the end of ‘Burning Down the House’ the building was literally shaking and the manager of the theater was truly sincerely freaked out. He thought something terrible structurally might be about to happen, and it was a big struggle with him to not stop the show.” Screening the picture outdoors for the Venice Film Festival produced the same result of audiences dancing in the aisle.

Twenty-five years after opening in the U.S. in October 1984, Stop Making Sense routinely lands atop lists of the best concert movies ever made. For its reissue on DVD in 1999, David Byrne stated, “Another thing I noticed was my character – if I could call myself a character – he takes a kind of journey in this thing. He starts off as Mister Stiff White Guy and does his very, very, very best to get down and get loose by the end of the show, to kind of shed his inhibitions and get loose … And so he’s kind of changed as a person, just like would happen in a regular movie with a regular story with three acts or whatever, which I think helps make this movie work in a way that some other concert movies don’t.”

Opinion
Unlike concert movies out to celebrate the pageantry of a musical event, or offer some glimpse into the mind of a musician, this is the first democratic concert film. Stop Making Sense is made expressly for the concertgoers who came to see a concert, producing a seamless, exhilarating document of a performance. The only reactions or insights to be taken away here are ones Jonathan Demme empowers the viewer to take away on our own.

Demme’s work seems almost effortless against David Byrne’s gloriously geeky staging, as well as the chemistry of Talking Heads themselves; enigmatic, witty and unpredictable. Instead of a band trying to blast you out of the arena, here we’re compelled to get as close to the stage as possible. Jordan Cronenweth strips the theatre of color and bathes it in gorgeous shadow – memorably during Byrne’s dance with a lamp in “This Must Be The Place” – while Pablo Ferro, whose hand drawn titles were scrawled over the credits of Dr. Strangelove, designed the opening titles here too.

Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide writes, “No matter how hard I tried, I never could develop much of an affinity for Talking Heads. They are one of those acts that I always felt I should like but just never really did … I think SMS might finally have done it. Is it the greatest concert film of all-time? I don’t feel that way – I doubt anything will ever surpass Prince’s brilliant Sign O the Times – but this piece, directed by Jonathan Demme, makes a strong argument for the Heads’ case; the film presents the band cleanly, effectively and evocatively. It does what every good concert movie should do: it makes me really wish I could see the show live.”

“First let me say that the Talking Heads had a huge influence on me as a teenager. They were among my favorite bands and one of the reasons that I wound up learning the bass and spending the next fifteen years playing in bands of my own … Though considered an avant-garde art band the Heads put on a surprisingly energetic presentation that shows them to be both consummate performers and accomplished musicians. Stop Making Sense comes closer to capturing the feel of a live show than any concert film made before or since. If you let your self get swept up in the performance you may well be tempted to get up off the couch and dance around in front of your screen,” writes Chris Hughes at DVD Talk.

Dean Roddey at DVD Verdict writes, “There are a few times and places where the Universe or God or the Muse is caught on film talking to us through human conduits. On my short list of such religious musical experiences are Hendrix at Monterey Pop, The Band’s The Last Waltz, Sting’s Bring on the Night, and U2’s Rattle and Hum, and, last but not least, The Talking Head’s Stop Making Sense. These films, for those of us who appreciate such things, contain transcendent moments that definitely peg the Chill Bump Meter.”

© Joe Valdez

Documentary directed by Christian Charles – co-creator of the American Express ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld – opens in The Comedy Cellar in New York in early 2000. After walking away from a hit TV sitcom in 1998, then “retiring” the material he’d performed his entire standup career in an HBO special, the film follows Seinfeld as he attempts to build a completely new act.

This takes place in basement dives – Caroline’s, Gotham Comedy Club – where Seinfeld, and Colin Quinn, hang around, looking for an open mic and a few minutes to try new material. Intercut with this is 29-year-old Orny Adams, an up and comer with the ambition of a laser beam. He wants to get to where Seinfeld is. Seinfeld wants to get to where Adams is, honing an act.

George Wallace, Robert Klein, Ray Romano, Chris Rock, Jay Leno and Gary Shandling cross paths with Seinfeld at various points backstage. Some express amazement that the comedian has developed a new hour of material in a year. Seinfeld’s manager – George Sharpiro – takes Orny Adams on as a client. When the kid asks Shapiro if he thinks he’s going to be a big star, Shapiro answers, “Yes. And I think you’ll still be unhappy.”

The film existed in a 120-minute version at one point, before Charles took out a great deal of documentary material, replaced it with more standup, and delivered an 82-minute cut. That’s not nearly enough time to illustrate what the film alludes to so well; performing standup comedy is as much an addiction as it is a craft or career, and like any artist, comedians end up looking at an empty canvas sooner or later.

Comedian consciously steps away from being a documentary about Jerry Seinfeld, to the degree An Inconvenient Truth tried to not be about Al Gore. But Seinfeld is such a pro that he remains a cipher – internalizing most of his thoughts – while the kid Orny Adams is the opposite, equivocating way too much of his angst. He comes across as an unabashed dick whose career could not suffer any fate too harsh.

A lot about the film bugged me. There’s too much Orny Adams, too much jazz drowning out the comedians. Charles fails to sustain anything good until the final ten minutes, which are sublime. Seinfeld visits Bill Cosby – who Chris Rock enthused was performing the best standup act he’d ever seen – and when Seinfeld returns to show biz, seems at peace. Close-up shots of the club appear as the credits play, and Susannah McCorkle sings “Waters of March.” It’s an absolutely perfect ending to an imperfect film about creativity.

“Comedian provides terrific insight into the world of the stand-up comedian. Despite the foibles of the production, it is worth seeing if only to get to hear parts of Seinfeld’s new act,” writes Mike DeWolfe at Apollo Movie Guide.

Alex Mestas at Lights Out Films says, “Comedian isn’t a particularly great movie. It’s too simple a flick for the audience to become emotionally invested in, but it’s interesting enough to compel you to feel nervous for Jerry when he’s about to go on stage.”

“Virtually all of Comedian appealed to me, really. The movie contrasts the paths taken by a little-known comic and one of the world’s most famous, and while it doesn’t do this in a consistently smooth manner, the material’s very compelling and incisive,” writes Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide.

“The question is this: What have I been doing?” View Seinfeld’s return to standup on the March 21, 2001 episode of Late Show With David Letterman.

© Joe Valdez

Documentary directed and photographed by Amanda Micheli begins in 2000, as Lucy Lawless’ stunt double on the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess – 22 year old Zoe Bell – finds herself out of work when the show ends. Bell leaves her family in Auckland and arrives in L.A., where Jeannie Epper – Lynda Carter’s stunt double on Wonder Woman twenty-five years previous – takes Bell under her wing and attempts to help her career in film.

Epper is daughter of stunt pioneer John Epper, whose entire family has dedicated itself to continuing his legacy. This includes Jeannie Epper’s daughter Eurlyne, who landed on her neck during a routine fall four years previous, and has to watch from the sidelines during her rehab, while Jeannie continues to work into her 60s, even after she donates a kidney.

In spite of her connections, Bell is passed over for a job on a TV series, but a year later, Epper gets her into a high fall training session, where Bell comes to the attention of a scout looking for a stuntwoman to double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. He invites her to audition for the film’s stunt coordinator, Master Wo-Ping, and director Quentin Tarantino.

In addition to Lawless and Tarantino, Micheli interviews Steven Spielberg – who met Epper when she and most of her family worked for him on 1941 – and he talks about the stuntwoman being a recent breakthrough in Hollywood. Up until the women’s movement, men in wigs routinely doubled for women where stunts were concerned in movies and TV.

Stunt coordinator Terry Leonard – who performed the truck undercarriage gag in Raiders of the Lost Ark – states, “The girls do have a tougher job, just because of the costumes.” With wardrobe that usually features a bare midriff, arms, legs or all of the above, stuntwomen can’t pad up. Footage from Wonder Woman shows Epper never used padding at all.

Double Dare came to my attention after seeing Zoe Bell not only play herself in Grindhouse, but perform a mind blowing moving vehicle stunt that surpasses the one in Raiders. She comes off as the same utterly rad chick here. During her audition for Kill Bill, she wipes out on a flip four times in a row, but what impresses Tarantino is the way she wipes out, getting up, laughing about it, and doing it again. Her toughness wins her the job.

This type of strength among women in show business is what Searching For Debra Winger completely ignored, and I don’t mean physical strength. Stuntwomen don’t complain about getting older, losing jobs or not getting respect. Instead, they do what the men do, only they do it better. As Bell departs for China to train with Wo-Ping, Epper’s advice to her is “Don’t get all frazzled when you’re over there. Just do your job.”

Micheli does such a subtle job telling her story that I hesitate to call the film a “documentary” at all. The camera crew and docu-style is almost invisible, and we’re simply able to follow a professional woman in a two or three year span of her career, being mentored by another woman and overcoming barriers through pure devotion to her craft.

Double Dare is only one hour and twenty minutes long, and while I would have enjoyed seeing a lot more stuff, it feels perfectly framed. Spielberg is wonderfully articulate about the Eppers and the tradecraft of stuntwomen. A segment at a Xena convention is wonderful, and watching Bell receive word she’s won the job on Kill Bill is a joy.

Another joy is watching Zoe Bell do a header off a 35 foot ladder into an airbag (it looks like a 100 foot ladder) and hearing Epper ask her if that was fun. “Fuck yeah!” This summed up the movie for me, which is passionate and a must-see for movie fans. It took Netflix two weeks to make this DVD available to ship to me, but if you can locate it, I highly recommend checking this one out.

Documentary directed by actress Rosanna Arquette features brief, candid interviews with about thirty of her acting peers. Conversation includes how the women have balanced work with raising a family, and what affect turning 40 has had on their screen careers.

Arquette’s inspiration for the project – which debuted on Showtime cable TV – was Debra Winger, who was nominated for three Academy Awards in the 1980s, then “quit and didn’t want to be an actress anymore” according to Arquette’s information. Winger doesn’t prove as reclusive as her reputation, appearing about an hour into the film to discuss why she retired.

Diane Lane, Salma Hayek and Alfre Woodard are among those who acquit themselves, offering limited insight on their approach to their craft, but compared to many others in the film, are at least shown to demonstrate class and dignity.

Highlights include Jane Fonda, who admits that Ted Turner made it clear on their second date that if their relationship was going to work, she’d have to give up her career. Fonda has no regrets about that, but admits she missed doing those pivotal film scenes, with everyone on set waiting to see if she would earn her salary and pull off the big emotional transition.

Holly Hunter remarks that – while actresses like Jessica Lange “are dangerous and sexual and take great risks” – it’s nothing like the 1940s, when screen actresses had tremendous power. Tracey Ullman echoes that, stating, “There’s no more Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore being made, no Diary Of A Mad Housewife, there’s no dignity in it anymore.”

Frances McDormand – who Arquette apparently caught in a ladies’ room in Paris and gives her interview there – comes across as the most down to earth, telling Arquette that in ten years, stories are going to need to be told about 54 year old women, and the only ones left to fill those parts will be the ones who didn’t opt for plastic surgery.

The credits read “A Rosanna Arquette Experience.” This is the problem I had with the movie. It has no director. Arquette merely shows up for a chat, interrupts the actresses occasionally, and then permits many of them to descend into gripe sessions about their image, their career opportunities, or how the only industry many of them know – Hollywood – is losing interest in them.

Meg Ryan comes off as particularly vapid. Gwyneth Paltrow is such a black hole of insight it astonishes me she’s had so much work over the last decade. Teri Garr makes a decent point, but then harangues a waitress about whether her tuna is cooked. If the point here was to elicit any kind of empathy for veteran actresses and their struggles, this wasn’t the way to go about it.

Fonda and McDormand – and Roger Ebert, who Arquette catches at a theater in Cannes and distills why Hollywood offers few quality roles for women over 40 – come across as natural and insightful on their first take. Many of the others seen here are enabled to make fools of themselves. In terms of concept, execution, research and editing, Searching For Debra Winger is one of the worst debut films I can remember seeing.

Academy Award nominated documentary directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel traces the rise and fall of the Weather Underground, the militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. From 1970 to 1980, the Weathermen conducted a series of mostly bloodless bombings against government institutions in the United States. Their goal was the violent overthrow of the government.

Many members of the SDS felt that non-violent protest had done little to stop the war in Vietnam. In 1969, a faction calling themselves the Weathermen took control of the organization. These included some of the stars of the student left: Bernadine Dorhn, a lawyer and national secretary of SDS, and Mark Rudd, famed for leading demonstrations that shut down Columbia University in 1968.

The Weathermen wanted to make the Vietnam War visible inside the United States. They staged what they hoped would be a huge confrontation with the police called “The Days of Rage.” In Chicago, only 250 kids showed up. They rampaged through the Gold Coast area, smashing windows, but only marginalized themselves with militants like the Black Panthers, who denounced the group.

The Weathermen trained themselves to use guns and explosives, but were unable to decide how far they should go. A collective in New York led by Terry Robbins plotted to set off a bomb at a non-commissioned officer’s ball at Fort Dix. A short circuit in the wiring exploded the bomb prematurely, killing three members of the group and destroying their townhouse on West 11th Street.

The FBI started taking the Weathermen seriously, and its members fled underground. The group reached the conclusion that they had made an error in New York. They would not unleash indiscriminate violence against the people. From that point forward, they took measures to make sure no one was hurt in their bombings.

The Weathermen bombed the State Corrections Department in San Francisco. They bombed the National Guard headquarters, and the U.S. Capitol. They broke Timothy Leary out of prison and spirited him to Algeria. For a moment in time, the Weather Underground had their finger on the pulse of the growing counter culture.

But with the end of the Vietnam War, and the Weathermen’s cause irrelevant, some in the group felt they should come into the open. By the end of ’70s, most had turned themselves in. Ironically, almost none did prison time when it became clear how the FBI had broken the law in pursuing the group.

A somber tone is evident throughout The Weather Underground. The present day interviews with former members of the group show them all haunted by ghosts to one degree or another. By taking the moral high ground, they enabled themselves to commit acts none of them are proud of today, and each seem inflicted by a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The archival footage – from network news, to handheld protest film, to random 16mm film of the period – immerses us in the 1970s, and the documentary is acutely factual about the state of the union at that point in time. The film shows how violence – even in the name of stopping violence – poisons its perpetrators. The subject matter is heavy, but this is an extremely well made documentary. The subtle narration is provided by actress Lili Taylor and by audio artist Pamela Z.

Documentary directed by Billy Corben chronicles how cocaine, cash, and violence transformed Miami of the early 1980s into one of the most dangerous places on earth. The film begins by profiling a shooting at Dadeland Mall on July 11, 1979, in which two Colombians were machine gunned repeatedly in broad daylight at a liquor store. The story of how this came to be is related primarily by three men, all of them superlative documentary subjects:

John Roberts was a former nightclub owner who moved to Miami at age 25, and ended up distributing $2 billion in cocaine for the Medellin cartel. His partner, Mickey Munday – “a redneck from South Florida” – smuggled over 38 tons of cocaine from Colombia to Miami in planes he piloted. Jorge “Rivi” Ayala grew up in Chicago and later confessed to 29 murders, as head of security for Griselda Blanco, the so-called godmother of the cocaine trade. Ayala gives his interview from prison.

The demand for cocaine in South Florida was so great in the late ’70s that Roberts outgrew his Cuban suppliers. A Ford model he was dating introduced him to Munday, who ran transportation for the Medellin cartel. The men went into business. They bought property in Florida, built two runways, and hangars that looked like barns. They had their own towing company, and would haul cars loaded with cocaine to Colombian wholesalers already in Florida. Their operation went for six years without a hitch.

Retail sales in Miami soared. Real estate agents, car dealers, and jewelers all profited from the cocaine industry. Dozens of nightclubs opened (The Mutiny in Coconut Grove catered specifically to drug dealers). South Florida operated more banks than any area in the country. The film points out that prior to the 1960s, Miami was like Alabama. There was no money. The $7 billion a year cocaine economy funded a lot of development in modern day Miami.

Jorge Ayala started out in Miami delivering dope and picking up money. He was taken to meet Griselda Blanco, a Colombian who ran her own family. She had developed a reputation even more fearful than the men in her line of work, typically having whoever she was after shot, and anyone around them shot. Ayala led a ragtag group of enforcers who acted on Blanco’s orders, and were responsible for much of the violence in South Florida, including the Dadeland shootings.

Dadeland was beyond the scope of anything the public had seen up to that point. The “cocaine cowboys” would kill anybody in sight. 86 rounds were fired. The liquor store looked like a wild west shootout. Once police realized what they were up against, with the help of the federal government, they slowly started to regain control of the streets.

If Cocaine Cowboys had been done as a narrative film – with actors playing Roberts or Ayala – it would have been totally unbelievable. The amounts of cash, the impunity the drug smugglers operated with, and the level of violence that was perpetrated would have made Scarface look like a school play. By finding people who knew this world inside and out, and letting them explain how they did what they did, the filmmakers reeled me in from the get-go.

This is probably one of the best gangster movies of the last twenty years. It’s fast paced, ceaselessly entertaining, and at 116 minutes, jams enough historical detail for three movies into one. Corben and his people do a fantastic job cutting together tourist bureau film, local news reels of the time, and recreated footage to tell the story of modern day Miami. It pretty much does for “The Magic City” what Casino did for Las Vegas, for better or for worse.

Corben doesn’t glamorize the drug trade, but makes no bones that half of modern day Miami was built with cocaine. That’s something I haven’t heard anyone admit before. Roberts, Munday and Ayala are straight forward and talk without pretense. Like the film, they’re charismatic, frequently insightful, occasionally witty, and demonstrate again that truth is stranger than fiction.

Concert film documents the final performance of The Band, the rock, rhythm & blues group featuring Levon Helm on drums and vocals, Rick Danko on bass and vocals, Richard Manuel on piano, Garth Hudson on synthesizer, and Robbie Robertson on guitar. Robertson, the group’s principal songwriter, felt that after sixteen years on the road, he was ready to quit performing.

Their swan song was held on November 25, 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, site of the group’s first show as The Band in 1969. Organized and promoted by Bill Graham, it started out as just a farewell performance. But the group decided to invite guests that had been pivotal in their development, and the lineup grew.

Ronnie Hawkins, their first frontman, was invited. Bob Dylan, whom The Band played backup for throughout the ’60s, was invited. Muddy Waters was asked to represent Chicago blues. Eric Clapton, British blues. The Staple Singers, gospel. Emmylou Harris, country. Neil Diamond, Tin Pan Alley. Dr. John, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr and Ron Wood were also coming.

The concert film grew in scope as well. Toward the end of his 100 day schedule on New York, New York, Martin Scorsese was called by producer Jonathan Taplin and asked if he wanted to shoot a documentary of the show. Scorsese was an admirer of The Band, and the roster – which ran the gamut of American rock – impressed him. Despite having only six weeks to prepare, he agreed immediately.

Vilmos Zsigmond, Laszlo Kovacs and director of photography Michael Chapman were among the camera operators. Scorsese meticulously storyboarded the songs, setting up lighting and camera cues to match the lyrics. Much of that went out the window on the night of the show, when equipment malfunctions and maneuverability prevented all the songs from being covered.

The Last Waltz has been hailed as not only one of the best concert movies ever, but one of the great rock movies of all time. After the show, Scorsese shot interviews with The Band at their recording studio in Malibu, and also filmed for several days on a soundstage at MGM, restaging The Band’s performances with The Staple Singers, and Emmylou Harris.

The sequences Scorsese shot in a controlled environment are the best in the film. The Staple Singers performing “The Weight” with The Band could rank as one of the best music videos ever done. The camera movement and lighting beautifully capture the emotion of the music. The way Scorsese inserts images of the vast, densely populated soundstage neatly sum up the end-of-an-era feeling he tries to conjure throughout the film.

Boris Leven built a tremendous stage for the concert, renting a set from the San Francisco Opera’s production of La traviata and stringing up chandeliers. The lighting is equally elegant, with warm amber footlights employed to give the performances a classic look. As far as the music, The Band performing “Helpless” with Neil Young stands out. Because they wanted her appearance later to be a surprise, Joni Mitchell sings mesmerizing backing vocals shrouded in darkness behind the stage.

Whether Scorsese was just better acquainted with Robertson, or none of the other band members had much to say to him, the interviews are lacking. They could have been cut in favor of more concert footage anyway. The event started at 5pm, with Thanksgiving dinner catered to 5,000 concert goers. It was followed by ballroom dancing, then The Band and their guests performing a marathon show that went from 9 pm to 2:30 am.

The event itself, and its music, are vastly superior to what Scorsese managed to get on film. The technical difficulties – limiting how much of the show could be documented, and how effectively – are just one thing. A bigger problem is Scorsese’s insistence that this film be about “the end.” “The end” of what exactly is never made clear in the movie, whose theme feels misappropriated.

Bands break up and reunite – The Band got back together in 1983, sans Robertson – and Scorsese’s idea that something was coming to an end here rang false to me. Most of the musicians who appear – from Neil Young to Muddy Waters to Clapton to Robbie Robertson – found more success after the decade was over.

The Winterland shut down on New Year’s Eve, 1978. If you wanted to imply something in rock ‘n roll was coming to an end, a film on the venue – and why changes in the industry were forcing it to shutter – may have had a heartbeat that The Last Waltz misses for the most part. For what it was, I would have enjoyed this film if it had been more music, less liner notes.

Documentary directed by Kirby Dick and written by Dick and Eddie Schmidt & Matt Patterson explores the enigmatic decision making process of the Motion Picture Association of America, the lobbying arm of the film industry, who, from an impenetrable building in Encino, hires anonymous parents to assign ratings to movies.

Their decision has major consequences for a filmmaker. Movies given an NC-17 aren’t permitted to advertise in TV or print media, be exhibited before a wide audience, or appear on the shelves of retailers like Blockbuster. The names of the parents making these decisions are kept secret. When appealing a decision, filmmakers are not told why their film was given a particular rating.

Instead, the filmmaker has to cut their film, resubmit it, and hope the shorter version passes inspection. Among the those who sit down to talk to Dick about their experiences with this are Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), Kevin Smith (Clerks was originally given an NC-17 rating, Jersey Girl an R), and Matt Stone, who was told the South Park movie had to lose the subtitle All Hell Breaks Loose.

For South Park, Stone changed his subtitle to Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and that actually passed. Two weeks later, the board realized they had made a mistake, the new title was even worse, but producer Scott Rudin notified them he’d already struck prints for the posters. It was a rare victory for the filmmaker, one of the few over the years.

Director Wayne Kramer and actress Maria Bello appear to talk about The Cooler, which was given an NC-17 for a brief scene where Bello’s character enjoys receiving oral sex. They raise a question that has been asked over and over again; why the MPAA overwhelmingly tries to keep adult sexual content out of sight, while graphic violence routinely passes with an R.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated features Dick not only submitting this film through the ratings process (it’s given an NC-17 for “some graphic sexual content”), but hiring two of the best private investigators ever seen in a movie, a mother-daughter team who stake out the MPAA office, get pictures of the raters and identify who these people are. 60 Minutes tried this once and failed. The ladies of Ariel Investigations succeed.

This flick has everything I enjoy in a documentary. There’s history, of the ratings system and why Hollywood employs it. There are interviews with the brightest, most articulate in their field. Thought provoking questions are raised. There’s humor. And instead of standing on a soap box, the director gets down and brings previously suppressed facts to light.

Dick – who was nominated for an Academy Award for Twist of Faith – gets out of his own way. Instead of trying to be a movie star, he has faith in his subjects to tell a story. Kimberly Peirce and Kevin Smith are very succinct and down to earth. Peirce – who was also given an NC-17 when one of her actresses spent too much time enjoying an orgasm on screen – asks “Who’s ever complained about an orgasm that lasted too long?”

In the wake of the film, MPAA president Dan Glickman announced that filmmakers would now be permitted to cite precedent when appealing a rating, and that raters would resign after their kids were grown. Glickman stated “The documentary made it clear that we probably haven’t done as much as we can to explain how it all works.” This is dynamite stuff, and a must-see for movie fans.

Methodical and passionate big screen adaptation of “the slide show” presentation Al Gore has given with his Mac in auditoriums and conference rooms six years running addresses the issue of global warming; what it is, what it’s doing to the planet, what will happen if man continues to ignore it, and finally, what the average citizen can do about it.

Prolific TV director Davis Guggenheim begins this documentary on Gore’s family farm in Tennessee – where the former vice president and senator first learned about conservation. The film balances Gore’s personal journey over the years – including the near death of his 6-year-old son – with the broader story about the fate of the planet, told with charts and photographs and recreated on a sound stage in front of an audience.

Standing in front of a 45-foot screen and employing dynamic three dimensional imagery, as well as moments of brevity, Gore vividly demonstrates how data gathered from Antarctic ice cores show carbon dioxide to be at its highest levels in 650,000 years, how this is a result of man made pollution, and how elevated CO2 levels directly correlate to a rise in temperature.

On the warmer planet we now reside on, more glaciers are melting and more lakes are evaporating, threatening the water supplies of millions in the Third World. A melting of the polar ice caps not only endangers wild life, but could lead to a rise in ocean levels along the coasts of the world, endangering stretches of Florida, Holland, Hong Kong and Manhattan to be swallowed by the sea.

An Inconvenient Truth documents how warmer weather has proliferated the bark beetle, which has devoured entire forests. Warmer waters feed stronger hurricanes, and during the production of the film, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore across the Gulf of Mexico, destroying New Orleans and giving a preview of what storm seasons on a warmer earth might look like.

The ten hottest years on the books have all occurred in the last 14 years. There’s no precedent for any of this. It’s not part of a natural cycle. Nor is it presented as Al Gore’s opinion, or the beliefs of a political party, but instead, a near consensus of the world’s environmental scientists. Suggestions for the average citizen include switching to higher mileage or hybrid cars, while governments must act to reduce emissions of CO2.

Gore has said he’s given this presentation a thousand times, and both his conviction and storytelling ability are really something to marvel here. I put this on at midnight and was just pulled right in. And I hate lectures, especially scientific lectures. But unlike the calculation many of us recall from Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign, there’s not a false emotional note, or a moment where the facts and figures get ahead of the audience.

Though Gore makes no secret that the administration of his “opponent” does not share the views of the world’s environmental scientists, An Inconvenient Truth is not going after anyone. It’s not Fahrenheit 9/11. I enjoyed how it balances the audience presentation with images of Gore moving through airports and hotels talking about why he continues this mission, when most retired politicians go on the lecture circuit and get rich.

I hesitate to place this into the concert film category – though Guggenheim was influenced by The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s concert film on The Band – because to say the film is performance does it an injustice. There’s simply no way you can walk away from this thinking the risks of doing something about global warming – even if you’re convinced it’s just “theory” – outweigh ignoring the possibility any longer.