DVD Review: Rona Barrett's Hollywood: Nothing But the Truth (2008)

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From Infinity Entertainment
2/10/09

One Dollar from Every DVD Sold Goes to
The Rona Barrett Foundation for
Helping the Elderly Poor

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Working in the entertainment news industry for more than thirty years, veteran daily broadcaster and celebrity interviewer Rona Barrett is indeed as Infinity Entertainment Group notes, "a true pioneer and innovator." Leaving behind the overly formal television studio styled interviews we see on most broadcast and cable network shows that puts celebrity guests in the hot seat, Barrett's approach was simple, genuine, empathetic and direct.

With, as she admits, a true interest in "what makes people tick" and a commitment to "never ask a question I couldn't answer myself," (should she ever be in the interviewees' shoes), she was the first to "conceive the 'coffee klatch' style now embraced by other top journalists," as celebrities opened their doors and lives up to Rona and chatted with her as though "they were with an old friend."

There's an old quote that unfortunately after an hour of digging I cannot locate to reference directly so forgive my paraphrasing and it states that if one is fortunate enough for whatever reason to live an extraordinary life, one has no business keeping that to themselve. And so it is to our great pleasure that Ms. Barrett, who introduces the first in her series of interview DVDs serves up snippets of eleven of her most memorable interviews from stars ranging from John Wayne to Carol Burnett.

Having been acquainted with Cher since she was just a kid-- roughly around the time she was to marry Sonny Bono at age 16-- Rona visits the successful singer at home with the two relaxing on her large bed as though they were sisters as Cher candidly opens up about her recent divorce from Bono and new relationship with Greg Allman (who would become her second husband).

Confessing that she knew from an early age that she didn't want to continue life as a poor young woman who felt ugly as the only non-blonde in a family of blondes, Cher reveals the way she practiced signing autographs at age twelve and the frank discussions she had with both her mother and Bono that although she may not be the prettiest or the most talented, there was something unique about her. Admitting that her whole life revolved around Bono who waited months to even hold her hand, Cher is refreshingly able to speak lovingly about her ex whom she felt had become like family in sharing that she would always love him.

Just one of the singers and famous women Barrett includes on the disc as there's another interview of a similar vein with Priscilla Presley-- whose marriage to Elvis, Barrett had been the first one to break. Catching up with Presley now a little over a year following his death as a poised Presley recalls both the great times and the hard times of living with the King whose happiness was of the utmost importance to her. She shares that Elvis Presley's ease and genuine love for people will be the one thing that their daughter Lisa Marie would inherit, following his shocking passing.

Perhaps the most articulate singer Barrett interviews on the disc is the remarkably intelligent Donna Summer-- always underrated in my opinion-- who discusses the impact that such a frankly sexual hit like "Love to Love You Baby," had on the otherwise shy, comedy prone, and devoutly religious young woman so that she wasn't sure she wanted to leave the house for awhile. Ultimately looking back and noting that, "I'm a coat of many colors, you're just seeing one stripe," as the quintessentially graceful response to those who pigeonhole her as simply a sexy diva-- Summer shares her dedication to her craft and the way that in the end, she feels that to work in show business requires a sense of masochism, especially in the music industry where love and hate flow side by side as it beats you one week and you beat it the next.

Another woman who always fell prey to that double-edged sword-- Ms. Raquel Welch shares the similar way that her looks were used to define her range as a performer and while she freely admits that even at age seven she realized she received attention just walking around in ballet toe shoes due to her beauty and later used that to her advantage, she was relishing with Barrett in the opportunity to show the real side of herself that few people know.

Perhaps the most gripping portion of the disc contains a segment with Carol Burnett that quickly had me in tears in this 1976 interview in which Barrett asks her about her horrific tragedy prone life growing up as the child of two alcoholics. With the utmost of clarity and bravery, she recalls the bold decision she made as a young woman barely scraping by in New York to return home and take over as guardian of her twelve year old sister. Absolutely devastating yet extraordinarily courageous-- Burnett proves to be yet another one of those comedians who turned to laughter out of misery in order to mask a pain so deep that no one would be able to decipher it on the surface.

While Burnett safely reveals her history with Barrett, it's interesting to take a look at two interviews with Robin Williams just a few months apart before and after the start of the astronomical success of Mork and Mindy as he is unable to sit still, taking on voices and jumping topics throughout as Mork in the first one and then becoming a bit more composed in the second, speaking to her as Robin.

Noting another performer who changed in a short period-- Barrett offers a significant interview with John Travolta, just following the burial of his mother which finds him matured incredibly over the year following the success of Saturday Night Fever where he reveals that he felt his greatest ambition and goal was to continue to inspire others such as helping breaking gender stereotypical boundaries to encourage men to dance (via Fever, Grease and many others). Moreover, Travolta states that the ultimate legacy to which he aspires to leave would be to add positive inspiration to a life that is filled with so much negativity, in a way that makes contemporary viewers feel especially heartbroken realizing the tragic loss of his son Jett.

In two other interviews that break free of traditional gender stereotypes, fans who may have shortchanged Burt Reynolds as simply a car driving sex symbol and former stuntman get an intimate look at the man. Within moments, he shares his insecurities about his appearance (including one politically incorrect ethnic description), hints at the wound left by the press over his relationship with his best friend and former lover, the older "America's sweetheart" Dinah Shore, and mentions his desire to remain a bachelor but adopt a child so that he can become a father.

Much like Richard Dreyfuss, who is also interviewed, Reynolds rejects the notion that there's something wrong for men to remain bachelors although in Dreyfuss' case, it seems to have been a decision made at a young age as he shared in 1981 that he'd been openly opposed to marriage his entire life. While he doesn't like loneliness, he also confesses that although he doesn't believe he could be involved with just one person, he refutes any immature playboy labels by candidly revealing that sex is just extremely unimportant to him and that he's almost always embarrassingly been less interested in the act itself rather than foreplay (which he considers himself far more into as a "foreplay junkie").

Although Barrett's summation following each interview which she introduces and segues from into the next piece revealed that Dreyfuss has not only been married three times since that interview but also had three children, she also commends his willingness to open up about his history with drugs and bipolar disorder as promoting honesty and awareness about those extremely important issues.

However, it's the second interview included on the disc-- Barrett's final interview with John Wayne-- which is a bittersweet treat for fans as we see him just out of the hospital in one of his last public appearances before his death from cancer. Understandably sure that he would cancel and want his rest and privacy, Barrett fondly recalls the way that she heard The Duke in the background yell, "Tell Rona to come on down."

Sharing an easy rapport with a man she considers one of her favorite people of all time, courageously Barrett gives Wayne the opportunity to impart any wishes or second thoughts, asking him about regrets or if he'd do anything differently if he had the chance and while he said there were times he admits he lost his temper or said some things he probably shouldn't have, in the end, he would do it the same way all over again.

Clocking in at only a nice ninety minute running time with a bonus feature entitled Rona's Story-- it's fascinating material and while some interviews (including Carol Burnett's) seem much more compelling than others (Raquel Welch's) and we longed for more, despite the loads of tissues I was grabbing for during the Burnett segment, luckily it's been stated that this is the first in a series of DVDs Ms. Barrett is releasing.

An important piece of twentieth century American history containing some great insights into the way our society and gender roles evolved over the years, these are much more than the type of Access Hollywood tabloid style interviews we see today or low-class gossip pieces about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or Britney Spears.

A reminder that television interviewing is an art form and that one must be empathetic, nonjudgmental and willing to ask the tough questions in the right way-- it's an important documentary for those in what has sadly become our paparazzi styled celebrity news industry and a wonderful addition for pop culture fans wanting to know the humans behind the personas. However, perhaps the best surprise is that one dollar of each DVD Sold goes to help elderly citizens without the economic resources the chance to go into assisted living through The Rona Barrett Foundation.

W. (2008)

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"We were not out to demean or hurt the man. That is not the right motivation for me to direct. Too much time is involved. Who needs a negative mindset? We let the man speak it in his own words. We set out to show his reasoning for the Iraq War as a function of who he is, his personal history. The hope is when you can walk out of the movie, you say, 'I understand that guy. I may not agree or like the result, but I understand.' And that's drama. I can't say I liked Oedipus when I walked out of 'Oedipus,' I can't say I liked Agamemnon, I can't say I like many of the Greek heroes. Some of them are outright assholes. But you watch them, you follow their story. That's drama. It may be easier or more palatable to have a character with whom you sympathize-- studio executives love that word. But it's tricky: if we sympathize with everyone, we create a manufactured values system. It's much more interesting and real if you try to empathize and understand, if not always approve."

-- Director Oliver Stone on W. in the Lionsgate Press Release

There's a recurring metaphor running throughout director Oliver Stone's controversial biopic W. Opening the film and ultimately closing it, the avid-baseball fan and team owner George W. Bush (as portrayed by Josh Brolin) is way out in the outfield with his eyes on a pop-up ball heading straight towards him in center field, just out of reach. Stone has never been one to relish the joys of traditional narrative structure and instead symbolism, ingeniously ironic musical cues, and clever editing have always made their impact for better or for worse during his legendary career but this time, his eye is on the ball (if you'll excuse the cliche) in depicting what has spiraled into the decision and event that will become synonymous with W's name. Of course, specifically that is the Iraq war which has developed into such an incredibly complicated mess that no one, not even the man who made the decision to go in following 9/11 knows quite how to catch and stop it. There's no calling a time-out-- although this upcoming election will find us trading players with the possibility of a whole new starting lineup if (as I'm truly hoping) Obama is elected, what has happened has happened and Stone knows better than to try and tack on some sort of conclusion that would ultimately mean as little as W's "Mission Accomplished" speech.

W. is the type of film that Stone argued it would be from the beginning-- a fair and balanced, overwhelmingly even-handed and at times slightly too polite portrait of the President from a young man to the leader of the free world. It's one that I doubt he would've made in exactly the same manner in the early 1990's, although he managed to make one of the finest and most underrated films of his career with his masterful biopic about Richard Nixon, yet this time, running just under two hours, W. is also one of his most succinct fact-based works.

Independently financed long before a studio was on board to distribute, Stone and his longtime collaborator and Wall Street scripter Stanley Weiser decided around Christmas of 2007 that "if we didn't do the Bush movie at that moment, it wouldn't have been made, not for a long time." Striving for the "long-shot chance of getting W. out before the election," Stone wanted to fight against his belief noted in the release that "attention spans in this era, particularly as to history, seem to have the shelf life of a fruit fly."

While it's sure to divide critics and audiences, no matter which political party you're affiliated with or what you think of the man himself, Stone and Weiser managed to do the impossible of reading every single book available on the man himself as well as the Presidency and made the decision early on not to cover his entire life or every event during the eight years he served (and continues to serve) as Commander-in-Chief, specifically "focusing on that crucial era between October 2001 and March 2003, when he finally went to war with Iraq." Intriguingly Stone continued that, "not much was known about the Presidency during the 2000-2004 period because the Presidency was veiled and propagandized. But after 2004 there seems to have been increasing scholarship into the inner workings of the Bush Administration."

While the focal point is undoubtedly Iraq, W. does disappoint slightly (perhaps due to its hasty production) in not including more on not just the controversial, hot-button topic of the 2000 election as well as Hurricane Katrina, yet possibly this-- along with the curious neglect of the days following 9/11-- may have been because Stone either felt that Bush had already been so much in the media spotlight that we knew it all so well or that it's been covered before such as in Spike Lee's Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke.

Further citing the even-handedness of the screenplay, Jeffrey Wright (who quietly gives one of the film's best performances in an Oscar worthy turn as Colin Powell) cited that W. is much like Stone's World Trade Center "which had a similar type of balance and sophisticated tone," and Brolin who initially turned the project down both due to the subject and Stone's "very controversial reputation," instead discovered the screenplay left him "taken aback, moved... impassioned, really, because I was saddened by it. And above all, I identified with it."

Although it chronicles his young wild days surviving frat initiation at Yale, drinking and driving, bar brawling and rebelling against the family political dynasty until he became a born again Evangelical Christian at the age of 40, sobered up and went into the family business for himself, at its heart, W. takes a cue from the Greek tragedies cited by Stone in presenting the never-ending tug of war and battle for love and respect that occurs between fathers and sons. Whether he's feeling like the black sheep next to his picture-perfect brother Jeb or being told off repeatedly by his father (portrayed by James Cromwell) that he's deeply disappointed him, in depicting W's life story, we find out that what perhaps drove him more than anything was trying to prove his worth to his father.

While daddy-issue tales are nothing new and it's hardly the only individual who held sway over our 43rd president, it's a more relatable and humanistic approach to the man where the time line and the film's three distinct acts are all mixed together as we see the new version of the Bush family in his Presidency of others who may have wielded their power more than they should've in steering the leader in certain directions. Rounding out the cast we witness Richard Dreyfuss' wicked turn as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones' geeky, off-in-the-shadows Karl Rove, Scott Glenn's Donald Rumsfeld, Thandie Newton's Condoleeza Rice, Bruce McGill's George Tenet, Wright's Colin Powell, Stacy Keach's Earle Hudd, Rob Corddry's Ari Fleischer, Ellen Burstyn's Barbara Bush, and nice support by Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush.

While the ads and marketing strategy have seemed to posture the film as a straight comedy and indeed there are some truly hilarious moments pulled right from actual events, more than that, it's a heartbreaking tragedy that goes beyond its initial SNL like characterizations that first kept me at an arm's length early on (especially as audience members laughed throughout Thandie Newton's first entire speech as Condi) and during Brolin's earliest scenes. And admittedly no doubt there will be much debate afterward over whether or not Stone went far enough or created a worthwhile enough portrait to justify its being made before the President has even ended his term in office (and regarding both issues-- I find I'm still torn). Not to mention, tons of discussion will ensue regarding whether it will have any resonant impact in the upcoming election as there were a few walkouts of bored young voting age attendees who may have learned far more about just how and why the war was waged if they'd adjusted their frame of mind from the promised "broad comedy" to the drama that surrounds the events.

Was it rushed? My, my, my yes as I felt like Stone was censoring himself in a few places and the overwhelming importance of the picture still seems to weigh heavily as the press release revealed that Stone's in the process of creating a website that "will include all the anecdotes and are mentioned in the film, their source and the rationale for how, why, and when we used them." Of course, all sources should be cited but this isn't the type of action one would've expected him to have taken years ago and sometimes it seems as though he reeled in his true intentions so much that there were a few loose threads that seemed to hang off the edge of the screen at times but politics aside and just as a film, it's an intimate, high quality and revealing look at a complicated man told in a way none of us were expecting.

While I predict it will do big business during its opening weekend given W's disastrous approval rating and an American population so tired of politics as usual, the true test of Stone's film will be if viewers are able to remain objective when presented not with the straight satire they were hoping but a very humane approach about an overwhelmingly controversial, morally and emotionally trying Presidency and war-- the results of which we're all suffering globally every day. Just like Stone's World Trade Center, it may be a little too soon to view with any real perspective since the wounds haven't yet healed (and they possibly never will) but cinematically I applaud the wonderfully executed effort and above all its fearless cast.