FILM REVIEW: BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!

Fredrik Gertten in Big Boys Gone Bananas!

Dole out some justice

By Ed Rampell

In 2009 Swedish director Fredrik Gertten’s documentary Bananas! was the most controversial Scandinavian import to America since I Am Curious (Yellow). Forty years earlier Vilgot Sjoman’s 1967 film was seized by U.S. Customs because the X-rated film dared show sex acts and full frontal nudity. But Gertten dared to take on an even touchier (no pun intended) subject in his nonfiction film: corporate America.

Bananas! exposed Dole Food’s role in spraying poisonous pesticide on bananas in Nicaragua and exposing agricultural workers to DBCP, which allegedly resulted in sterility for some of the affected campesinos. Gertten’s doc included footage of a Dole executive basically confessing on the witness stand during a lawsuit brought by the banana proletarians to using the pesticide in its Central America plantations.

The results of Gertten’s temerity were entirely predictable. The multi-billion dollar multi-national banana bullies headquartered near Los Angeles went bananas, waging a heavy handed P.R. offensive against the director and documentary as it was about to debut at the Los Angeles Film Festival, wreaking havoc and movie mayhem at one of L.A.’s top film festivals. The unfortunate LAFF brouhaha (which was no laughing matter), Dole’s aggressive publicity campaign, the corporation’s defamation lawsuit against the filmmakers and Gertten’s bold countersuit formed the basis for a great sequel, in that grand cinematic tradition: Big Boys Gone Bananas! (Even Sjoman made a sequel of sorts to his hit: 1968’s I Am Curious (Blue).)

Unlike retrograde reviewers who blithely reveal plot spoilers, your humble cinema scribe won’t ruin the fun for you. Suffice it to say, in that great silent screen slapstick tradition, that Dole slips on a banana peel. In any case, Dear Viewers, if you see only one movie this summer, get thee to the Pasadena Playhouse 7 (and wherever else it is theatrically released and screened) pronto to see this epic David against Goliath saga of biblical proportions, as Sweden’s WG Film -- with its four employees -- go up against the wall, motherfuckers, fighting the $7 billion corporation that has 75,000 employees. Forget about Spidey or Batman, Gertten is cinema’s superhero, as he fights against all odds for freedom of speech -- something U.S. journalists should take note of, especially those despicable pigs, media miscreants and Dole shills who stabbed Gertten in the back with pens and keyboards.

The role David Magdael and his L.A.-based P.R. firm also plays onscreen and off is also truly inspiring -- would that more publicists valued ballyhooing truth and artistic integrity over commercialism (but that would be a sci-fi fantasy flick). And those Swedes, who passed legal free speech protections way back in 1766, 10 years before our Revolution, can teach us a thing or two about freedom of the press and that crazy little thing called “democracy.”

Big Boys Gone Bananas! is highly dramatic and great fun (arguably a worthy successor to Woody Allen’s 1971, Bananas), with many twists and turns, and far more entertaining than most Hollywood features. During his quixotic crusade Gertten fights back on a number of fronts, but most effectively, this veteran filmmaker, who also produced the stellar 2008 Oscar nominated doc, Burma VJ, does battle with his mighty weapon of choice: a movie camera. If you value a free press and enjoy stand up and cheer movies, don’t miss Big Boys Gone Bananas! Bravo!

And, on a personal note, may I add: "Mahalo nui loa," thank you very much, to the Dole family for the role your forebears played in overthrowing Queen Liliuokalani and the independent Kingdom of Hawaii and turning it into a pineapple and banana republic.

   

  

 

 

 

THEATER REVIEW: NEW JERUSALEM

Baruch Spinoza (Marco Naggar) and  Clara van den Enden (Kate Huffman) in New Jerusalem. Photo by Hope Burleigh.

A rationalist strategy

By Ed Rampell

The censorial impulse has always been with us, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials to Peter Zenger’s trial to the post-World War I Palmer Raids to the Scopes Monkey Trial to the Stalinist Moscow Show Trials to the House Un-American Activities/McCarthy Era purges, and so on. Throughout history the “heretic,” the “apostate,” the free thinker, the non-conformist, has often faced persecution by orthodox defenders of the established order who fear the status quo is being threatened by new, different ideas. David Ives’ New Jerusalem takes a searing look at an archetypal seer facing excommunication by no less than two powers that be.

Philosopher Baruch Spinoza (Marco Naggar) was born in 1632 in the Dutch Republic of Amsterdam, where his family had fled from Portugal, with its inquisition and forced conversions of Jews. What is now Holland has long enjoyed a reputation for the kind of tolerance which Spinoza preached, and Amsterdam, of course, is where Anne Frank’s family sought refuge from fascism’s gathering deluge 400 years later. While the Netherlands granted these Sephardic wandering Jews more liberty than the auto-de-fes of Portugal and Spain, Amsterdam’s Jewish population experienced what’s been called a sort of second class citizenship, not unlike what blacks encountered in the segregated South.

Spinoza sprang out of this social milieu, and by the time he was 23 evolved a “heretical” philosophy that challenged the precepts of the Old and New Testaments. In a nutshell, Spinoza argued in favor of logic and rational thought against superstition and was a major Enlightenment theorist. Not surprisingly, the dominant majority Christian culture seemed to feel jeopardized by Spinoza’s radical precepts. Spinoza posed a double-edged dilemma for Amsterdam’s Jewry (or at least its establishment) which felt not only ideologically endangered, but, as a minority, perceived its tenuous position in a foreign land was being imperiled by what the majority viewed as apostasy coming from the strangers in their midst. Dutch Jews, or at least their leaders, felt like they were between the proverbial rock and hard place.

This is the stuff that makes for heady drama: The clash of ideas plus a trial, which is inherently confrontational, generating the conflict tragedies thrive on. Some, however, may find the play to be talky, especially act one, with its exposition; act two moves at a brisker pace. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s similarly themed 1955 play about a teacher of evolution being put on trial, Inherit the Wind, was filmed four times, most memorably in 1960 by Stanley Kramer. But alas, poor 23-year-old Spinoza had no Spencer Tracy/Clarence Darrow type character defending him.

Perceived as a sort of witch doctor, Spinoza needs a spin doctor to defend him as he debates Amsterdam’s chief rabbi, Saul Levi Mortera (Richard Fancy), and Gaspar Rodrigues Ben Israel (Shelly Kurtz), a parnas (president or trustee) of the congregation of Talmud Torah.  Spinoza’s expulsion hearing of took place there, in Amsterdam’s foremost synagogue, in July 1656. Amsterdam regent Abraham van Valkenburgh (Tony Pasqualini) observes -- if not presides over -- the proceedings to determine whether or not Spinoza should be forever banished by the Jews with a kherem (somewhat similar to an Islamic fatwa).

Unlike the Scopes Monkey Trial, which was actually broadcast on live radio during the 1920s, little remains of the record of the actual inquiry (although the chilling verdict remains). Having no trial transcripts, the playwright conjures up dialogue and the action of various characters, who spy on and testify against Spinoza, including his Dutch friend, the painter Simon de Vries (Todd Cattell), his half-sister, Rebekah (Brenda Davidson) and a female friend who Spinoza seems sweet on but can’t properly woo because she’s Christian. Conflicted Clara van den Enden (Kate Huffman) valiantly tries to defend the thinker.

The ensemble acting is adroitly, tautly directed by Elina de Santos. The sparring between the philosopher and his interrogators, especially the rabbi, is electric. Sparks fly as an anguished Mortera faces off against his former pupil, while Kurtz’s parnas likewise delivers a bravura performance. The rabbi’s philosophical conclusions in the face of his ex-student’s reasoning is surprising -- and quite troubling: Spinoza must be expelled not because he lies, and is wrong, but because he tells the truth and is right. So the victims of expulsion go on to practice expulsion themselves.

Naggar’s prophet outcast alternately comes across as priggish, smug, self-absorbed, self-righteous, brilliant and brashly hubristic in that youthful, exuberant way. Naggar hails from Geneva, the Swiss city with a long human rights history that’s currently celebrating the birth there of another of the Age of Reason’s top philosophes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As the Jewish leaders, a bearded Fancy and Kurtz (a Yeshiva University grad!) are also standouts, delivering Ives’ zingers with gusto and angst, as their characters whine on about Spinoza’s temerity in thinking for himself.

Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s set is spot on, creating a sense of being in a Jewish temple with Sephardic roots, where most if not all of the action takes place. However, Schwartz’s modern dress costuming presented a conundrum for this reviewer. On the one hand, this breaks the illusion of the fourth wall. Theatre, film, TV, etc., can take spectators to another time and place, long ago and far away, but when Mr. Pasqualini’s Valkenburgh appears in a snazzy three piece suit and tie, the aud’s “willing suspension of disbelief” (as poet Samuel Coleridge put it) is shattered.

On the other hand, this contemporary aspect could be an attempt to create a Bertolt Brecht-like “alienation effect,” intended to snap viewers out of the reverie that they are seeing real life unfold before their eyes, when in fact, they are merely watching a staged rendition of reality. Therefore, spectators should assess the play as a work of art using their logic (a true Spinozan perspective!), instead of via emotions caused by empathizing with characters, the plot’s plight points, etc.

Having said that, I feel that the modern dress costuming is a blunder, and note that according to photos in a N.Y. Times review, the cast wore period costumes in a 2008 off-Broadway production of Ives’ drama. Furthermore, the current version’s own graphic likewise depicts a figure in 17^th century garb. As for authenticity, only a few experts and sticklers for absolute accuracy would demand costly costuming completely faithful to that era’s fashions. In fact, mere black robes would have served as appropriate garb for some characters.

But this is a mere quibble, and the West Coast Jewish Theatre’s production is a thought provoking evocation of the thought police -- then and now. Last year WCJT also presented the anti-Nazi plays The God of Isaac and Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass. In addition to being an ethicist, Spinoza was a lens grinder, a symbolic calling for a man who set out to make humanity see the truth, and for one finally ground down before his time. To find out why Albert Einstein said he “believe[d] in the god of Spinoza,” don’t miss New Jerusalem -- a shining city on a theatrical hill.


New Jerusalem runs through April 1 at the Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., CA 90064. For more information: Call 323/821-2449;http://www.wcjt.org/. 

AFI 2011: THIS IS NOT A FILM

Jafar Panahi in This is Not a Film.

Knight of Eye C-ydonia

By Ed Rampell

When an AFI Film Festival official introduced this remarkable documentaryat the Chinese 1 Theater he lamented that the Iranian filmmakers behind and in front of it could not be present to do so themselves, as their passports had been seized and they were being detained by authorities of the Islamic Republic. At the end of this nonfiction rumination on – as co-director Jafar Panahi puts it -- “filmmakers not making films” – some audience members shouted: “Free Iran.”

Faced with unspecified crimes against the state, Jafar Panahi, whose 1995 The White Balloon won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, has been forbidden from making movies in Iran or to leave the country where he could conceivably do so, for 20 years. So he collaborated with another filmmaker, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (2008’s Lady of the Rose), to co-direct the pithily named This is Not a Film. The documentary records a day in the life of Panahi in his Tehran apartment, as he speaks on the phone with his attorney about the possibility of going to jail and from being banned from making movies.

Panahi tries to find some wiggle room from that onerous sentence, as it does not explicitly forbidden his reenacting and in particular reading the scripts he’s written of films he’d like to shoot. The defrocked director also screens clips from some of his previously made movies, as Mirtahmasb shoots him. There are a number of long takes and a kind of monitor lizard named Igi steals several scenes as he slithers about Panahi’s posh apartment. Throughout, the director -- who is presumably under some sort of house arrest -- generally retains his composure, only blowing his cool a couple of times when considering the injustice of not being able to practice his avocation for, perhaps, up to two decades. Considering the constraints he is acting under, Panahi seems to hold up well and, like his colleague behind the camera, admirable.

Towards the end an art student moonlighting as a janitor while his sister delivers her baby appears to collect and throw the garbage out. In the course of his conversation with the apartment dweller/noted director, Panahi corrects a comment the university pupil makes and insists that yes indeed, one “can make a film with [only] a cell phone” video camera. Panahi and Mirtahmasb prove that creativity and ingenuity not only trump technology and production budgets, but also political censorship. For my money, this film is far better than anything Michael Bay has ever helmed with his mega-million budgets.

The aptly titled This is Not a Film is also a testament to artists resisting repression, and to humanity refusing to accept persecution. In any case, it turns out that the clever This is Not a Film not only is, but this documentary, apparently entirely shot in a single day, has earned a rarefied spot in cinema history.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s commendation of the RAF: Never have so few done so much with so little. Panahi and Mirtahmasb are filmic freedom flyers. Portentously set against the backdrop of New Year’s celebrations in Iran and perhaps anti-government demonstrations in Iran, this documentary made against all odds somehow manages to end on a note of hope. Yes, “free Iran” indeed.

And while we’re at it, lest we Westerners get smug, free Julian Assange, too!

THEATER REVIEW: MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE

Rachel Corrie (Samara Frame) in My Name is Rachel Corrie.

Think tank

By Ed Rampell

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” -- John 15:13, King James version of the Bible

Following the Los Angeles premiere of My Name is Rachel Corrie the first of the post-play panel discussions and Q&As scheduled to follow every performance took place at Topanga Canyon’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. In their comments, renowned Oscar winning cinematographer and Medium Cool helmer Haskell Wexler and Susan Angelo, director of this one-woman show starring Samara Frame, each stated it “is not a great play.” Then why did the Theatricum and the company’s Artistic Director Ellen Geer, both stalwarts of L.A.’s theatre scene and renowned for presenting classics by Shakespeare, Chekhov, etc., select this drama as the inaugural performance for adults in its 88-seat S. Mark Taper Foundation Pavilion? Especially given the white-haired Ms. Geer’s contention that pressure was brought to bear against the theater, and that she was threatened, for daring to present My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has a history of being suppressed?

The answer, of course, lies in the subject matter of the play which, in the tradition of “Documentary Theatre,” was largely pieced together from bits and pieces of the eponymous real life title character’s writings. Journalist-editor Katherine Viner of London’s Guardian and British actor Alan Rickman (of Robin Hood and Harry Potter films fame) wove the tale together from Corrie’s journals, letters, emails, etc., as well as from facts known about the young Washington State woman’s life and death.    

In 2003 during the second Intifada the 23-year-old Corrie joined the International Solidarity Movement -- composed of foreigners practicing nonviolent direct action in support of Palestinian rights -- at the Gaza Strip to monitor and protest Israel’s occupation. On March 16, reportedly holding a megaphone and wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, Corrie literally boldly placed herself in harm’s way, standing between an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer and the home of a Palestinian pharmacist. The heavy equipment vehicle literally bulldozed Corrie, breaking her back, killing her and creating a non-Arab martyr for the Palestinian cause.

The Rachel Corrie incident and story has been the subject of much dispute and contentiousness. Critics of Israeli policies contend that this was a case of coldblooded murder and a war crime, while the Russian-born bulldozer operator claimed he didn’t see Corrie.

According to a 2003 Mother Jones report by Joshua Hammer: ”[T]he Israeli army showed no remorse for its action that afternoon. Days after Corrie's death, [Yasser] Arafat's Fatah Party sponsored a memorial service for her in Rafah, attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as ordinary Palestinians. Midway through the service, an Israeli tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas. Peace activists chased the tank and tossed flowers and the Israeli soldiers inside the tank threatened, in return, to run them down. After 15 minutes of cat and mouse, Israeli bulldozers and apcs [armored personnel carriers] rolled in, firing guns and percussion bombs and putting a quick end to the memorial.”

After the play’s 2005 award-winning opening at London’s Royal Court Theatre the controversy surrounding Corrie’s actions and death followed Viner and Rickman’s (who, coincidentally, provided the voice of the Caterpillar in Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland) one-woman show. The New York Theatre Workshop postponed its 2006 U.S. premiere of the drama, which eventually opened at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.

Apparently, like the New York Theatre Workshop, the Theatricum faced opposition to mounting My Name is Rachel Corrie from pro-Israeli forces. The fact of the matter is that, especially since 9/11, Israel and the Arabs (in particular, the Palestinians) have not only been engaged in combat from Gaza to the West Bank to Lebanon, but they have also been locked in a communications war. This propaganda battle aims at claiming the moral high ground in the ongoing conflict.

Pro-Zionist attempts to stifle artistic works that deviate from the official Israeli line, including My Name is Rachel Corrie, the feature Munich and the recent effort to ban a screening of the pro-Palestinian Miral at the U.N. are motivated by the same underlying anxiety. (Munich’s co-writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, and both of the movies’ directors -- Steven Spielberg and Julian Schnabel -- are Jewish; the latter’s mother was once reportedly president of Brooklyn’s Hadassah chapter; and while we’re at it, Ellen Geer is part Jewish.) In essence, this is the notion that Jews in general and Israelis in particular are victims, and not victimizers, who perpetuate human rights abuses. However, this agitprop and censorship campaign -- which smacks of book burning and is completely unworthy of the “People of the Book” -- is counterproductive.

Especially in the case of My Name is Rachel Corrie. By trying to muzzle it the play’s pro-Israeli detractors merely shine more light on what is, as the drama’s own Theatricum director herself confesses, not a particularly good play. Samara Frame’s Rachel comes across as a flakey, hippie-dippie girl who one day winds up in the war torn Gaza Strip. This could be a function of the playwriting per se (as noted, Rickman and Viner cobbled together the script from Corrie’s diaries and so on). Likewise, although we get a sense of Corrie’s heightened politicization once she experiences Rafah, her bulldozing just seems to come from out of nowhere. From a dramatic point of view this play has big structural challenges.

Frame is good but not great as Corrie. I’d guess that the actress is a bit too long in the tooth to fully convincingly portray a 23-year-old. I didn’t know Corrie (although wish I did) and don’t know much about this courageous young lady, but Frame’s portrayal makes her seem like a bit of a flake. Okay, having been around the Left my enter life, a good portion of activists do come across, shall we generously say, as rather “quirky” (hey, I’m Exhibit “A”). And maybe Corrie was ditzy, but I couldn’t help feel that this depiction somewhat trivialized someone who so bravely, selflessly sacrificed so much for other suffering people by putting her own life on the line.

(Actress-writer Saria Idana’s Homeless in Homeland, based on her experiences as a progressive Jew in Israel and the occupied territories, is a far better acted and written one-woman show than this play.)

The illuminating film clip of fifth grade Rachel that closes the 70-minute (giver or take a few minutes) one-woman show evinces more conviction and arguably intellect than the onstage adult Corrie does. Not that the production doesn’t score its points, dramatically and philosophically. A non-Jew, Corrie worries about being incorrectly perceived as an anti-Semite because she’s standing up for the rights of beleaguered Palestinians (who, lest we forget, are also Semites). But to me the most telling line is when our Washington State little miss sunshine, confronted by the sheer brutality and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, confessed that she was losing her faith in humanity.

This reminded me of what is probably the most famous quote from another famous young female diarist living in an occupied land, faced with vicious persecution, wrote: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are basically good at heart.” Trapped like a rat hiding from the fascists in an Amsterdam cubbyhole, threatened with extermination, little Anne Frank was still able to express faith in the human spirit in the face of Nazism -- even as the death camp ovens awaited her. Rachel, on the other hand, faced by a systematically savage Israeli occupation, is losing her hope and optimism.

And this is what the would-be censors of art critical of official Israeli policies are so anxious about. Instead of blindly supporting Israeli aggression, audiences might start asking: “Who’s wearing the jackboots now?” Have yesterday’s victims become today’s victimizers?

Just the other day the U.N. Palmer Report declared that Israeli forces used "excessive and unreasonable force" against the freedom flotilla to Gaza, wherein in nine activists were killed in international waters by the IDF aboard the Mavi Marmara ship, which was trying to break Israel’s embargo of Gaza by delivering humanitarian aid on May 31, 2010. Not surprisingly, publication of the report had been delayed three times as Israel frantically struggles to maintain the moral high ground -- even on the high seas.

This is why works like My Name is Rachel Corrie are so important and pose such a threat to the ultra-Zionist status quo, as they present a countervailing narrative to the official line. By the way, outside of the US, much of the rest of the world considers the Israel's occupation of Palestine to be illegal. Often the entire General Assembly votes against Israeli policy in the U.N. -- except for the U.S. and its tiny neo-colonies in Micronesia. And the issue of Palestinian statehood is due to come up soon before that international body which, you know, voted for statehood for Israel in 1948.

Despite its dramatic flaws, My Name is Rachel Corrie raises profound questions that must be publicly aired and discussed. So bravo to the Theatricum, which knows a thing or two about resisting the blacklisting of artists, for having the courage to present the L.A. premiere of this play and for insisting on freedom of speech. In keeping with this spirit a post-performance panel and Q&A with the audience will include an official of a Zionist organization. Pro-Israeli literature is also being distributed at the theater.

My Name is Rachel Corrie runs Sept. 8, 15, 21, and 22 at 8 p.m. at the S. Mark Taper Foundation Pavilion of the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For more information call: 310/455-372; www.Theatricum.com

FILM REVIEW: AMERICAN THE BILL HICKS STORY

Bill Hicks in American: The Bill Hicks Story.

Questions remain

By Don Simpson

There is a bloody good reason why this documentary by co-directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas is titled American: The Bill Hicks Story. Harlock and Thomas are British BBC veterans -- and we all know how much the Brits love the American comic Bill Hicks. In 2010 he was voted the 4th on the UK's Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups; and, though an American, he is certainly not held in the same esteem by most Americans. That is not to say that Hicks did not develop a dedicated cult audience in the U.S., especially after his premature death at the age of 32 from pancreatic cancer.

Hicks' dedicated fans claim that he is the most influential comedian since Lenny Bruce and, like Bruce, Hicks' unique style of comedy certainly challenged societal values, bluntly addressed political issues and just plain pissed people off. Hicks followed the credo: A true patriot questions the government. Students and leftwing politicos loved him (many of them still do). Often fueled by psychotropic drugs and/or alcohol, Hicks: criticized the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class; confronted organized religion and consumerism; targeted the first President Bush's foreign policy, especially the Gulf war; made the Waco massacre easy fodder. All in all, Hicks was very upset by the rightward direction the U.S. was going under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. His untimely death denied us Hicks' ripe opinions on the election of George W. Bush, 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, the war on terror and the economic collapse.

American: The Bill Hicks Story is told via interviews with ten friends and family members who knew Hicks the best: Kevin Booth, Steve Epstein, John Farneti, Lynn Hicks, Mary Hicks, Steve Hicks, Andy Huggins, David Johndrow, James Ladmirault, and Dwight Slade. We are taken on a journey though Hicks' life, from growing up as a Southern Baptist in Texas in the 1960s, to playing small comedy clubs as a teenager in the 1970s, and then into the 1980s and 1990s when he seemed like he might be on the verge of breaking it big. There is not much in the way of family home videos of Hicks growing up; instead, Hicks' early years are recreated via an elaborate array of cleverly animated archival photographs with voice overs by the interviewees. There is, however, ample video footage of Hicks' stage performances, including some of his early performances at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas.

Harlock and Thomas' documentary focuses on the memories of the people who knew Hicks best; this is by no means a vehicle to convince naysayers of Hicks' comedic (and political) genius. American: The Bill Hicks Story is more of an intimate and personal remembrance piece than a marketing tool for the Hicks' estate. (Hicks being a hater of advertising and marketing probably appreciates that from wherever he is looking down on us dumb Americans from.) It is certainly an intriguing approach to capturing the spirit of a man like Hicks, I just do not feel like it develops into an interesting film. Though I respect and admire Hicks, I am by no means a connoisseur of his work. I suspect real fans might be even more disappointed than I am. However, there is enough rare footage of Hicks to make this a worthwhile viewing for fans nonetheless.