Three documentaires.
The Outrageous Sophie Tucker -- If you're Jewish and of a certain age, you may have heard your parents talk about Sophie Tucker or perhaps seen her on Ed Sullivan. But did you know that Tucker was for decades the most famous entertainer of her time? Forget Jolson, Crosby or Sinatra, they all looked up to her. As it says at the beginning of the movie, there were 11 presidents during her lifetime and she knew 7. Some well enough to just pick up the phone and get them on the line. She had three Royal Command performances before the Queen and what makes it so funny is that she was a singer and teller of bawdy jokes and songs. She was known as the "last of the red hot mamas" even though she was always well overweight her whole life. But she was a great marketer and know hot to work and so she sang a song called, "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love." There are tips galore for how to self-promote yourself and no one did it better, until Instagram was invented.
My Psychedelic Love Story -- Unwatchable. A major failure by the great documentarian Errol Morris, about the recently deceased Joanna Harcourt-Smith. She was the girlfriend of Timothy Leary who, when he escaped prison, joined him on his globetrotting romp to keep ahead of the police. Morris makes a classic error, since he's talking a lot of about LSD, and other psychedelics, he thinks it adds to the experience to keep having "trippy" images constantly mixed into the the story. So photographs swirl and expand and displayed text also bubbles and just gives you a headache. "Like I'm too high, man." I made it through about 12 minutes.
Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives -- Good documentary about one of the most important figures in the music scene. Davis', who still works at 88 (!), story about going from a lawyer to record producer for more than the last 50 years is simply amazing. There's also a lot of insight into how the music biz works. Unfortunately, since this was made in 2017, it wraps up with the awful tale of his biggest protege Whitney Houston's rise and destructive fall and as an almost father figure to her how crushed he was. Still highly recommended.
