FILM REVIEW: SMILING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE, ESQUIRE IN THE 60S

Harold Hayes in Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s.

Needles in Hayes stack
 
By Ed Rampell
 
Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s is an informative, good fun nonfiction film about the history of one of the 20^thcentury USA’s most influential magazines, and one of those editors who has had a lasting impact on and made an indelible imprint upon American letters. Esquire editor Harold Hayes was arguably to magazines what Maxwell Perkins was to novels, both having a literary flair in their respective mediums.
 
Hayes, originally a Southerner, oversaw not only a stable of scribes who helped spawned the so-called “New Journalism," but also a visually inventive team who conceptualized the magazine as being a visual art form combining punchy prose and pictorials. Who can ever forget the cover image of Muhammad Ali during the height of his persecution for resisting the draft posing as St. Sebastian, pierced by arrows? Or the cover pic of Pop Artist Andy Warhol drowning in an open gigantic can of Campbell’s Soup? The often mind blowing art captured the sixties’ psychedelic zeitgeist.
 
For a time, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s, along with Playboy (its editor/publisher Hugh Hefner also appears onscreen) defined the “hip” sensibility in the world of monthly magazine publishing. (The doc also reminds us that prior to Hayes’ arrival, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s had published high caliber authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, but at one point had been a sort of soft porn “girlie”-type mag.) In addition to including interviews with photographers, art designers and cartoonists such as Ed Sorel, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s features a movable feast of notable wordsmiths, making this a movie memory literary lane. There are archival and original interviews with: Tom Wolfe; Nora Ephron; Peter Bogdanovich; Frank Rich; Harlan Ellison; and many other literary tigers (and a few pussycats).
 
Gay Talese drolly recounts writing the feature Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, which helped set the template for the more subjective, interpretive, long form New Journalism. The Left’s éminence grise, Gore Vidal, recalls his epic epochal battle royales with rightwing idiot savant William F. Buckley. Their televised tete-a-tetewas spurred by the galvanizing violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (which, BTW, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s counterintuitively assigned Beat scribe William S. Burroughs and satirist Terry Southern to cover). This journalist was aware of their war of words on live TV -- with our man Vidal calling Buckley “a crypto-Nazi” (although this reviewer fails to see what was so “crypto” about Buckley and his defense of the fascistic Czech-ago pig department during their “police riot” against unarmed peace demonstrators?) and the National Review editor calling Vidal’s alleged homosexuality out. (Ironically, in onscreen interviews Vidal refers to Buckley as a “queen.”) However, I did not know that this broadcast contretemps led to articles by each in Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s, which in turn resulted in libel suits. Of course, when Hayes requested fair play so that he could publish a rejoinder in National Review, true to form, Buckley the reactionary refused turn-around-fair-play to Hayes, who had previously provided that to him.

This award-winning documentary is directed and written by Hayes’ son, Tom Hayes, and his debut doc is something of a son’s attempt to come to grips with his complex, celebrity father and Harold’s legacy. But this film is no mere hagiography -- Hayes’ stumbles, as well as his triumphs, are covered. For instance, lefty author Garry Wills tells the camera that he refused to write the lengthy feature that came to be known as The Confessions of Lt. Calley. Wills protested against giving who he calls “a mass murderer” a prominent platform, and the dubious Hayes-directed cover stirred controversy not only among sponsors, but Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s staffers, as well: The smiling ex-soldier convicted of mass killing at My Lai posing with somber Vietnamese children. John Sacks, not Wills, wrote the article which was told from the point of view of the war criminal whose sentence was vastly reduced by Pres. Richard “Crimes-Against-Humanity-Are-Us” Nixon. Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” article pillorying conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein’s fundraising party for the Black Panther Party was also published under Hayes’ tutelage.

Smiling Through the Apocalypse, Esquire in the 60s will especially bring a smile to the faces of fans who enjoy(ed) the eponymous magazine; print journalism (New and old); graphic design; chronicles of the sizzling sixties; and lovers of the documentary art form. Its star-studded cast of literati and “illustrati” (to coin a phrase) will make it irresistible to aficionados of that school of publishing. The editor/ writer and father/son relationships are also of interest.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FILM REVIEW: GORE VIDAL AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA

Gore Vidal in Gore Vidal and the United States of Amnesia. 

Thanks for the memory

By Don Simpson

In capturing the life of a man who deftly re-imagined how we approach history and politics, it is unfortunate that Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia relies so heavily upon such an uninventive documentary format. Combining direct interviews with archival footage, director Nicholas Wrathall is lucky to at least have Gore Vidal’s natural charisma as the heart and soul of this documentary.

For those who are unfamiliar with his uncanny knack for highly-intellectualized wit and humor, The United States of Amnesiapresents Vidal in stark contrast to the perpetual stream of verbal diarrhea that spews from modern day pundits. Even when pitted against his nemesis William F. Buckley, Jr. during ABC’s coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Vidal transcended the stuffy intellectualism and presented his arguments with a poetic panache that made his elegantly barbed jabs all the more entertaining. Unfortunately, Vidal’s high-minded style of political discourse died with him on July 31, 2012.

Vidal’s lack of intellectual equals becomes increasingly evident as all of the other interviewees sprinkled throughout The United States of Amnesia pale in comparison to him. Their unabashed hero-worship does very little to contribute to the discussion of Vidal’s life, instead everyone seems much more enamored by his vibrant social life — as if to suggest that his friendship with Paul Newman or notorious feuds with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer are more important than his intellectual prowess. Even Vidal’s criticisms of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are reduced to comical soundbites that are primed for tabloid headlines. In this context, The United States of Amnesia seems to cheapen Vidal’s opinions and arguments, abbreviating the sound bites into petty and slanderous slurs; its just a shame that Wrathall does not allow him to justify the statements.

While many viewers might only know of Vidal from reading his historical novels such as Lincoln or Burr, Wrathall opts to present a very human portrait of Vidal; focusing on his personality, The United States of Amnesia avoids any scholarly analysis of Vidal’s work. Hearing Vidal’s friends and admirers speak about him, it becomes increasingly evident that he was an enigma to everyone. Vidal seemed to enjoy the mysterious nature of his public persona, especially when it came to his sexuality. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), is recognized as one of the first major American novels to directly feature homosexuality, but Vidal was opposed to defining people in terms of being “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” Vidal wholeheartedly believed that sexuality is not as clear cut as those polarizing terms infer, suggesting that everyone is bisexual to some degree. This made Vidal’s purportedly asexual relationship with long-term partner Howard Austen all the more perplexing to those who knew him.

Our world may still need a more academic interpretation of Vidal’s work, but Wrathall’s documentary serves as an essential introduction to the man, the myth and the legend. The United States of Amnesia presents Vidal (who I share a birthday with) in such an approachable light that perhaps it will propel more people to become curious about his novels and essays.