As a portrait of a man many compared to The Devil incarnate, Ivy Meeropol’s ‘Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn’ is mesmerizing. a perfect Pride month moment. Meeropol exposes Cohn’s magnetism, hypocrisy and malevolence with elan in a documentary that is oddly entrancing. This Cohn conspires with a gay Catholic Cardinal against homosexual rights. This Cohn casually threatens an elderly woman if she won’t sell her Provincetown rental house to him. This Cohn is responsible for a body in a trunk. And when he got sick, dying of AIDS, the man who would never admit he was gay went straight to Reagan, our president who wouldn’t mention the word AIDS, for access to AIDS drug trials – and got them. Meeropol has a history with Cohn. He sent her grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the Sing Sing electric chair in 1953. She first documented her familial heritage in the 2004 Sundance hit ‘Heir to an Execution,’ which was shortlisted for the Academy Award. These are condensed and slightly edited exchanges from our recent interview.
Q: How would you describe your legacy?
IVY MEEROPOL: It took me a while to get to the point and make ‘Execution,’ embracing my legacy. What happened is politics was always informing my life. At a certain point I wanted to know more and ask hard questions — and people were starting to die who actually knew them. I wanted to find a way to answer my own questions but take them out of the realm of ‘pure innocent martyrs’ or ‘pure evil.’ It was a way to give audiences more insight into who they were. And a way to revisit the notion of, What does it mean to be a Communist at that time?
Q: What did you find out then?
IM: There were justice seekers I believe. I just feel I was the generation, as my father’s daughter, I could ask some of the questions he shouldn’t have to ask but were always demanded of him. So I took it on. I didn’t expect to again but I thought this is a time to explore this part.
Q: So your ‘Bully’ doc isn’t about your grandparents.
IM: I didn’t want to go back to my family story when I went to do a documentary about Roy Cohn, it’s an important interesting topic. I wasn’t planning to do it until after the morning after Trump got elected. I felt this is it.
Q: We just had a Roy Cohn bio-doc last year with ‘Where’s My Roy Cohn?’ from Matt Tyrnauer. You have the celebrated filmmaker John Waters, a denizen of Provincetown, saying exactly why he so despised, hated and loathed Cohn and his summer sojourns there.
IM: I was very struck how exploring Cohn’s life in the closet was so important. I love Provincetown – I’ve been going there my whole life and that’s where I started the film. I knew he had been seen there, ‘Citizen Cohn,’ Nicholas Hoffman’s book, starts with Provincetown. I wanted to add that my film feels ‘sexier’ in a way because we really did set out to allow the audience to feel what it felt like to be Cohn. So when we’re in Studio 54 or Provincetown, the music, the pacing we wanted there. Because Cohn was having fun we wanted to have fun.
Q: Ivy, you just come out and say Cohn had an affair with David Schine, the WASP Cohn aide who was drafted and Cohn, upset at being separated, demanded that he be bunked in the Waldorf-Astoria. This attempt to extort influence with the Army led to the notorious Army hearings that destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy and ended Cohn’s ‘brilliant’ career until he reinvented himself in Manhattan. Others describe the Cohn-Schine closeness as merely an unrequited crush on Cohn’s part.
IM: I can’t prove that there was an affair but it seemed the only explanation. Otherwise why was Cohn as [playwright Tony] Kushner puts it so brilliantly, ‘He was willing to threaten the Army because he wanted his boyfriend back’? Especially how closety he had been in Washington at the time more gay people were being routed out than Communists. He looks so happy with David Schine! They’re having a ball running around Europe handing out anti-Communist literature. And Schine was Roy’s ‘type’ — tall, blond, athletic. [Schine died at 68 in a 1996 airplane crash.]
Q: Obviously you don’t see this as a distant history lesson.
IM: I think it’s important to see how Cohn was part of a time in our history where it’s not just all the things Trump does too, like lying, blaming others, not paying taxes. But specifically demonizing activists, immigrants or progressives. Any groups you want to control. I wanted to show this has been going on a long time and we don’t have to accept it. Cohn was a master and Trump is doing it too; dividing for their own benefit. If we know our history and unfortunately we don’t — we don’t remember it or teach it — but Cohn represents what Trump is doing now: Calling protesters thugs or saying Antifa is a violent protest group. The same language used to vilify anyone who was a socialist or Communist. Any progressive moment. Taki [the controversial Greek socialite, memoirist and columnist] says, ‘We hated Communists because it threatened our way of life.’ No, their way of life is break the law, destroy other people’s lives, don’t pay taxes, attack minorities. We would do so well to understand that Trump doesn’t care about the working class at all and is using the same tactics used in Red Square. It’s also just about shining a lot on bad or evil behavior. I hope by exposing Cohn it helps to root it out.
Q: What’s next?
IM: I would love to see a scripted series based on this documentary. The Cohn story could be like Showtime’s Roger Ailes story ‘The Loudest Voice in the Room.’ I have so many details that would be incredible for a limited series.
NEW DVDs:
THE HUNT IS ON: Controversial as a satire, initially pulled from theatrical release, the Blumhouse horror entry ‘The Hunt’ (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Code, Universal, R) is pretty fantastic, an intense – and intensely violent – surprise. When I saw ‘Hunt’ on the pre-pandemic big screen I had no idea Hilary Swank co-starred. For the Blu-ray, she has star billing alongside a magnetic Betty Gilpin who as Crystal is among those targeted as roadkill by an unknown mob of assassins. Just like the classic story of a man shipwrecked on an island who discovers the ruler’s favorite game of sport is hunting humans, ‘The Hunt’ begins as a puzzle – victims wonder, Why are we here? How did we ever get to this foreign country? – and escalates into a revenge, survival saga. Bonus features: ‘Crafting The Hunt,’ ‘Death Scene Breakdowns’ and ‘Athena Vs. Crystal: Hunter or Hunted?’
FILM BUFF ALERT What gives the ‘ABC Event Series’ ‘Wild Palms’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) it’s place in film history (even though it’s television) is the starry auteur lineup the Oscar-winning director-producer Oliver Stone (‘Platoon’) has assembled for Bruce Wagner’s sci-fi/LA noir. The 1993 5-part miniseries has 4 directors, led by the Oscar winning Kathryn Bigelow (‘Strange Days’), Keith Gordon (‘A Midnight Clear’), Peter Hewitt (‘Garfield’) and Phil Joanou (‘U2: 18 Videos’). With a score by Ryuchi Sakamoto and a cast that ranges from Angie Dickinson (‘Dressed to Kill’), Dana Delaney and Kim Cattrall to James Belushi, Brad Dourif and Ernie Hudson, ‘Wild Palms’ also offers enticing bonus features. On 4 of the episodes there are audio commentaries by, among others, Belushi, Delany, Gordon, Wagner and Joanou. But not Bigelow.
AN OSCAR WINNER’S STRETCH Jean Dujardin’s status as one of France’s most magnetic stars makes ‘The Artist’ Oscar winner’s choice of the offbeat, amusing ‘Deerskin’ (DVD, Greenwich Entertainment, Not Rated) a must see. A black comedy about possession – in the guise of a fringed deerskin jacket – Dujardin goes off the rails with a midlife crisis that his him in a picturesque Swiss village suddenly making one very odd documentary.
A companion piece of sorts is Dujardin’s appearance as ‘himself’ in the popular inside-Hollywood French series ‘Call My Agent.’ Here in Season 3 Episode 1 the actor sends up ‘Deerskin’ as a star who is driving his agent nuts because although the film is finished he remains ‘in character’ – think Daniel Day-Lewis and ‘Last of the Mohicans.’ Jean sports a bushy beard, sleeps in a tent beneath a tree outside his home, never bathes, even eats animals he’s killed, always in his deerskin jacket. Yet for his new movie which begins filming in days he must be clean-shaven and in a tux. How can they make Jean snap out of this trance!! It’s all very French and quite amusing.
CLASSIC HUGHES/RINGWALD If Molly Ringwald was the creation of writer-director John Hughes, it’s also correct to say she elevated the auteur’s standing in the 3 films they made together. She was 16 when ‘Sixteen Candles’ (’84) made her a star.
The two followed with 1985’s ‘The Breakfast Club’ and stopped with ‘Pretty in Pink’ (Blu-ray, Paramount, PG-13) in 1986 which is now being released on the Paramount Presents classics label in a Blu-ray upgrade which has a new interview with director Howard Deutch as well as the comedy’s original ending. Outstanding among the supporting cast: Jon Cryer, James Spader (‘The Blacklist’).
WHEN STOP & FRISK STOPPED How sadly timely. ‘Stop’ (DVD, Kino Lorber, Not Rated) is a 2014 documentary by Spencer Wolff on the legal assault on New York’s now abolished stop and frisk procedures under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly. The doc covers the 4 plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Floyd vs. City of New York. Interviewed on camera are the case’s lead attorney, police who defend the policy and the law professor who authored the case’s expert report. Bonus: A deleted scene.
AN AUTEUR NAMED BARTEL Paul Bartel thrived in ‘80s Hollywood with his offbeat sense of humor and mainstream sense of fun. His best known films are true classics: the 1982 ‘Eating Raoul’ is a deadpan cannibal comedy with Bartel as co-writer, director and star while ‘Lust in the Dust’ paired drag queen supreme Divine (‘Hairspray’) with then still-closeted gay icon Tab Hunter in a parody of a wonderfully bad Jennifer Jones vehicle. Bartel’s 1989 ‘Scenes from Class Struggle in Beverly Hills’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R) was his follow-up to ‘Raoul’ and reteamed Bartel with his muse and fab foil Mary Woronow. Co-stars include the iconic, enigmatic Jacqueline Bisset (‘Bullitt’), Robert Beltran, Ray Sharkey and Rebecca Schaeffer who was murdered by a deranged fan shortly after the movie opened. This brand new 2K release – its first on American DVD — has a bonus interview with Beltran who made his film debut in ‘Raoul.’
FROM TASMANIA WITH ELAN I always thought Tasmanian native Essie Davis sort of began and ended her international career with the long-running, oh-so-very-stylish Twenties detective Phyrne Fisher, who now is gifted with her very own spin-off star vehicle movie, ‘Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears’ (Blu-ray, AcornTV, Not Rated). But as I’ve discovered in the last couple of months Davis is a truly remarkable actor as well as an Aussie icon of the first order. Watch her as the avenging if often beaten down mother in the otherwise unwatchable ‘True History of the Kelly Gang’ or, currently, as the grief-stricken stymied mother of a cancer-doomed teenaged daughter in ‘Babyteeth’ and you see an actor of range, conviction and presence.
After 3 seasons of Phyrne Fisher’s ‘Murder Mysteries’ it’s a fine time for this feature which begins in Jerusalem, then under British rule, and quickly hops via airplane to England’s nicely manicured estates where verdant green lawns make ideal landing strips. There’s a 50-minute bonus with cast, crew and Ms. Davis.
OUTRAGEOUS IF HONEST HORROR STORY You would never ever know that the United States ranks as the world’s wealthiest nation if you looked at the figures on teenage homelessness: 4.2 million! Rotimi Rainwater, as writer-producer-director of ‘Lost in America’ (DVD, Indican Pictures, Not Rated), has enlisted names like Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Halle Berry, Sanaa Lathan and Jon Bon Jovi to highlight this issue but the reals stars here are the homeless teens who tell their story. ‘Lost in America’ looks at human trafficking, the foster care system and the many reasons teenagers become homeless – their sexuality, domestic violence, abuse. Rainwater is an unfortunately ideal guide for he ranks as a survivor of the nation’s homeless youth epidemic.
"Hollywood" - Google News
June 17, 2020 at 11:02PM
https://ift.tt/2zG8ybj
Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald
"Hollywood" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38iWBEK
https://ift.tt/3fdiOHW
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald"
Post a Comment