Documentaries about acclaimed authors can often be formulaic; this honest and engaging study makes a refreshing difference. Robert B Weide, who has directed many episodes of TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as documentaries on the Marx brothers and Woody Allen and written the little-seen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night, now gives us a heartfelt personal film about Vonnegut himself – his hero, friend and father figure, and the writer of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and Player Piano.
Vonnegut mashed up literary fiction, sci-fi and standup comedy, making him a satirist and countercultural mainstreamer who tapped into the defiant spirit of the 60s. (Weide doesn’t mention Douglas Adams or Thomas Pynchon, though these are approximate comparisons I’d make.) This film is at least partly about Weide’s own story as a Vonnegut superfan since his high school days and his failure to complete his Vonnegut film for some 30 years, despite Vonnegut’s cheerful cooperation.
