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By DP30 david@thehotbuttonl.com

DP/30 @ SIFF ’12: The Savoy King: Chick Webb & the Music That Changed America, documentarian Jeffrey Kaufman

FYI: The history of Mr. Kaufman goes through Pauline Kael’s house, if you’re interested.

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2 Responses to “DP/30 @ SIFF ’12: The Savoy King: Chick Webb & the Music That Changed America, documentarian Jeffrey Kaufman”

  1. Terry says:

    Sorry, but Penelope Gilliatt did not sit in her office scowling at anybody at the New Yorker. Kael went behind her back constantly, trashing her to William Shawn in an effort to get her job and salary. Gilliatt returned Kael’s evil with pure class, even writing her a letter of support after Renata Adler decimated Kael’s reputation in the New York Review of Books. Kael’s hyperbolic writing is losing its once-high reputation, whereas Gilliatt’s brilliant, probative, utterly unbiased criticism. Kael couldn’t handle intellectual films, and was embarrassingly exposed in her reviews of Bergman, Fassbinder, and on and on. Her subject biases, combined with her personal biases towards the films of her friends, is among the reasons her criticism has diminished, whereas Gilliatt’s work is viewed on an ever-higher plane. Kael wanted to write short stories, novels, screenplays, etc., but she had no talent for them. Gilliatt was an acknowledged master of the short story, a brilliant novelist, a brilliant screenwriter, opera librettist, film and theatre critic, documentary script writer. Kael was jealous and treated Gilliatt in an infamous manner that speaks to Kael’s pure narcicism. Her conduct towards other critics was disgraceful and her work in in decline. People now actually laugh at Kael’s hyperbole. Gilliatt’s work, across an astonishing range of forms, will survive.

  2. Fran Morris says:

    We were lucky enough to see Jeff Kaufman’s documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival – lucky to grab a seat, the theater was packed. Everyone enjoyed the film, a great story about a great man – and of course, some of the best music ever. Jeff did a fine job of capturing the essence of Chick Webb’s life and legacy. We were very impressed at the actors doing the voices – Jeff managed to get Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson and Tyne Daly, among a lot of other wonderful folks. Highly recommended film.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
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“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon