Harry Crews: Survival Is Triumph Enough (2007)
“I ain’t got a fuckin’ thing to hide.” Harry Crews (1935-2012) was interviewed by artist and filmmaker Tyler Turkle at his Gainesville, Florida, home in 2006 and 2007 – the…
Family Band: The Cowsills Story (2011)
“Talent and charm. Secrets and fear.” Even though they scored four hit singles during the late 1960s and served as the real-life inspiration for The Partridge Family TV series, NOBODY…
Carny (2007)
“I was born into this, so this is it.” A fascinating, uncompromising documentary from award-winning Canadian director Alison Murray in collaboration with photographer Virginia Lee Hunter (Carny: Americana on the…
Literary Insults
Elizabeth Bishop on J. D. Salinger: "I HATED the Salinger story (The Catcher in the Rye). It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time,…
Kung Fu Elliot (2014)
“There is No Force More Powerful than Self-Delusion.” A bizarre, often hilarious (and increasingly disturbing!) documentary directed by Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau, Kung Fu Elliot follows the travails of…
Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986)
“Heavy metal rules! All that punk shit sucks. It belongs on fuckin' Mars, man!” Every time I watch this hilarious underground classic billed as “the wildest rock ‘n’ roll documentary…
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007)
“If you couldn’t play a video game, you were nothing.” In 1982, some of the world’s best video game players gathered in Ottumwa, Iowa – the self-proclaimed “Video Game Capital…
Films About Sideshow Performers
“Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to behold a sight so strange, so horrifying, so utterly monstrous, that I urge you who are easily frightened or upset, who suffer from nervous…
Bukowski at Bellevue (1970)
“You can do without a woman but you can’t do without a typewriter.” In the spring of 1970, Charles Bukowski gave a legendary poetry reading at Bellevue College outside Seattle,…
Andy Kaufman: I’m From Hollywood (1989)
“I wanted to bring back the old days of the carnivals.” Best known as “Latka” in the TV series Taxi, Andy Kaufman saved his most bizarre material for his life…