My Wife and I rented the newly released documentary last night, and loved watching it, particularly the Vonnegut family home movies (I had been a Kickstarter donor years ago, but only gave $25, I think, so I didn't see my name listed as a Kickstarter donor at the end of the film. :)). The Vonnegut home films were amazing and gave important context to the information regarding Vonnegut's amazing and sometimes tragic, often happy, childhood. We loved the documentary's structure that follows a style of a Vonnegut novel--tell us the main person is going to die right at the start, and inject oneself as part of the story, along the lines of watching a kettle boil. The narrator or author affects his own story, and, in Vonnegutian fashion, why not just tell the truth, dammit? :)
However, I admit to being a bit surprised there was not more literary analysis, considering the biographers and lit profs interviewed--particularly for those books the documentary noted were ripped at the time of release, meaning Slapstick, Gallpagos, and especially Hocus Pocus. I know it was two hours plus already, but I think we could have withstood five more minutes to talk about how Vonnegut truly played with narrative arcs in the later novels, which went to Vonnegut's point of how little we know about Time with a capital T. And maybe a shout out to another person who, besides Kilgore Trout, appeared as a real life person in I believe three Vonnegut novels, Eugene Victor Debs.
The strangest things to me are: (1) making Jill Krementz look like a homewrecker, when Kurt left Jane because Jane embraced a sort of evangelical type of Christianity, which the creator of Bokononism and the Church of Jesus Christ, the Kidnapped could not abide. Vonnegut himself is made to look like the successful doctor spouse who leaves a marriage after the other spouse had paid for medical school. It hints at Kurt's falling out with Krementz, which was over Krementz's infidelity in the 1990s, and it is of a piece that Krementz is never interviewed to tell her side of the relationship. (2) There was no mention of son Mark's psychological challenges, when Mark himself wrote the very successful book, The Eden Express. These two sets of omissions cause me to believe Vonnegut children may have been dictating what was said or not said, even though most of the children got in their usual, and highly understandable, child-of-famous-people digs at Kurt for not being a good parent.
Still, I have long been a major fan of Robert Weide, having adored his Marx Bros. documentary which I saw in real time on PBS, and his later documentary on St. Lenny (well, not a saint by any means, but he was a martyr for free speech and all). My Wife and I were so pleased to be let in on the life journey he had with Vonnegut, the kind and loving phone messages Vonnegut would leave, and to get a glimpse into Weide's amazing life, particularly with his wonderful and courageous bride.
My Wife and I both happily sighed at the end of the film, and deeply felt Vonnegut's words about how being kind is a great thing to do as much as we can--though as a political activist, I admit to being frustrated when people will go out of their way to not enact kind policies to help each other, and instead allow or push policies that enable us to kill each other and the planet. Weide's use of the Vonnegut line about mother nature wanting to kill off us humans was also classic Vonnegut, to throw in lightheartedly something that is ultimately very ominous. :)
