Eight Months | Eight Documentaries
You may have noticed that there wasn’t a doc-of-the-month for October. In addition to running The WALT as a solo operation, I’m also a multimedia consultant & producer and as luck would have it, I have a lot of great clients at the moment. That said, I wanted to recognize a lovely influx of subscribers to The WALT, largely thanks to the kindness of two recent interviewees, Blake Kasemeier (
) and Eddie Lee Sausage (Oblivion Books/Shut Up Little Man).To sum up The WALT, it’s an online forum for discovery and thoughtful discussion of documentary films. At the top of each month (except this one, clearly), I send out a documentary pick, how to watch it for free, and a few discussion prompts. At the end of the month, I share supplemental films, TV shows, music, books, etc. that pair well with the month’s doc. I sometimes create a custom playlist inspired by the film. And if I can wrangle it, I release an interview with someone either involved with the film directly or a person who is relevant to the doc’s theme.
Since some of you are new and others may not have been able to get to some of the films presented over the past eight months, here’s a cheat sheet to get everyone caught up.
February, 2024 Doc of the Month: The Thief Collector (2022)
A captivating crime documentary about the heist of one of the most valuable paintings of the 20th century, Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre," which was brazenly cut from its frame in 1985 while hanging at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Thirty-two years later, the painting was found hanging in the New Mexico home of an eccentric married couple with a keen eye for great works but a very unconventional method of collecting them.
Visit the original post | Skip to the comments | Watch our interview with Director, Allison Otto
March, 2024 Doc of the Month: DOWNWIND (2023)
Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Mercury, Nevada? The latter was the site for the testing of 928 nuclear weapons on American soil from 1951 to 1992. The fallout is still lethally impacting Americans today. DOWNWIND features interviews with Michael Douglas, Lewis Black, and narration by Martin Sheen. Matthew Modine served as Executive Producer.
Visit the original post | Skip to the comments | Watch our interview with Directors, Mark Shapiro & Brian Miller
April, 2024 Doc of the Month: Art of the Prank (2015)
The great media prankster, Joey Skaggs, wants to fool the world media AGAIN, and, with the most complex hoax of his career in the pipeline, he now must use every trick in his prankster's arsenal to make it work. Art of the Prank is an emotional journey following the evolution of artist Joey Skaggs-a fierce proponent of independent thinking and the man who has turned the media hoax into an art form. With unprecedented access to the man and his archives, the 95-minute documentary interweaves a current unfolding hoax with a look behind-the-scenes at some classic performance pieces (all reported as fact by a wide range of prestigious journalists) plus commentary from co-conspirators and others.
Visit the original post | Skip to the comments | Watch our interview with Joey Skaggs
May, 2024 Doc of the Month: Origin Story (2018)
When Kulap Vilaysack was 14, she took her father's side in an argument and her mother replied, "Why are you defending him? He's not your real dad." Twenty years later, she's finally ready to learn what that means. Origin Story is a feature-length, international quest with stops in Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Laos to meet the biological father she never knew. On the road, unforeseen revelations strike as hilarious or heartbreaking, rarely in between. An avid comic book reader with a vigilante character named after her in the DC Comics universe, she must summon the courage of Katharsis, because each question is another step out on a limb. Origin Story is a deeply personal but universally relevant tale of immigration, conflict, addiction, and personal responsibility. Interviewees in the film include extended family, husband Scott Aukerman, and close friends, like Sarah Silverman, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael and Howard Kremer.
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June, 2024 Doc of the Month: Workhorse Queen (2021)
By day, Ed Popil worked as the manager of a telemarketing center in post-industrial Rochester, New York for 18 years. By night, he transformed into drag queen Mrs. Kasha Davis. Not your average aspiring pop star drag queen, Mrs. Kasha Davis is a 1960’s 1960s-era housewife trying to liberate herself from domestic toil through performing at night in secret – an homage to Ed’s own mother. After seven years of auditioning to compete on reality television show RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ed Popil was finally cast onto the show and thrust into a full-time entertainment career at the late age of 44.
Visit the original post | Skip to the comments | Watch our interview with Ed Popil/Mrs. Kasha Davis
July, 2024 Doc of the Month: The Last Blockbuster (2020)
One of the magic things about summer is the excitement of the new blockbuster movies coming to theaters. It’s only appropriate that the world’s biggest video rental service, boasting over 9,000 stores, was called Blockbuster Video. But even though it may seem like this one-time juggernaut is now extinct, one store remains in Bend, OR. Director Taylor Morden brings us on a journey of nostalgia and hope as celebrities recount their experiences working at or renting from Blockbuster, as well as the story of Sandi, the last Blockbuster’s manager, who is keeping the store afloat despite having the odds stacked against her.
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August, 2024 Doc of the Month: The Endless Summer (1966)
Back in 1964, filmmaker Bruce Brown grabbed some cameras, piles of film, and a couple of surfer pals and globetrotted their way from beach to beach.
Visit the original | Skip to the comments | Watch our interview with Blake Kasemeier
September, 2024 Doc of the Month: Shut Up Little Man! (2011)
In the late 1980s, friends Eddie and Mitchell moved into a crappy San Francisco apartment next to the loudest and grumpiest old men. The neighbors’ arguments were so ridiculous that Eddie and Mitchell did what by 2024 standards would be considered pretty standard, but to record audio of the squabbling oddballs next door in the 80s was not common practice. But what else are you supposed to do when they say things to each other like “Shut up, little man!”
Visit the original | Skip to the comments | Listen to our interview with Eddie Lee Sausage
