TO BE TAKEI - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kuchar Bros. Film Biographer Jennifer M. Kroot serves up superb doc on Star Trek's Mr. Sulu @TIFF BellLightbox followed by a DVD Release via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

One of Takei's favourite movies as a kid was Errol Flynn
in the classic swashbuckler The Adventures of Robin Hood.

During a celebrity roast, Mr. Takei carves
William Shatner up like a RUMP ROAST.

To Be Takei (2014)
Dir. Jennifer M. Kroot

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Most of us know George Takei as Mr. Sulu the stalwart Asian helmsman of the multi-racial S.S. Enterprise crew on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, the immortal science fiction television series (and its subsequent blockbuster feature film spin-offs). In recent years, however, Takei has become a symbol of Asian actors who broke out of the offensive stereotyping American drama prescribed for our Asian brothers and sisters. Maybe most important of all, Takei has been one of the world's most tireless champions for Gay Rights and in particular, Gay marriage. As Star Trek is surely the greatest television series ever produced, Mr. Takei is one of America's most important actors and activists. With this in mind, it's fortunate for Takei and audiences all over the world, that his documentary biographer is the extraordinary Jennifer M. Kroot who studied under the late, great filmmaker George Kuchar and went on to direct It Came From Kuchar, the ultimate big-screen love letter to her mentor George and his brilliant brother Mike - two filmmakers who defined 20th century cinema.

Kroot's sophomore effort proves she's no one-trick pony and has carved a lovely niche for herself as one of the medium's best documentary biographers and, in fact, can be considered as one of the foremost filmmakers working in America today. To Be Takei is absolutely joyous - a funny, touching and compelling portrait of a great, great human being - so much so that you'll only be disappointed that the picture eventually ends. Her first-rate DNA-hardwired filmmaking prowess is responsible for leaving us wanting more, in all the best ways. The movie is as close as we're likely to get to actually being able to mainline Takei as if he was the purest heroine. And yes, she's chosen an ideal subject, but her skill and artistry as a filmmaker is what ultimately raises both Takei and the film to stellar heights. By focusing so resolutely on his achievements with all the aplomb of a master storyteller, Kroot has made a movie that not only dazzles, informs and entertains, but is - without question - as important a film as any of us really want all of our film experiences to be. Such is the living legacy that is George Takei.

At 77 or 30, George Takei is the epitome of HOT!

And such is the consummate artistry of Jennifer M. Kroot that she spins the Takei yarn in the context of 20th Century American history. If you ever wanted a portrait of pre-War life amongst Asian Americans, you'll get it here. If you've yearned for a deeply moving and personal exploration into America's racist policies of interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps upon the attack of Pearl Harbor, you've got it. If you're interested in the childhood memories of life in such a concentration camp from the erudite, detailed perspective of a 77-year-old man, Kroot delivers the goods. For a portrait of a young Asian actor finding his place in an American Cinema replete with disgraceful stereotyping, look no further. If you've a hankering for an illuminating look, through the eyes of said actor, at American television and film history from the 50s to the present, To Be Takei offers a riveting, informative window into the last half-century and beyond. As well, the themes of burgeoning sexuality in a repressed America, living in the closet, coming out of the closet (when the dough-headed, at-the-time California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the state's same-sex marriage legislation) and a fervent commitment to activism, fill the film to overflowing.

If, perhaps most movingly of all, bearing witness to the deep love between two wonderful human beings, Takei and his spouse Brad Altman, you'll discover it here.

And then some.

The aforementioned to-die-for grocery list of sumptuous morsels to tantalize, tickle and touch, doesn't even include Takei's brilliant use of social media, his stellar political career, his unwavering support of public transit, his longtime on-air creative relationship with the insanely brilliant shock-jock Howard Stern, his open and generous relationship with fans and his astounding, obsessive and triumphant production of Allegiance, a musical (!!!!!) about the internment of Japanese-Americans.

Hell, if sainthood wasn't tied so inextricably to the evils of Catholicism, George Takei would be an ideal candidate for such lofty canonization and it's this very thing, Takei's importance and impact upon 20th Century (and beyond) culture, which is what makes Kroot's film so damn terrific. There's no need to provide a warts-and-all look at this great man. There are, so to speak, no warts. There is, however, considerable conflict in his tale which Kroot manages ever-so-deftly to provide a stirring narrative.

dif tor heh smusma - WORDS TO LIVE BY

One of the coolest revelations in Kroot's film, at least to me (being the inveterate John Wayne lover that I am) is the regard with which Takei speaks of "The Duke" giving him a juicy starring role in his epic blockbuster war extravaganza The Green Berets (you can read my own in-depth review of the film HERE). It's a movie I love deeply, in spite of its clearly skewed politics, but the fact remains that Wayne, like it or not, broke incredible ground by choosing to make a Vietnam War film at the height of a war that was, and still is, one of America's many dark hours.

That said, seeing this reasonably extended segment in Kroot's film reminded me of how important it is for artists - especially those with "pull" - to always seek out that which is as audacious and unheard of as Wayne did. To not only give Takei a rich role in a high-profile film suggests Wayne's acumen as a filmmaker, but reminds me of how many such individuals, including Takei, pushed all manner of limits - artistically and politically. As well, Kroot's film contrasts this with the horrendous use of Takei in a stupid Jerry Lewis comedy which moronically fell back upon the racist stereotyping of Asians. Takei's regret in this regard, is deeply and profoundly moving.

Needless to say, Takei's regard for Wayne is also touching as is his respect for the visionary genius of Gene Roddenberry to realize that a futuristic space voyage on the scale depicted in Star Trek would, in fact, have to be populated with a multicultural crew.

Kroot herself populates the film with a multitude of faces, places and media to relate this great story. Using archival clips and photos, as well as a variety of all-new interviews (expertly handled, by the way), she boldly takes us to places no documentary biographer has dared to go by affording herself with all the available tools anyone might use, but does so in a fashion that's so seamless, we never feel weighted down by tropes, but instead are veritably cascaded on a journey that takes us into Takei's heart and mind, and in so doing delivers a portrait of life, politics, art and history.

Some of the more delightful interviews come from expected and not-so-expected places. The talented young actor John Cho (the current Sulu and co-star of the hilarious Harold and Kumar films) discusses the childhood thrills he (and his family) experienced whenever Takei came on screen. Sex columnist Dan Savage points out the obvious - how unbelievably HOT Takei is. And perhaps the most literate and heartfelt thoughts come from the great actor/director Leonard Nimoy who shared the Star Trek stage with Takei as everyone's favourite Vulcan, Mr. Spock.

And in the words of Mr. Spock, Kroot has fashioned a film that will ensure that George Takei will "Live long and prosper" - for now and forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****
5-Stars, Highest Film Corner Accolade

To Be Takei is platforming theatrically across North America with a flagship engagement at the majestic TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, to be followed by a massive home entertainment release via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada and Anchor Bay on October 7, 2014. Feel free to order directly from the Amazon links below.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

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IT CAME FROM KUCHAR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Terrific Documentary about the Kuchar Bros is a MUST-SEE! Don't miss it in anticipation of TO BE TAKEI, a new film by Jennifer M. Kroot, the superb American documentary filmmaker who provided this lovely film biography on the Kuchar Brothers and in turn, delivered a lovely portrait of Star Trek's "Mr. Sulu" opening August 22, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox via Anchor Bay Entertainment

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

In anticipation of TO BE TAKEI, a new film by Jennifer M. Kroot, the superb American documentary filmmaker who studied under the late, great and legendary avant-garde filmmaker George Kuchar at the San Francisco Art institute, I am presenting this all-new rewrite of my first review of her brilliant first feature IT CAME FROM KUCHAR which I filed five years ago. A lovely portrait of the man we all know and love as navigator Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series and the six classic feature film spin-offs, TO BE TAKEI just enjoyed two sellout screenings at the famed FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal and will be opening theatrically in Canada at TIFF Bell Lightbox on August 22, 2014 followed by a DVD release from Anchor Bay Entertainment via Starz Digital. In the meantime, read about Kroot's magnificent tribute to a pair of filmmakers whose influence changed the shape of independent cinema and, given that it's the kind of film portrait that any artist would die to get should give you some idea of what you, the movie-goer have to expect with TO BE TAKEI. (I suspect Mr. Takei feels as blessed to have Kroot as his film biographer as the Kuchar Brothers.)

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It Came From Kuchar (2009)
dir. Jennifer M. Kroot
Starring: George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar, John Waters, Bill Griffith, Buck Henry, B. Ruby Rich, Wayne Wang, Guy Maddin, Christopher Coppola and Atom Egoyan.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Whenever I asked young filmmakers whose work they adored or what they thought was especially cool, I'd get the same pathetic responses: Christopher ("One Idea") Nolan, Wes ("Geek Chic") Anderson, Quentin ("I finally made a genuinely Great movie") Tarantino and, God Help Us, George ("I used to make cool movies before Star Wars") Lucas. (All parenthetical slags mine.) On rare occasions, I'd breathe a sigh of relief whenever someone mentioned David Lynch.

However, when I'd mention the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters, The Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, Ulrich Seidl or Doris Wishman, their faces became as blank as a sheet of Kinkos/FedEx paper waiting to be fed into a copier. Granted, I'd almost forgive the upcoming generation of cinema-belching Philistines when they'd scratch their ignoramus noggins at legendary names like Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Bruce Conner or Hollis Frampton, but most disturbing to me was seeing their faces dissipate into some sort of optical effect of nothingness that reminded me of Claude Rains transforming into The Invisible Man when I mentioned the coolest of them all, the Kuchar Brothers (George and Mike).

This was and still is truly depressing. The Kuchar Brothers are as important to cinema as any genius iconoclasts like Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, Welles, Corman, Altman, Kubrick, Fellini, Pasolini, Bunuel, Bergman and among many others, yes, even Quentin Tarantino (post Pulp Fiction, of course).

And guess what? The Kuchars aren't only important, they're cool.

At the risk of sounding like my father, my generation fed gluttonously at the buffet of cool movies because we wanted to make movies that were as cool, if not cooler than those that came before us. Most importantly, we learned things that could become springboards for our own ambitions - not just from the very recent past, but from over the entire breadth of cinema. And I reiterate, the coolest of the cool were George and Mike Kuchar.

And, Thank Christ Almighty (or whatever deity strikes your fancy), because someone has finally enshrined these cool cats in a feature length tribute worthy of their status, genius and historical importance in the development of cinema.

It Came From Kuchar is a finely honed and entertaining documentary that also carries with it a considerable degree of import to burgeoning (and even seasoned) filmmakers as well as cineastes. Some documentaries are important for content, some for form, and yet others for both. The fact that this documentary focuses so winningly (in form and content) upon the brothers' work, their influences (and influence over other filmmakers), plus their remarkable personal lives, is more than enough to make this a must-see motion picture.

Such is the filmmaking dexterity of the doc's director Jennifer M. Kroot. Granted, she is one of the converted, having been George Kuchar's student at the San Francisco Art institute where he became her mentor. As such, this paid off in spades. Kroot learned from the Master well and in turn painted both a loving portrait and a movie with a strong narrative support beam that draws audiences magnetically to its subjects.

At first, the movie simply, seamlessly and amusingly places the Kuchars within the context of 20th century cinema. Through a series of introductory interviews with the likes of Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, John Waters and Guy Maddin - interviews that are copiously infused with accolades of the most laudatory kind from said filmmakers - we see how some of the world's most important directors love, respect and have been deeply affected as artists by the Kuchars.

In addition to this, the picture also delivers a nice taste of what influenced the Kuchars themselves. Mike Kuchar talks about how they adored going to the movies in the 50s and he describes movie theatres as "temples" which, of course, they were. This was long before the age of the multiplex - where one could be sitting in a packed-to-the-rafters picture palace (which always boasted hundreds, and sometimes thousands of seats). The movies the Kuchars adored were garishly colour-dappled melodramas by the likes of Douglas Sirk and overblown Hollywood star-turns by Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8.

Kroot also wisely focuses on introducing us to the underground cinema scene of the early 60s where in contrast to the picture palaces, young hipsters patronized tiny hole-in-the-wall joints like "The Bridge" in New York City to groove on ultra low budget experimental works. Many of the projects were super-cerebral and contrasted the narrative qualities and huge entertainment value inherent in the works of the Kuchar Brothers.

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I especially love the simple, direct way Kroot juxtaposes the films of the Kuchar Brothers with the blockbuster soap operatic features they loved. Seeing samples from The Craven Sluck or The Devil's Cleavage up against the lofty Kuchar influences like Imitation of Life is what demonstrates how much they loved movies. This for me, is one of the things I personally always loved about the Kuchars - their devotion to motion pictures amounted to deity worship.

They were also always funny, but their own perverse renderings of the likes of Liz Taylor did not fall into oft-despicable spoofs or even parody - the pictures they made had a satiric edge wherein they overplayed the conventions of melodramatic mainstream cinema, yet did so not to mock the movies, but to expose innumerable truths found in everyday human behaviour and relationships by using the movies they loved as starting blocks to render their own unique cinematic style.

What is so astounding about the work of the Kuchar Brothers is that for all the lurid details, the shock value, the intensely overblown melodrama, the cult-ish qualities, these movies are so uncommonly personal that they are often extremely moving. One alternates between laughing and crying, inspired by force one seldom sees in avant-garde cinema (and, frankly, cinema period). The Kuchars managed a magical blend of the grotesque with heartbreakingly emotional truths again and again and yet, again.

These guys are true Masters.

These guys are the real thing!

And they're so cool they're beyond cool.

And certainly, one of the many things I love about Kroot's documentary is seeing and hearing how the Kuchar Brothers' love of melodrama contributed to their exclusive voice, which in turn inspired a whole new generation of filmmakers. When I hear Guy Maddin waxing eloquent about George's use of makeup - especially on women - wherein their eyebrows are ludicrously inflated to look like "chocolate bars", I can only smile and recall Guy's own unflagging boldness in applying raccoon-eye makeup to all his female characters. Guy also cites the "aggressively stylized voices" of the actors, which Guy also brings to his work - or rather, he insists upon stylized vocal delivery, but in his own predilection for all that is repressed and muted. John Waters, of course, took the Kuchars' notion of aggressive vocal stylization completely to heart. That said, the Kuchars' ripe dialogue played a huge part in this and both Maddin and Waters picked up that particular torch and ran with it.

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In the film, we learn that the Kuchar Brothers were born in New York City at Bellevue Hospital, which as George notes, is renowned as the hospital where 50s/60s heart-throb Tab Hunter was also born, and most notably as a hospital devoted to treating the insane. A few years later, the Kuchar family moved to the Bronx - a neighbourhood of blasted-out empty buildings and endless vacant lots. This is where George and Mike (twins, though neither knows if they are identical or fraternal) really discovered themselves. They loved the Bronx and using their bountiful imaginations, they turned this seemingly grotesque world of the abandoned into a veritable paradise - Disneyland for the sons of working class Eastern Europeans.

Their Dad was a handsome, rough and tough truck driver of Hungarian descent and Mom was a gentle, supportive book binder of Ukrainian descent. Dad had an eye for the ladies, or as George says in the doc, he was "very carnal". This resulted in continual friction, but the boys dismiss it as typical family squabbling. I was especially fond of George's recollections of how his own Dad eventually came around to partially accepting their love of filmmaking when the boys started putting lots of nudity in the work. Dad, as it turns out, was an avid collector of "Red Reels" (8mm porno films for home consumption) and he fervently encouraged the boys. Gotta love it when fathers and sons find common ground. That said, George drew a line at refusing his Dad's request for some private porn requests.

Very few stones are left unturned in Kroot's documentary. We get generous footage and background on George's work as a film professor and mentor at the San Francisco Art Institute, a tremendously moving section on George's creative and romantic relationship with the late filmmaker Curt McDowell (Thundercrack), some wonderful early recollections on George and Mike's career as graphic artists on Madison Avenue (yikes!) as well as George's friendship with Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffiths that led to his work as a cartoonist in "Arcade" and Bill Griffiths's astounding revelation that Zippy the Pinhead was partially inspired by George. Mike's illustrations of gay porno comic books, George's incredible Weather Diaries, the brothers' devotion to caring for their aging (now deceased) Mother and even the differences in approach to storytelling when the brothers work apart are additional nuggets spread about Kroot's Table de cinéma.

While the wealth of information in this movie is staggering, it NEVER feels like everything but the kitchen sink. Each piece of information, each recollection, each clip, each interview, each piece of the puzzle that is the Kuchar Brothers is meticulously placed and honed to move the story forward in an entertaining and informative fashion.

Most importantly, we are blessed with George Kuchar's secret to providing the exquisite turds on display in so many of his movies. For this, my life is now complete.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Here are some terrific Kuchar related materials including the It Came From Kuchar on DVD at Amazon that you can order directly from the links below and in so doing support the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

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