--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this is the Sunday Special.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: There was a time when documentaries could only be found on public television and maybe at your local art house theater. But today, if you fire up almost any streaming service, you'll find that they're chock full of documentaries. True crime documentaries, celebrity documentaries, music documentaries, poop cruise documentaries. Maybe there's just the one poop cruise documentary.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Today, we're going to talk about it all. We're talking about documentaries. And if we're talking about docs, even in this era of incredible glut, there's one gentleman we have to talk about. And that is Ken Burns. He has made more than 40 documentaries. He's done jazz, which is the first one that I saw. Baseball, the Civil War, country music, and so many other subjects. This month he's got a new one out, a six-part, 12-hour opus called the American Revolution.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Here to talk about Ken Burns and the wide, wide world of docs, I've got two of my wonderful colleagues. Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at The Times. She writes our documentary lens column about new documentaries. Hello, Alissa.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Hello.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And James Poniewozik is our chief TV critic. He needs no introduction. He has reviewed the American Revolution for us. Hello, Jim.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Good day to you, sir. Good day.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Well, let's start with the American Revolution. It's a great place to start. America started there. Why not us?
--:-- James Poniewozik: So the American Revolution is sort of what you would expect from your experience of Ken Burns, the celebrity guest voices, the sort of assembled roster of historians commenting on the historical events and their context. All the tricks he's developed to bring history to life, make it more kinetic, make it more auditory.
--:-- James Poniewozik: But it is also, you know, I would say, not just the version of the American Revolution that you learned in grade school, depending when you went to grade school. Right up front, you were sort of set at the beginning of the stirrings of revolution. From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen, not to be extinguished.
--:-- James Poniewozik: But the narrative also turns to the Iroquois Confederacy, which was a democratic governance arrangement among Native American groups that predated the American Revolution by centuries. We know our lands are now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value. But we are sensible that the land is everlasting.
--:-- James Poniewozik: So it makes clear that this is going to be a story of all the Americans. Colonists, loyalists, yes, but also Native Americans, also enslaved Americans. To that extent, I think it is a broadening of the story. And at 12 hours, he's got a lot of space to broaden the story.
--:-- James Poniewozik: I would say that it's not one of his most surprising documentaries in terms of departing from his style. But with the 250th anniversary of America's independence coming up and a lot of culture wars going on over America's history and how it's told and what people should and shouldn't say about it, there were certainly things that surprised me.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Things like one of the takeaways that I got from it was George Washington, you know, great American figure, not necessarily a great general in terms of winning a lot of battles.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Alissa, what's your relationship to the work of Mr. Ken Burns?
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: So I wasn't a big TV watcher as a kid, but I was a big PBS TV watcher as a kid. And my main memory of watching PBS as a kid is watching Ken Burns documentaries during pledge drives.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: I don't know which ones they were. Looking at the dates, I'm thinking it was possibly the Civil War or maybe the Congress. Although I think I also was watching the Shakers. I think they just used to run them during pledge drive.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Just like blurring in your mind. They're just, you know, a lot of photos being panned across and like experts and people being interviewed. So it's sort of a blur of history.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: But I assume that's sort of where I got my idea of what a documentary was in the early part of my life. And also, I was homeschooled from the sixth grade onwards, which means that, you know, that was a big part of my history understanding was this is, you know, these photographs, the experts, the firsthand accounts.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: That was really what I understood a documentary to be for a long stretch of my youth. Did you learn a lot about the three tenors from these pledge drives?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I did. From Riverdance? The three tenors. Did you learn a great deal about Plogedance?
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Yeah. You know, I don't know. I was kind of a pledge drive kid, I guess. How many tote bags does your family have?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Oh, we never donated. I just watched the pledge. I donate now. I donate now. You're giving back. You're giving back. You're giving back through your work.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Sucked all this information out of PBS and never gave anything. Look, I have so many tote bags now. You don't even know. I think we all do. Yes.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I'd love to hear more about this perception in your mind of what you thought a documentary was, what it should be, how it should feel. We're going to talk a little bit more about things that subvert that form.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: But what did young Alyssa understand a documentary to be? Yeah, I think like a lot of people, we think of documentaries as a information giving vehicle. You know, it's sort of like a visual magazine article or a visual newspaper article.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's sort of like a visual podcast is almost how I start to think about it. Exactly. Look at all this information being delivered to me. And in fact, you know, Burns often has a book.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: In fact, I think there's a book. There is. Yes, we just reviewed it at The Book Review. That's right. So there's like a book that goes with the documentary. And so they're kind of, they go hand in hand in their information delivery vehicles.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And a lot of us, I think, get that idea because we then, when we're kids, we watch those documentaries in our history classes. Yeah. When our teachers just can't deal with us anymore or for whatever reason, right?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: But it's a good way to learn about history. Certainly, we get the visual images and the ideas. And we get these history clips also from, you know, to understand what did the civil rights movement look like?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's more exciting than just reading about it in a book. I remember the feel of, you know, being in a wave and being part of something bigger than yourself. And that's a very great feeling.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Jim, what would you say the reputation of Ken Burns is or the perception? And do you think that reputation or perception is earned? Or do his documentaries sort of subvert this very basic idea of what Ken Burns is?
--:-- James Poniewozik: Well, I was not always early in my TV critic career and even before then a huge Ken Burns fan. I think I had the perception that maybe a lot of people have that his stuff was very earnest and worthy, but very sort of middle of the road, that it was making it eloquent, well-produced case for things that people already agree on, right?
--:-- James Poniewozik: Like war is hell, you know. Jazz is good. Yes, exactly. You know, we love baseball. You know, and there is that, you know, there is a reason that this sort of thing is broadly appealing and, you know, is pledge drive gold.
--:-- James Poniewozik: But I've also come to see what he does as kind of more pointed and radical over the years than I initially perceived it being, which I think partly is my just growing up and seeing more in it and partly is maybe a change in the times.
--:-- James Poniewozik: What he is trying to do is sort of create a canon of American history. You know, whatever we think about the present, we agree, you know, this stuff happened in the past and it happened for, you know, probably these reasons.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And this is, this is where we came from. And that, that is, you know, that it's gotten increasingly contentious, uh, over times. I also think that a lot of his documentaries, they're really about more than the subject.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And to me, this is the thing that I, I come to documentaries for. Like, you know, I, I'm not just trying to get like a Wikipedia download of information. I want there to be a take, an idea.
--:-- James Poniewozik: His National Parks documentary, I remember writing about when it came out somewhere, it was like around the beginning of the Obama administration. And I think each American can look into their own hearts and tell you, this is my national park.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And it might be the great... You know, and the idea was like, you know, the national parks were like America's greatest idea and we preserve this land. And, you know, but it was also about an idea that was very much currently being debated at the time, which is, do we need government to do things collectively that the private sector is never going to do?
--:-- James Poniewozik: You know, and it doesn't come out and say that, but it is engaging with ideas. All this stuff is engaging with ideas that are, you know, current and timeless.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Alyssa, what's your relationship to the work of Mr. Ken Burns?
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: So I wasn't a big TV watcher as a kid, but I was a big PBS TV watcher as a kid. And my main memory of watching PBS as a kid is watching Ken Burns documentaries during pledge drives.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: I don't know which ones they were. Looking at the dates, I'm thinking it was possibly the Civil War or maybe the Congress. Although I think I also was watching the Shakers. I think they just used to run them during pledge drive.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Just like blurring in your mind. They're just, you know, a lot of photos being panned across and like experts and people being interviewed. So it's sort of a blur of history.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: But I assume that's sort of where I got my idea of what a documentary was in the early part of my life. And also, I was homeschooled from the sixth grade onwards, which means that, you know, that was a big part of my history understanding was this is, you know, these photographs, the experts, the firsthand accounts.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: That was really what I understood a documentary to be for a long stretch of my youth. Did you learn a lot about the three tenors from these pledge drives?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I did. From Riverdance? The three tenors. Did you learn a great deal about Plogedance?
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Yeah. You know, I don't know. I was kind of a pledge drive kid, I guess. How many tote bags does your family have?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Oh, we never donated. I just watched the pledge. I donate now. I donate now. You're giving back. You're giving back. You're giving back through your work.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Sucked all this information out of PBS and never gave anything. Look, I have so many tote bags now. You don't even know. I think we all do. Yes.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I'd love to hear more about this perception in your mind of what you thought a documentary was, what it should be, how it should feel. We're going to talk a little bit more about things that subvert that form.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: But what did young Alyssa understand a documentary to be? Yeah, I think like a lot of people, we think of documentaries as a information giving vehicle. You know, it's sort of like a visual magazine article or a visual newspaper article.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's sort of like a visual podcast is almost how I start to think about it. Exactly. Look at all this information being delivered to me. And in fact, you know, Burns often has a book.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: In fact, I think there's a book. There is. Yes, we just reviewed it at The Book Review. That's right. So there's like a book that goes with the documentary. And so they're kind of, they go hand in hand in their information delivery vehicles.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And a lot of us, I think, get that idea because we then, when we're kids, we watch those documentaries in our history classes. Yeah. When our teachers just can't deal with us anymore or for whatever reason, right?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: But it's a good way to learn about history. Certainly, we get the visual images and the ideas. And we get these history clips also from, you know, to understand what did the civil rights movement look like?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's more exciting than just reading about it in a book. I remember the feel of, you know, being in a wave and being part of something bigger than yourself. And that's a very great feeling.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Jim, what would you say the reputation of Ken Burns is or the perception? And do you think that reputation or perception is earned? Or do his documentaries sort of subvert this very basic idea of what Ken Burns is?
--:-- James Poniewozik: Well, I was not always early in my TV critic career and even before then a huge Ken Burns fan. I think I had the perception that maybe a lot of people have that his stuff was very earnest and worthy, but very sort of middle of the road, that it was making it eloquent, well-produced case for things that people already agree on, right?
--:-- James Poniewozik: Like war is hell, you know. Jazz is good. Yes, exactly. You know, we love baseball. You know, and there is that, you know, there is a reason that this sort of thing is broadly appealing and, you know, is pledge drive gold.
--:-- James Poniewozik: But I've also come to see what he does as kind of more pointed and radical over the years than I initially perceived it being, which I think partly is my just growing up and seeing more in it and partly is maybe a change in the times.
--:-- James Poniewozik: What he is trying to do is sort of create a canon of American history. You know, whatever we think about the present, we agree, you know, this stuff happened in the past and it happened for, you know, probably these reasons.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And this is, this is where we came from. And that, that is, you know, that it's gotten increasingly contentious, uh, over times. I also think that a lot of his documentaries, they're really about more than the subject.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And to me, this is the thing that I, I come to documentaries for. Like, you know, I, I'm not just trying to get like a Wikipedia download of information. I want there to be a take, an idea.
--:-- James Poniewozik: His National Parks documentary, I remember writing about when it came out somewhere, it was like around the beginning of the Obama administration. And I think each American can look into their own hearts and tell you, this is my national park.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And it might be the great... You know, and the idea was like, you know, the national parks were like America's greatest idea and we preserve this land. And, you know, but it was also about an idea that was very much currently being debated at the time, which is, do we need government to do things collectively that the private sector is never going to do?
--:-- James Poniewozik: You know, and it doesn't come out and say that, but it is engaging with ideas. All this stuff is engaging with ideas that are, you know, current and timeless.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Alyssa, what do you think about the explosion in documentaries and how it's changed the way we consume them?
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: Yeah, I mean, I write about at least a documentary a week for the paper, and I see more than that. I go to a lot of documentary festivals and try to see as many as I can.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: There's one happening right now in New York. There is one happening right now in New York, Doc NYC, and there's a bunch more around the country all year long.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: And it's, you know, it's really interesting because there's been a lot of ebbs and flows even over the last 10 years. Documentaries are really affected by where the money is.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: I mean that true of films generally but because there not kind of the same star power it often driven by you know where the platforms are what the stories are that are being told.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: And right now, the industry is really struggling. There's not a lot of money for documentaries unless they fall into a couple of different categories, one of which is cults, one of which is true crimes.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: One is sort of the reputation burnishing celebrity marketing documentary where the celebrity is the executive producer of the documentary. And those are the kinds of films that get made.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: And then a lot of other filmmakers want to make other kinds of films. They want to tell other kinds of stories. One thing about really, I would call, quote unquote, important documentaries, the ones that are telling stories that can actually change things in the world, they take a lot of time.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: I wrote about one documentary recently called The Alabama Solution that uses footage shot by prisoners inside the Alabama prison system.
--:-- Alissa Wilkinson: The Alabama Department of Correction, the ADOC, they don't want the bug, they concede. You know, you can't just walk in and shoot that in two weeks. You have to have years of footage.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Let's talk about documentary subgenres, what's getting made a lot right now. As you mentioned, you cannot talk about documentaries without talking about true crime.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I was TV editor here at The Times in 2015 when it feels like a lot of this really started to pop. The beginning of that year, you had HBO's The Jinx.
--:-- James Poniewozik: What were the divers for? Obviously, they're looking for body parts, looking for something that can be used as evidence.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And then at the end of 2015, Netflix's Making a Murderer came out.
--:-- James Poniewozik: If the county did something or whatever and trying to plant evidence on me or something, I don't know.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And that seemed to sort of spark something or set something off.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Jim, do you have to deal with true crime sort of material as a TV critic here? I mean, to some extent, there's just so much television now that there has to be a bar for me to pay attention to it.
--:-- James Poniewozik: I was thinking about the question, you know, am I into true crime documentary? And I feel that's like saying, you know, do I like cop shows?
--:-- James Poniewozik: You know, well, I like The Wire. You know, I like Happy Valley. Like, I like something that has a voice and ideas and is, you know, saying something beyond what happened or just like, you know, look at these people.
--:-- James Poniewozik: And there is certainly true crime that's thoughtful and does that. The yogurt shop murders earlier this summer on HBO.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I don't know this one. How scary is that?
--:-- James Poniewozik: I don't know that the city of Austin has ever been the same since the yogurt shop murders. I mean, that was a loss of innocence for this town for sure.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: You wouldn't think it would be thoughtful from the name, but it actually was a, yeah. It was really less about giving you the lurid details behind a crime, and it was much more about how our society reacts to shocking crimes and, you know, very much in a meta way about the same impulse that drives the godzillion true crime documentaries, podcasts, etc., that we see out there now.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: That's interesting to me. That's an idea. That's something I can do something with.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Right. It's interesting that true crime has gone so far down the path that there's actually a bunch of projects this year that including that one that have like kind of come back around and are commenting on it.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Like The Perfect Neighbor is one of the highest or most watched movies on Netflix. That one is kind of a comment on true crime in addition to being a true crime documentary.
--:-- James Poniewozik: Um there's an upcoming film called the zodiac killer project that's sort of a satirical film about how I would have made the zodiac killer true crime movie if I could have.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Okay film predators is also about the to catch a predator show and then um there was another HBO show a couple years ago, Mind Over Murder, which was also kind of an unpacking of the genre.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: So it's sort of like we know the tropes of true crime so well that we can watch shows about true crime and understand what they are because we know what they are.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, there's been a true crime boom in documentary filmmaking, certainly in podcasts. But if we go back even farther than that, it feels like there's a giant category that we all have watched.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Maybe we watched with our family members over the holidays, but we never really talk about, which is the nature documentary.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: If there's something that maybe is more sort of anodyne than a history documentary, it's a nature documentary. But now we have reached the stage where we have the sickest cameras ever invented and you could just go places you never were able to go to before.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Yeah, and probably like, certainly for me, like my first experience of documentary was that, you know, we get to watch a movie day in school. And, you know, there would be something where, I don't know, like an otter is trying to escape from a wolf and it has a voice.
--:-- James Poniewozik: You know, those like, you know, early like Disney-type documentaries.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I will admit, in the right mood to being a sucker for this sort of thing, like the technology and just the ability to capture rare moments is stunning nowadays.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And also, and I don't mean this disparagingly, like, they can be sort of screensavory for me in the best way. And voyeuristic, too. It's like, I could never watch this otherwise.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Yeah, see, can one be voyeuristic toward, like, penguins? I guess you can. Yeah, totally. They deserve their prize. They can be moult before going to sea to fatten up for courtship.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Others are already courting, parading back and forth with a special ritualized walk. I mean, the thing that I find funny is that there are so many iterations in a lot of these series and productions that it becomes like a challenge of classification.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's sort of, you know, this one is organized by continent. This one's going to be by biosphere. This one's going to be by, you know. This is about the forest. This is about the ocean.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: You can't just say, you know, a bunch of cool nature crap, volume 50. There needs to be some sort of taxonomic principle that says this is a different. But we all know we just want to watch a bunch of cool nature crap.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Another big category, and I say this as someone who is not a person who watches sports generally, but is the sports documentary. You know, the 30 for 30 series, which was the ESPN series, feels like one of the big touchstones of TV documentaries over the past decade plus.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I distinctly remember the officials threatening to throw a flag on us if we did not shake your opponent's hand. Some of the language that was said there, the coin toss, it was just not right. Tillman to make the toss as the visitor.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: You have all of those, and then you sort of peak the first year of the pandemic with The Last Dance. Yes. Michael Jordan's the only player that could ever turn it on and off, and he never freaking turn it off.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It was a very odd experience. Maybe the both of you remember this. March 2020 was Tiger King, a genuine sensation on Netflix. And then the month later, The Last Dance premiered.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Yeah. And it felt like documentaries sort of ruled those first few months, for me at least, of the pandemic. Yeah. And those two could not be more different as watching experiences. Absolutely.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Even though it was very, watching Michael Jordan just kind of sit there in The Last Dance and talk was almost an uncanny experience for me. I remember watching those games. Oh, yeah. Totally. Not a sports guy at all, but, you know, in the 90s, you could not not know about the Chicago Bulls.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And, you know, it's kind of, you know, is it partly that this is one of our few remaining areas of mass culture, you know, thing that all kinds of people know about? Yes. Well, also, I have, as a not a huge sports person myself, but the raw material of sports is so cool to see how documentarians shape it into different kinds of stories.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: During, I think, the last Olympics, I went on the Criterion channel and realized they had the full collection of all of the Olympic documentaries. Incredible. And some of them are made by some of the greatest documentarians of their time.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I mean, I very much recommend watching them. And you get to see them grappling with, like, actually the moment and what the Olympics are supposed to say at that moment. Sort of the message of the Olympics at that moment, which gets pretty dark in some moments of the Olympics.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: You know, especially right around World War II in particular. V for victory. Victory not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, but in sportsmanship and in peace.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I wrote recently, I think last year actually, about a movie called Copa 71, which pulled footage from this World Cup event. That's a massive stadium. It's a men's football match. Where a women's soccer tournament took place. It's women's football. What?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And it was sort of like the footage was buried because they were so mad that this event had taken place and nobody knew it had happened. And so it was brought back out and made into this documentary. Why didn't they know about this?
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: So you see like all these interesting types of stories, political stories or like stories about gender, stories about the potential of the human spirit or also the sort of dark side of that, able to be told out of the raw material of sports.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I really, I think that's part of why they make for such interesting documentaries. Yeah, I know that this had its critics, but I remember, and this is more series than the sort of thing that you're talking about, but I was very captivated by Cheer when that was on Netflix a few years back.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I just didn't have a heart. I just didn't care about anything or anyone. And without Cheerleading, I would have not made it. It would have been over for me.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: In the same way, well, why do I like watching Friday Night Lights? You know, it's because it's about people and wanting things and, you know, a certain culture. And it's about, you know, what people will do to get the things that they want.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Last Chance You, I also felt the same way. A great show about just, you know, what will you do to get to where you need to be when you have no other options.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I sit in the bed and I think, like, okay, I'm playing football for him, but I'm also missing him growing up. But if I get to the NFL, I'll be able to give him whatever he wants, whatever he asks for.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: All right, we've talked about a lot. I think it's time for a break, and when we come back, we are going to have some very hearty recommendations for documentaries that our listeners might enjoy.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Okay, Jim and Alissa, I'm going to ask you two to recommend some documentaries, both new and old, that you think listeners should watch.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Jim, let's start with you. A show I really loved from earlier this year was Pee Wee as Himself.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Hi, kids! Guess what? What? I having a party and you invited Yeah This was a film about Paul Rubin slash Pee Wee Herman the late great children performer and artist who cooperated with the movie and didn't.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Did you hear that? I don't hear it. Yeah. You would see. You would see. You see? He's interviewed for it, gave access to much of his materials. Also, throughout the documentary and his interviews, is very ambivalent about the idea of how much he wants to reveal about himself and how much control he can have and cannot have.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Go ahead. I'm ready. I'm ready. You had conceived of a whole arsenal of fully developed characters before Pee Wee, right? Had I? It ends up being, to me, not just a fascinating portrait of an artist who I just think can't be rated highly enough in pop culture, but also about the effects of creating and living under a persona.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And very much about the documentary process itself and what it can tell you and what it can't tell you. I kept who I was a secret for a really long time. And that served me very well as I wanted it to. And then it didn't.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: That is a great recommendation. I've wanted to watch that for a while. I was going to watch it this weekend. I didn't get to it. You can find it on HBO Max or Max Plus or whatever they call themselves now.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Whatever they are by the time this airs. Alyssa, give us one. Um, I'm going to start with a documentary from last year called The Remarkable Life of Ebelin.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Our deepest sorrow lay in the fact that he would never experience friendships. Love. This is a good example of how documentaries can be totally unlike anything that you think a documentary can be.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: So it's about a young man who had a degenerative disease and passed away when he was in his early 20s. And after he died, his parents went into his blog to post something about his passing and started getting emails from all these people.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: He was an incurable romantic. They kept talking about how their son had meant so much to them and how, you know, how he had changed their lives. And they didn't understand because their son had been literally confined to a wheelchair and hadn't left the house in years and years.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: He would listen and like remembering back then that he was there for me. And I could also talk to him about the stupid things. And come to find out he had been part of this guild on World of Warcraft.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Oh, I've heard about this one. Yeah. And so they went in and got hundreds of thousands of pages of logs from World of Warcraft, which keeps the chat logs, and got animators and recreated basically all of these scenarios.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And then he just wrote back, this is too emotional for me. And I was like, well, you need to be emotional as well from time to time. Then you know you have met it to people. I mean, it sounds corny when I say that, but it is the most amazing documentary that I saw, I think, last year entirely.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: So I highly, highly recommend it, not just for, you know, seeing what a documentary can be, but also because it's incredibly moving about how we connect with one another.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's just it's really quite moving. So The Remarkable Life of Ebelin, I-B-E-L-I-N. It's streaming on Netflix.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Jim, let's go back to you. Yeah, so you may not have heard it, but Saturday Night Live had a 50th anniversary recently.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Are you kidding? Why didn't they say anything about that? That was this year? Well, it was this year. Or was it last year? And last year. SNL semi-quincentennial. SNL loves having a birthday and it celebrates it for like five years.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And the one good thing to come out of this one was a film, and make sure I get this right, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Ladies and gentlemen. Saturday. New York. Jolt of electricity. Iconic. Musical history. They turned over SNL's, you know, entire library of musical guests to Questlove.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And now here's Prince. I was there when Prince came on the very first time. And he only got one song. He sang Party Up. He is an excellent documentarian and musician, obviously.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And his filmmaking is so musical. It's just, it's percussive. It's, you know, he knows just when to cut. I remember at the end he sang it. I'm not gonna fight no more. Threw his mic down and walked off the stage. Gonna have to fight on damn wall Cause we don't wanna fight no more
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Alyssa, give us one more. Well, then the one I want to talk about is Look Into My Eyes, also from last year, directed by Lana Wilson.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Grandma Sia. That doesn't surprise me. Okay. Because she's like, party and pulling up a chair. She's like, okay, so let's have a discussion. She's like, let's chat.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: It's about psychics, sort of. Okay. So Lana reached out to seven different psychics in New York City and asked if she could film readings that they conducted with clients.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And so you basically are in the room with them as they're conducting readings and you're watching them. I feel like your birth mother still thinks about you but it's like and the movie is not there to credit or discredit them you're just there.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And then uh in the course of the movie they talk to her about what they think is going on kind of fall back to is i really feel like i have this presence and this energy and this spirit with me. And I hope that I'm channeling something outside of me.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And one of them's a pet psychic. Like the first month, I diagnosed a UTI in a cat. It's a movie putting you in the room, and it's just asking you to say what's happening, or maybe not ask what's happening, but just to be there.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: And not that I thought I could really do this either, but I was hearing such great feedback and it was a way I thought out of my situation which it was and I don it is not a movie that really gives you any preconceptions about what happening um and that so hard to find in the documentary world I think that we normally walk into a documentary with a lot of like this is the angle um it's just very open-ended it's very emotionally intimate it's actually quite beautiful.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: So yeah, 824 actually released it and it's streaming, I believe, on HBO Max as well.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: As someone who's lived in New York for a while and has walked by many a storefront psychic, that actually sounds pretty fascinating. And I think I want to check it out at some point.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: I want to toss a recommendation out of my own, if that's okay here. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, which is weird again, because I'm not a sports guy, but it is a documentary from 1996 called When We Were Kings.
--:-- Gilbert Cruz: Oh, yeah. Fast! Last night I cut the light off in my bedroom, hit the switch, was in the bed
