Documentaries

I like Wesley in small doses on podcasts. He’s a very smart guy but he is way too hyper in the podcast format.

 

Without getting too deep into it, I've seen lawyers recently try to micromanage a source list for a proposed documentary.

 

I watched "Becoming Katharine Graham" last week on Prime Video, and really liked it. I can recommend it for anyone interested.

Graham, of course, was publisher of the The Washington Post for nearly 30 years, from 1963-1991, one of the few women to hold such a position, particularly then, and particularly at such a major newspaper. While she supported women's rights and advancement in principle, she couldn't rightly be called an activist for them. She simply ended up in her position as result of her family connections and the trajectory of her life, and went on from there. She also wrote a Pulitzer prize-winning autobiography, "Personal History."

But before that, she had stood firm and supportive of her paper and its editors and reporters through Watergate, when she, and the paper, were harassed and threatened as a result of its coverage of President Nixon and the White House. But she had already earned the respect of the people at The Post long before then.

The biographical documentary was interesting in that there were definitely echoes of battles between a U.S. President and the media in general, and the Post, in particular, that were depicted. It was amazing how much Nixon, at the time of Watergate, sounded a lot like how Trump does now -- same condescending air, same angry perspective, same snarling comments, and the same type of responses to conflict with the media.

I had initially wanted to watch the movie because I wondered about Graham's handling of The Post, as compared to the way Jeff Bezos is doing things there now. Suffice to say, there was a big difference.

 

I'm two-thirds of the way through the Ashley Madison doc on Netflix.

It's pretty interesting. And I want to kick the ever-loving shit out of the Christian Vlogger with the gorgeous, seemingly very devoted wife and beautiful children who couldn't help himself from getting some side-pieces and lying about it every step of the way.

 

Been enjoying the series on the Celtics' history on Max, even touching on some of the blemishes, including Boston's racial unrest and Bill Russell's eventual separation from the city following his player/coach years.

Glad to see Jaylen Brown taking on such a leadership role for the team and the city, much in the same vein of Russell. This for the same guy who had a high school teacher say "she will look me up in the Cobb County jail in 5 years."

An additional aside: Jaylen was the subject of one of my favorite page designs. The state championship game -- and intra-county matchup against Pebblebrook High -- came down to Jaylen drawing a foul with less than a second to go and draining the winning free throw. Our photographer snapped a brilliant horizontal picture of the exact moment the ball swished the net, with everybody's eyes focused on the hoop. This picture was better than any of the requisite championship trophy or team photos, but it needed so much space for being so wide, I had to improvise.

Damn, I had a crick in my neck that night.

 

A FELLOW MDJ ALUM!

 

I've been waffling on the Celtics doc, just because there's been so much done on them previously. Good to hear a positive view. I'll probably dive into that soon.

 

They've put out two episodes so far (looks like they drop on Mondays), going through the end of the 1960s heyday.

There is a a good amount made up from archival interviews from those who have passed (Russell, Auerbach, Heinsohn, Havlicek -- not sure if the Jerry West clips were before or after he passed), but there are a lot of fresh clips from the current stars, as well as Cousy, Satch Sanders and the daughters of Russell, Auerbach and KC Jones.

I will be looking forward to them getting to the team's 1980s rebirth, just to see the contrast between this doc and the dramatized "Winning Time" portrayal.

 

Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party.

It’s a Cameron Crowe directed documentary on the band that aired just once, in 1983, on MTV.

Kind of like finding old home movies of the band. Lots of full song performances. Some clips from interviews have popped up in other Tom Petty stuff, but most of the stuff seems pretty deep in the vault.

Lots of stuff from 1979-82 when Petty and the Heartbreakers hit huge and were fighting record companies for control. Really interesting period in the rock history.

 

If I'm remembering correctly, that had a beach rooftop performance of one of my favorite Petty deep tracks: "Dogs On the Run".

A while back on the Petty channel on Sirius, I randomly stumbled across a 40th anniversary retrospective on Beach Party that was an interesting listen.

 

That’s good stuff.

Along with the documentary (on Paramount+) there’s also outtakes and a new retrospective with Crowe and Petty’s daughter.