“If you don’t know where the fuck we are right now, just look around. You’re making a goddamn documentary, so you don’t have to have me say in front of the camera where we are.”
There’s probably nothing more frustrating for a director
than to be directed himself, but filmmaker Mark Wexler should have expected
exactly that once he pointed the camera at his dad, fractious bastard Haskell
Wexler. The elder Wexler also moonlights as a celebrated cinematographer and
political activist, and in the absorbing documentary/therapy session Tell Them Who You Are, Mark explores the
life and work of a Hollywood legend as well as the complicated and often
contentious relationship between a formidable father and a son longing for his
respect.
For those who don’t automatically get all film-geeky at the
mere mention of his name, here’s a little Haskell Wexler 101: A pioneer in the
moviemaking style known as cinéma vérité, Haskell has five Oscar nominations,
with wins for Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? and Bound for Glory. He’s
shot films for heavyweights like John Sayles (the beautiful Secret of Roan Inish) and Elia Kazan (America, America), and he wrote and
directed a classic of his own called Medium
Cool, which he filmed in and around the riots at the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago.
Through interviews with Haskell’s friends and co-workers,
including George Lucas, Jane Fonda, Studs Terkel, and Albert Maysles, Mark
paints a portrait of his father as an uncompromising (and colorblind!) artist
whose vision was not always in concert with his bosses. The man who states, “I
don’t think there’s a movie I’ve been on that I didn’t think I could direct
better,” has been fired from films by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation) and Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
Norman Jewison made three films with Haskell and still calls
him “a pain in the ass to work with.” (Haskell also claims to have shot more
than half of Terrence Malick’s sublime Days
of Heaven, considered by many to be the most visually stunning film ever
made… and for which cinematographer Nestor Almendros won the Oscar.)
Haskell, who came from a privileged background, once
organized a strike among the employees at his father’s factory, and his
rabble-rousing ways are at perpetual odds with his son’s conservative leanings.
Haskell’s choices in projects reflect his willingness to court controversy,
whether the topic is racism (Jewison’s In
the Heat of the Night), gang violence (Dennis Hopper’s Colors), Vietnam (Hal Ashby’s Coming
Home), or the current political climate (Sayles’ most recent, Silver City).
Mark used to grudgingly accompany his father to political
rallies, but now he makes films about Air Force One and takes photos with
Bushes. He knows this irritates his dad, but like any normal kid, he takes
secret delight in winding the old man’s clock.
Tell Them also
watches as that same old man rages against the dying of the light. Now in his
early 80s, and still quite handsome and fit, Haskell is growing concerned with
his own mortality, reading the obituaries and averaging out the ages of those
who have passed on. His prickly attitude toward his son may be flecked with
some envy that the younger Wexler still has many years of filmmaking left in
him, while Haskell recognizes that he still has much more to say but not that
much more time in which to say it.
Interestingly, the relationship between Mark and Haskell is
echoed by that of Conrad L. Hall (an Oscar winner for American Beauty) and his son, Conrad W. Hall (Panic Room), both gifted cinematographers in their own rights. The
fathers were close friends, as were the sons, but Mark admits that he used to
wish the easygoing Conrad L. was his dad, while Conrad W. confides that he felt
more of a kinship with Haskell than with his own father. The elder Hall died before
Mark completed Tell Them, and the
film is dedicated to him.
And just when you’re ready to write off Haskell as a man who
sacrificed his heart for his art, the Wexler men make a trip to see Miriam,
Mark’s mom and Haskell’s second wife. Haskell’s vulnerability finally emerges
as he tries to get through to Miriam, once a gorgeous and talented painter but
now in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s.
How Mark was able to keep the camera steady (and dry) during
this heartbreaking scene is a mystery, but he had better take care not to fall
into the same impassivity trap that threatens to ensnare those who observe the
world through the detachment of a lens.
Tell Them Who You Are (NR), directed by Mark Wexler, is showing
Friday, September 16, at the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre.
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2005.
