“You Can Call Me Bill,” a new first-person documentary about the life, career and philosophy of William Shatner, boldly goes where no film has gone before to present a contemplative look at that man whose life’s work encompasses everything from Kirk and commercial spokesperson, to pop singer and Shakespearean stage actor.
The many ups and downs, ins and outs, of Shatner’s career are on display. Clips from “Star Trek,” both the iconic television show and movies, and his myriad other projects (like “Boston Legal,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” “The Intruder” and “Incubus”) sit side-by-side archival footage and ephemera from the actor’s scrapbooks, set to a soundtrack of Shatner’s distinctive voice and cadence.
The result is something you don’t often find in celebrity documentaries. “You Can Call Me Bill” may be a tad self-indulgent, but the neither the actor or director Alexandre O. Philippe, can be accused of pulling punches.
It’s stream-of-consciousness, without input from any talking heads, save for the 91-year-old actor. In an in-depth, wide-ranging and often thoughtful interview the story is told in his own words. From the creation of Kirk, to the loneliness that has shaped his life to a sad story about his childhood pet dog, it is a raw portrait, that feels blessedly free of the meddling influence of protective publicists.
Shatner emerges as a thoughtful, yet maximalist guy, brimming with a big, theatrical personality and even bigger ideas. In touch with both his self-deprecating “Free Enterprise” persona, as well as his introspective side. His thoughts on acting and career should give fans the juice they want from a celebrity doc, but it’s the deeper stuff, his talk of death and what comes next that is most effective. Particularly effective, and emotional, is his recounting of his 2021 trip to space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space shuttle. “Our brains aren’t made to encompass the vastness of the things we’re talking about,” he says.
Perhaps the most striking revelation in the thought provoking “You Can Call Me Bill” is the extent to which the actor has adopted the “Star Trek” ethos of boldly going forward. Whether he goes where no man has gone before is up for conjecture, but after watching the doc, it’s clear he has rarely been anything but bold.
Formatted almost like a film school lecture, “Leap of Faith,” a new documentary about the making of “The Exorcist” and now streaming on Shudder, is a master class in how a classic movie was made.
In the almost fifty years after the release of a movie that was heralded as everything from “religious porn” to “pure cinematic terror,” “The Exorcist” has not lacked for critical analysis. Thousands of gallons of ink have been spilled printing books and articles on the subject while in the internet age everyone who has ever stepped into a theatre seems to have written something about the film. “Leap of Faith” does everyone who has ever posited an opinion on the film’s meaning one better. It goes to the source with an in-depth interview with the movie’s director William Friedkin.
Documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe goes long with the director on the creative process, nailing down the definitive stories of how the 1973 horror film came to be. Much of the information was covered in the 2014 autobiography, “The Friedkin Connection,” but here the director’s way with a story and Philippe’s use of visuals makes the stories cinematic.
This isn’t a casual fan doc. Friedkin and Philippe dig deep to uncover the film’s visual influences—everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1955 “Ordet” to Magritte’s “The Empire of Light” series—to how recording the score ended a long-time friendship. There is great detail on the casting, the filming of controversial scenes and why star Max von Sydow, who once played Jesus in a film, had so much trouble performing one of “The Exorcist’s” most pious and famous sequences.
Over and over Friedkin talks about following his instincts and making decisions that either seemed counterintuitive or deemed too costly by the studio. “I didn’t question my instincts,” he says, which I suppose is at least part of the reason the film is called “Leap of Faith.” There’s the obvious reason and then there’s the small leaps of faith that those working with Friedkin had to take along the way. Hearing about his battles with everyone from studio heads on down to get his vision to the screen is an interesting reminder of Hollywood when creative vison could trump corporate interference.
“Leap of Faith” isn’t a flashy film. It’s a detailed, if straightforward, making of documentary that connects the dots between the filmmaker and his faith in an interesting, if long winded way.
Alfred Hitchcock, knew how to scare the wits out of people. The shower scene in “Psycho,” for example, is a benchmark in cinematic fear. If he had any doubts about the effectiveness of that sequence they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from a father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in “Les Diaboliques” and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing “Psycho.” Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
“78/52,” a new documentary from Alexandre O. Philippe spends ninety minutes exploring not only why the fifty-two second scene continues to terrify but also how it changed cinema. Drawing its title from the 78 shot set-ups it took to film the scene, the movie is an exhaustive but not exhausting look the shower sequence.
A mix of fan info and academia, it covers some familiar territory but more intriguingly looks to experts like filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and editor Walter Murch to dissect the nuts and bolts of the scene. Shot-by-shot they get inside Hitchcock and collaborator Saul Bass’s mindset, delving into the decisions, both artistic and practical, that give the sequence its power. First hand recollections come from a new and spirited interview Janet Leigh’s nude model stand-in Marli Renfro and archival conversations with Hitchcock and Leigh.
“78/52” is likely the final word on the infamous shower scene. The level of detail will enthral film geeks and Hitchcockolytes but shouldn’t dissuade more casual viewers. The enthusiasm of several of the talking heads—most notably Elijah Wood—is infectious. We can learn how and why the scene works but their passion shows why the scene is so successful from a strictly personal point of view.
