Sad offscreen deaths, discussion of child abuse, some disturbing images of a severed limb
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
September 18, 2015
You might not think that a documentary about two men fighting over a severed leg would be funny, touching, and insightful, but it is. You might think that it would be a carnival freak show for the age of YouTube and Twitter, and it sort of is that, too, but mostly in the clips from the various television shows that got involved in this real-life gothic mashup of Southern culture, reality TV, dysfunctional families, substance abuse, money, tragedy, and two men, one plummeting from a life of wealth and privilege and one desperately aspiring for fame and fortune, both seeing the approval of fathers who are no longer here. And they became two men who fought each other for years over something the rest of us cannot imagine anyone would want.
Shannon Whisnant in a small-time operator in North Carolina, always up to some scheme or other. So of course he showed up to bid on items from a storage locker that were confiscated when the payments lapsed. He bought a small, rusty smoker and was surprised to open it and find inside a severed human leg, about mid-calf down, with the foot and toes. The film plays his 911 call. “I got a human foot.” “A what?” “A human left foot.” I love that he thinks that additional detail will somehow make a difference.
The foot belongs to John Wood, or at least it once did. It was amputated following a plane crash and he wanted to keep it. It seemed very reasonable to him once he heard that Whisnant had it that he would get it back. But Whisnant saw it as the golden ticket he always knew was coming to him, his chance for the big time. Oh, he had already appeared on “Jerry Springer,” but he had not achieved that level of fame he just knew in his heart was his destiny. He went on news shows to talk about his find. He started charging admission — $3 adults, $1 kids. He had t-shirts made. I would like to say they were tasteful but they were not. His twitter account is @fottmannc.
Whisnant met with Wood — at the parking lot of the Dollar General — to talk about the ownership of the foot. The details of the conversation are still disputed, but the next steps involved litigation. And more reality television.
The great gift of the film, which is at times hilarious and at times deeply moving, is that it takes this absurd dispute and humanizes the story so profoundly that by the end we are a part of it. It deals with the endearing and the obnoxious sides of American celebrity culture. It is abashing but also reassuring that the multi-year fight is finally resolved — with Solomonic jurisprudential nuance — by television’s Judge Mathis. But is is the almost unbearably intimate conversations with family members and the two men themselves that show us the inherent vulnerability of even those who at first seem cartoonish or grotesque.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, discussion of drug and alcohol abuse, discussion of tragic deaths and child abuse, and some grisly subject matter and disturbing images.
Family discussion: Why did both men want the foot? How did their relationships with their fathers affect their views of themselves?
Rated PG for thematic elements, brief suggestive images and incidental smoking
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Social drinking, brief smoking
Violence/ Scariness:
None
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
September 18, 2015
The best documentaries — and the best movies and the best stories — are fascinatingly specific but universal as well. When actor/comedian Ravi Patel agreed to let his parents, Vasant and Champa, try to find him a wife according to the established traditions of their Gujarati Indian culture, he and his sister Geeta decided to make a movie about the process. While the details of how it works are fascinating and often hilarious, the joy of the film is how universal it is. We have all had parents try to push us according to their own ideas of what will make us happy. Maybe we do not get “biodata” marriageability information sheets on all of the prospects, specifying that caste and horoscope must be compatible and disclosing skin shade, but pretty much everyone has had calls from relatives who want to put us in touch with a wonderful girl/boy they don’t really know but their neighbor/podiatrist/brother-in-law assures them that the possible romantic partner in question has a great personality. Geeta, a documentary filmmaker, picks up a camera and follows Ravi through a series of remarkable encounters, from speed dating to a specialized version of OK Cupid to a Patel marriage convention. It is pretty clear which girl he is going to end up with, but that in no way impairs the fun of the film.
In part that is because the real stars of the show are the Patel parents, who are irresistibly adorable. As Ravi points out, they met through the traditional system, as did most of his relatives, and they are the happiest married couple he knows. It is clear that the Western system of romance, dating, and marriage is far from perfect, so why not try the time-tested system that worked so well for his parents? He is so broken-hearted after the end of his most serious relationship, with a girl who is not Indian, he thinks he might as well go along.
And we have a lot of fun going along with him. Ravi is a natural on screen, self-deprecating and very sincere in his search for love, his affection for his culture, his love for his family, and the struggle he has, like all children of immigrants, to find his identity somewhere between the old country and the new.
Parents should know that this movie has some family drama, and some smoking and drinking.
Family discussion: How did the couples in your family meet? What is the best way to find someone to love?
If you like this, try: “Sherman’s March” and “Bride and Prejudice”
Interview: Sarah Colt on the PBS Documentary “Walt Disney”
Posted on September 13, 2015 at 3:18 pm
Copyright PBS 2015
Sarah Colt’s two-part “American Experience” documentary about Walt Disney is a fascinating look at one of the towering figures not just of film history but of American history. Disney revolutionized film and the way we tell stories with his animated features, nature documentaries, and family entertainment. He created a new industry and a new way for families to vacation together with Disneyland and the Disney World properties. He was a pioneer of new technologies from sound recording to photocopiers and animatronics. And he built one of the world’s most successful businesses. It premieres September 14 and 15, 2015, on PBS stations.
Director Sarah Colt told me that the Disney company opened up its vast archives for her with no restrictions and no right to review the film before it was made public.
It was really an amazing thing and we were thrilled. It made the project possible. From a documentary film maker’s perspective who has worked on a bunch of historical films this was like a dream come true. Because I was making a film about an artist, a filmmaker, and an animator. So not only was there material of him and the behind the scenes kind of stuff that you are always looking for but also his work. To be able to use big chunks of “Snow White” as part of the story was just amazing. So that was just incredible. I’ve never made a film about a filmmaker before. That was very fantastic to have all that material. And their photograph collection is very well organized. They have a really good database and we could access what we needed. The footage of the behind the scenes kind of material was harder to find because the Disney Company. They are not a professional archive and that’s not their main purpose so not surprisingly their collection is not necessarily all in one place, it’s in lots of different places and it was a lot of work. They totally helped us but it wasn’t a one stop thing where you just look in a database and there’s all the material. There was a lot of hunting and talking, asking questions and then were these big moments of excitement when we found things. I’ll give you an example, the footage of Disney playing baseball with his colleagues. I had seen it once somewhere in another film but we were not finding and nobody at Disney could find it and then all of a sudden they found it and not only did they find it but it had sound. Most of the footage from that era as you probably know doesn’t come with sound attached, so we do sound design. So when you hear those voices cheering Disney as he is hitting the balls and running the bases, those are the voices of the people there and those kinds of finds were very exciting because they helped to really tell the story in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do without that kind of material.
Disney’s fascination with using new technology is a theme of the documentary and there is a charming example of one of his earliest cartoons, before he had his own company, with a real little girl interacting with animated characters, like this Laugh-o-Gram production from 1923, featuring Walt Disney himself.
He was an innovator, no question in a lot of different areas, and technology was definitely an important part of his ability to innovate. So he was always pushing things. It wasn’t that he was actually inventing things but he would see how other people were doing things and he had these ideas to take them to the next level. I think sound is a great example of that and we use that as our main example of his technical innovation in the film. Other cartoonists were using sound and experimenting with sound and sound was becoming a part of the movie business. But what Disney did with sound was to take it and really make it an integral part of what the film was about so that the film didn’t make sense without sound, instead of the sound just being kind of layered on top of it. He had a way of pushing things and what I think is really interesting too is that he understood the potential. It wasn’t that he figured all these things out, it was like he had an idea and then he would surround himself with the most talented people in every category. If you’re thinking about artistry, the most talented artists, when it came to technology the most talented people with that, so a perfect example is his collaboration with Ub Iwerks. You know Ub Iwerks was very talented but also he really was technically amazingly savvy. So Ub helped Disney take things to the next level. I don’t think alone either of them could have done what they did but together they did these amazing things. So Disney was always collaborating with the top people. Now he was always in charge, there was no question that he was the visionary, he was in charge but he recognized talent and he was able to attract talent. And that’s how I think his technological innovation happened because I don’t think, he certainly wasn’t technical wiz, it was more that he was figuring out how to do that with other people’s talent.
But the documentary is frank in showing that he cultivated talent and he appreciated talent and yet he alienated a lot of the talent, resulting in a strike and defections to a rival studio, both which hurt him deeply.
Copyright PBS 2015
He was a complicated boss. I think he was a very good leader. He knew how to create a sense of excitement, he knew how to translate vision and get other people excited about it but at the same time I think he could be quite insensitive. He treated some people very kindly, very well and then treated other people not as well and he was very unaware of how he alienated people. As the film portrays, the strike is the ultimate example of something that could have probably been avoided by a leader who had been more aware of himself and what was going on around him. He was blind to things that were happening right in front of him and so he could be a very difficult boss. I think he was very demanding. He demanded the highest level of performance from people and some people did very well under that but some people were mad that they were not being properly compensated. They were working long hours without being recognized for the work they were doing. I think he could be very difficult and so he was charming but he was also I think demanding and difficult.
One of the film’s most moving sections concerns the brief time Disney spent as a child in the small town of Marceline, Missouri, which he thought of always as the happiest time of his childhood. Disneyland’s Main Street and many of the settings of his film reflected his idyllic memories of Marceline.
Right from reading the first biography it was clear that Marceline was a hugely important place and whether it’s a real place or more of an imagined memory of a place it was crucial and so it was clear that we needed to include it in both his upbringing but also how he remembered it. And so we were especially happy to have footage of his return to the town with his brother as adults. It was just such a wonderful way to be able to take note of how important Marceline had been to him as a child and how important it was to him. And then what better way to see him as a middle-aged man in a suit kind of visiting this little town in the Midwest and how important it was. So I feel like that’s where my job as a documentary filmmaker is so fun because it’s like you’re using these finds that you have, we found that footage and I was like, “Okay, this is the scene and this is going to be how we really show how it builds into Disneyland and what does Disneyland mean and so Marceline is in a way kind of a version of a Disneyland for Disney. For Walt Disney it is this place in imagination, a place where he felt safe, a place where he was with animals and nature and an escape from the troubles and the problems of real life and so I think that’s what Marceline represented for Disney and then Disney takes that and makes Disneyland.
Colt wants the film to show people Disney as a person, a man of vision, a man of sentiment, and a dreamer who always liked to remind people that it all started with a mouse.
When people hear “Disney” they may think of the company or its products. It’s very easy now especially with the amazing success of the Disney company since his death to forget who he was and that he was a real person. I want people to be able to take away that he was human and that he was human both an exemplary human being and also he had flaws, and he was complicated and that some of his greatest successes came out of difficult things from his own personal life and experience. And that it’s a layered and much more a kind of deep and interesting story than the legend of Walt Disney.
Interview: Kim Campbell on Caring for Glen Campbell and “I’ll Be Me”
Posted on September 4, 2015 at 12:07 pm
Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me is a beautiful documentary about an ugly disease. Glen Campbell, one of the most popular and successful musical performers of all time, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. As memories, words, and some basic concepts about daily life became fragile and then disappeared entirely, the music stayed with him. And so, his family took him on one last performing tour. The audiences were understanding, applauding even when he forgot the words or repeated a song he had just played. But backed up by his children, he played brilliantly and he loved the audience and they loved him back. The documentary is the story of that tour, of how Alzheimer’s affected Campbell and his family, and, with commentary by friends and fellow musicians, about how all of our lives are touched by the tragedy of dementia and cognitive impairment.
Campbell’s wife Kim is in every way the heart of the film. Her loving spirit and devotion are deeply moving. It was a pleasure to speak to Kim about the film, which is Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Menow available on DVD.
What has it been like for you to see how audiences respond to this film?
It’s been amazing. Everywhere we go and show the film people are really moved. They feel like we’re telling their story and they feel like it’s bringing Alzheimer’s out of the shadows into the light and helping remove the stigma of this disease.
What is it about music that seems to be able to reach people with dementia even when words are failing?
From what the doctors told us, music involves all the different regions of your brain at the same time and everything is stimulated at once. It just seem to promote the health of the brain, to keep everything working. They say that it may have kept Glen from progressing as quickly as he otherwise might have had he not been playing music. It’s a natural memory aid. People have used music to memorize things for years, for centuries. I think when you hear songs from your past on the radio or something you remember everything, you remember where you were when you heard it and the smell of the ocean and colors and what you were wearing and it just seem to trigger everything to do with your memory for some reason. And it brings joy to people. And joy of course brings a sense of well-being. So it’s a good therapy for people. I think all the arts are. There is a video clip of Glen relating to color and singing while he is painting and it’s really beautiful. So I am a big advocate of all of the arts for people with dementia. Really for everybody, for caregivers too. The art is therapeutic.
How is Glen doing now?
In March of 2014 our family joined the Memory Support Community in Nashville and Glen began residing there but recently about a month ago I brought Glen back home so now I’m caring for him at home again. And it is extremely challenging, he’s at the point where he just need one-on-one care round-the-clock. And it’s such a joy to have him back, emotionally it’s much better for me but physically it’s really challenging, I don’t get much sleep. He still has moments when he can become combative. I’m sporting a black eye this week that I got just trying to change his pants. You know that’s a part of Alzheimer’s that people generally don’t talk about. Your desire is to protect someone’s dignity but I really don’t think it has anything to do with dignity; it’s a disease. And this is typical for all people who have Alzheimer’s. They can’t express themselves verbally anymore and they don’t understand what’s going on, if you are trying to bathe them or take their clothes off or something their natural instinct is to lash out. So it’s just something that you don’t talk about that I think needs to be out there so that people can understand the tremendous challenges it is to be a caregiver for someone who has dementia.
So what are you doing to try and takes care of yourself? You can’t take care of him unless you are in pretty good shape.
Well, I pray a lot and I’m so blessed to have our daughter Ashley and our son Shannon and our nephew, Matthew. They’ve all been a part of our care team for so many years and they’re still living at home with me and helping. So I have got family and friends around, so that’s really important because you don’t want to become isolated. So many people are isolated in a home with someone with Alzheimer’s and they don’t have any help or the moral support of having somebody else there to help you. But I exercise, I take ballet, and that’s very therapeutic for me. I think it’s really important to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s and educate people about Alzheimer’s and so I’m doing that. I recently did a real estate course to get my mind off of Alzheimer’s and learn something new because I am aging, too. I am 57 and for my brain health I need to keep learning. So that was really fun. And it helps to meet people that are going to the same thing that I am. I’ve met a lot of women around the country who have husbands that have Alzheimer’s. I think it’s really different thing to have a spouse with Alzheimer’s than with a parent who has Alzheimer’s, emotionally different and so to have those friends has really been a great support to me. And I don’t belong to formal support group but I believe that those are really important and people should seek those out in their communities. I’m just blessed that it kind of happened organically with me to meet people in the same situation around the country and connect with them we stay in touch and visit each other and talk on the phone about what we are going through. And I try to eat right, too, all the natural things.
The film really makes clear that while people with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers have a lot in common, there are some very big differences.
Right. The thing is if you see one person with Alzheimer’s you’ve seen one person with Alzheimer’s. It’s different for everybody but at the same time it’s similar for everybody. There are standard things that people generally go through. Not everybody becomes combative but many do. Not everybody goes through retrogenesis but many do. Glen hasn’t really regressed and started becoming a child but there are childlike things that he began to do like his fascination with color. That is kind of beautiful actually because the way they begin to look at the world is like a brand-new life. Glen would look at the sunset and just get so emotional about it, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” So you try to find beauty and joy in the obvious tragedy. It’s your brain dying and you’re losing your memory but there’s still beauty to be found and Glen still seem to recognize me and we love each other and hug each other and still there are moments when we really connect deeply, when we look into each other’s eyes. And for the longest time Glen still would say things like, “We are so blessed!” Or he would go over to the window and raise his hand and say, “Thank you heavenly father!”
So I knew that he still senses God’s presence and we’re still connected to God and that really gave me a lot of comfort. Now he has really progressed with his dysplasia so his ability to communicate verbally has diminished severely. He doesn’t understand anything anyone says to him but we still communicate with smiles and hugs. At least it’s so funny because he still has his personality to some extent that he’s always been an entertainer, and so even now he’s still telling you jokes. It may not make sense, the words don’t really relate to each other but he is telling a joke so he laughs and laughs and laughs hysterically which makes us laugh and that makes him happy. So we try to appreciate each day for what it is and we just love each other and try to make the best of a bad situation. What can you do?
Tell me about some of the support activities you are working on.
We’re also excited that the I’ll Be Me Alzheimer’s Fund will create programs that will lift the spirit of caregivers and also fund research. What we want to do is give an award to young scientists, give grant to somebody like gave Mayo Clinic or a place like Johns Hopkins to hire a young scientists and involve them in Alzheimer’s research because generally scientists doesn’t get involved in research until they are older. It’s really exciting. There are lots of great companies working as hard as they can to find their drug or therapies are hopefully a cure. So we’re hoping that that is going to speed up the process.
If somebody came to you and said, “We’ve just got the diagnosis and I don’t know where to turn,” what would be your first piece of advice?
You have to educate yourself. That’s the first thing and the Alzheimer’s Association is really helpful. That’s where I went to start learn about the disease and learn what kind of resources there are available to you. You have to build a support team around yourself. It’s important for the person who has Alzheimer’s to have that support and the caregiver needs support. You can’t do it on your own — it takes a team. I would advise them to not let it get you down, do what Glen did and keep living your life and not worry about it. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, it has enough worries of its own.” And a cheerful heart is like a good medicine so keep yourself a healer, keep living your life. Educate yourself and surround with people that you love and who will support you. And be honest with people, because when you are honest with people and let them know what you’re going through that gives them permission to step in and help, it helps to remove the fear. I think people are afraid, “I don’t know how to relate to someone Alzheimer’s” and they just stop coming around because they are afraid that they will say the wrong thing. But if you talk openly about it, it helps them feel a bit more comfortable with you. And then you’ve got more support.
In Theaters For One Night Only: How to Change the World
Posted on September 2, 2015 at 3:54 pm
Greenpeace activists protest at the stern of whaling factory ship. (Greenpeace Witness book page 48-49) (Greenpeace Changing the World page 11 similar photo)
How to Change the World, the critically acclaimed, award-winning documentary, comes to select U.S. theaters this September 9, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. local time, presented by Fathom Events and Picturehouse Entertainment. The documentary looks at the very early days of the modern eco-movement. Using never-before-seen footage, it tells the gripping story of a courageous group of men and women, led by Robert Hunter, who set out to change the world and in the process sparked a revolution.
The event will include an exclusive live Q&A from the London premiere event hosted by respected broadcaster and journalist Mariella Frostrup. The panel will feature legendary fashion designer and longstanding Greenpeace supporter Vivienne Westwood, director Jerry Rothwell, Hunter’s daughter Emily Hunter and other special guests to be announced.
is a beautiful documentary about an ugly disease. Glen Campbell, one of the most popular and successful musical performers of all time, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. As memories, words, and some basic concepts about daily life became fragile and then disappeared entirely, the music stayed with him. And so, his family took him on one last performing tour. The audiences were understanding, applauding even when he forgot the words or repeated a song he had just played. But backed up by his children, he played brilliantly and he loved the audience and they loved him back. The documentary is the story of that tour, of how Alzheimer’s affected Campbell and his family, and, with commentary by friends and fellow musicians, about how all of our lives are touched by the tragedy of dementia and cognitive impairment.
