Yours truly is now officially a full-fledged, bonafide, card-carrying (Vaccine card) member of WPIX-TV, or as we've called it in New York for more than 50 years, PIX 11's Documentary Club, a/k/a Watch With Dan, for its moderator, Daniel Mannanino, who also anchors the 7,8,9, and 10 AM hours of the PIX 11 Morning News. (Watch it on pix11.com, the PIX 11 News app, or, in the New York-New Jersey area on Hulu or YouTube TV.) I don't know how long it's going to last, because many are starting to return to work, but it's a fairly simple idea: Watch one (or both) of two documentary films chosen by Dan and his producer Katie Meyers, follow the special Zoom link, and get ready to talk about the pros and cons of the docs you have seen. I know what you're thinking, "It's one of those glorified contests,right?!?" Friends, the biggest prizes you can win from this club are knowledge of topics of which you may, or may not, have been aware, the courage to defend your beliefs before a group of friends, and, quite possibly, friendships that will last long after the world gets all the way back to normal.
The first two documentaries chosen by PIX 11 that I have seen are SUMMER OF SOUL OR, HOW THE REVOLUTION NEARLY WASN'T TELEVISED (Hulu) and WOODSTOCK 99: PEACE, LOVE AND RAGE (HBO Max). SUMMER OF SOUL is about an event I never heard about until I saw the first trailer, the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969. Like many kids of the era, I got my Top 40 music and the top stories about the artist in those pre-MTV days, from mainstream AM radio stations like 77 WABC, 57 WMCA, or the pre-Imus iteration (Google the I Man!) of 66 WNBC (now WFAN) , and neither the jocks nor the newsmen at the top and bottom of the hour said anything about the Harlem Cultural Festival which occurred the same weekend in 1969 as the original Woodstock Music Fair. Both mainstream artists such as the Fifth Dimension (who felt they had to do this festival to convince their African American brothers and sisters they weren't white), Stevie Wonder, and Nina Simone and countercultural figures such as Gil Scott-Heron were represented, and the festival secured a corporate sponsorship from Maxwell House Coffee, but none of the local television stations in the New York market , the largest and most demanding in the country, would carry it, and the original film had been stuck in a basement for 50 years, until it was unearthed by Amir (Questlove) Thompson, better known as the bandleader for THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON, who assembled a very entertaining, enriching, portrait of a unique time in American cultural history. Get ready to enjoy this beautiful film, but also know there are a lot of similarities between Black America of 1969 and the Black America of today, such as the glaring inequality, unemployment, and prejudice. Of the two docs, SUMMER OF SOUL is the most musical and, well, most soulful.
By contrast, WOODSTOCK 99 is more reminiscent of a good magazine article, examining developments both positive and negative without fear or favor. The original Woodstock 99 music festival, held on an Air Force base in Rome, NY, was intended to replicate the magic and joie de vivre of its pioneering namesake thirty years prior, but it drowned in a sea of violence, vandalism, sexism, misogyny, and all-around poor planning and production. Who are the villains of this piece, the promoters of the original 69 festival and its 94 follow-up, the kids who stole money from the ATMs, took Limp Biskit leader Fred Durst's call to "Break Stuff" literally and thought it was OK to use the N-word because rapper DMX had, or MTV, once the iconoclastic pioneering music television network, now a shameless promoter, using every opportunity to milk this train wreck, which, in the eyes of this reviewer, laid the cornerstone for the insurrection of January 6th? (The viewer may note graffiti that dropped the F-bomb on MTV and one of the concertgoers who also dropped it on one of the cameras that just HAPPENED to be there. He should have read the legally-required sign giving MTV the right to use voices and likenesses of concert attendants during live concerts as well as for promotional purposes.) I leave it for the reader to decide, but I WILL say that Jewel, Alanis Morrisette, the Backstreet Boys, and Rage Against The Machine also turn in memorable performances. Of note is Latina comic Rosie Perez responding to a bunch of male chauvinist pigs, and that's all I'm gonna say about THAT.
Some people may opine that the documentary died with David L. Wolper and Edward R. Murrow, but if these excellent productions, and the interest that has sprung up since the pandemic, the genre is very much alive and well, and these two are definitely worth a look, and listen. (Also of note, and on HBO Max, SMALLTOWN NEWS, the real-life story of an actual TV station, but still, it's great for fans of WKRP, MARY TYLER MOORE, NEWSRADIO, and even WAYNE'S WORLD.)
Steve out!
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