Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)
In BlackBerry, the rise of a blue-chip tech company sets the stage for the dissolution of a longstanding friendship. Sound familiar? Just wait ‘til you hear the score. Directed by Matt Johnson, it tells the true story of Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, software engineers who founded the company Rim in the mid-80s and later invented a cellphone that could handle email. The film begins on the day when they meet Jim Basillie (Glenn Howerton), a Rottweiler who, alongside Lazaridis’ genius, turned Rim’s invention (only later christened BlackBerry) into the world’s most ubiquitous mobile device––at least for a time. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Hole in the Fence (Joaquín del Paso...
BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)
In BlackBerry, the rise of a blue-chip tech company sets the stage for the dissolution of a longstanding friendship. Sound familiar? Just wait ‘til you hear the score. Directed by Matt Johnson, it tells the true story of Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, software engineers who founded the company Rim in the mid-80s and later invented a cellphone that could handle email. The film begins on the day when they meet Jim Basillie (Glenn Howerton), a Rottweiler who, alongside Lazaridis’ genius, turned Rim’s invention (only later christened BlackBerry) into the world’s most ubiquitous mobile device––at least for a time. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Hole in the Fence (Joaquín del Paso...
- 6/2/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 675 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.
Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.
Being There (1979)
Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...
Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.
Being There (1979)
Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...
- 12/16/2015
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Holliday Heart: Winter Reimagines the Peripheral Flotsam and Jetsam of Famed Interview
The nagging obscurity of Shirley Clarke’s famed 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason remains a notable absence on many lists noting the best examples of the format, a title only recently made available within the Us in late 2014. An unforgettable portrait of a gay black hustler named Jason Holliday interviewed by the famed documentarian (who had previously won on Oscar for Robert Frost: a Lover’s Quarrel with the World in 1963) over one twelve hour period in 1966, it’s a case study representative of the limitations humans have in being able to completely understand another’s experiences based on social demarcations of race, gender, class, etc. Director Stephen Winter reimagines what went on between takes during the famed interview that transpired in the Chelsea hotel, dramatizing some of the salacious hypotheses surrounding the source film, such as Clarke...
The nagging obscurity of Shirley Clarke’s famed 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason remains a notable absence on many lists noting the best examples of the format, a title only recently made available within the Us in late 2014. An unforgettable portrait of a gay black hustler named Jason Holliday interviewed by the famed documentarian (who had previously won on Oscar for Robert Frost: a Lover’s Quarrel with the World in 1963) over one twelve hour period in 1966, it’s a case study representative of the limitations humans have in being able to completely understand another’s experiences based on social demarcations of race, gender, class, etc. Director Stephen Winter reimagines what went on between takes during the famed interview that transpired in the Chelsea hotel, dramatizing some of the salacious hypotheses surrounding the source film, such as Clarke...
- 10/23/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Set in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, the film Portrait of Jason is notorious for its white director’s humiliation of its black star. A new movie revisits the story
On the afternoon of Friday 9 June 1967, a select group was ushered into a fourth-floor screening room at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to view the latest film by Shirley Clarke, the Oscar-winning director and longtime participant in the downtown scene. The guestlist included Andy Warhol, filmmakers Elia Kazan and Da Pennebaker, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg and jazz critic Nat Hentoff.
Clarke must have particularly relished inviting Warhol, since the star of her project, Jason Holliday, was someone he had been trying to film. Disdainful of Warhol’s presence on the scene (he tried to move into the Chelsea Hotel, but couldn’t hack it, Clarke would scornfully tell people), she screened a film that afternoon which in...
On the afternoon of Friday 9 June 1967, a select group was ushered into a fourth-floor screening room at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to view the latest film by Shirley Clarke, the Oscar-winning director and longtime participant in the downtown scene. The guestlist included Andy Warhol, filmmakers Elia Kazan and Da Pennebaker, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg and jazz critic Nat Hentoff.
Clarke must have particularly relished inviting Warhol, since the star of her project, Jason Holliday, was someone he had been trying to film. Disdainful of Warhol’s presence on the scene (he tried to move into the Chelsea Hotel, but couldn’t hack it, Clarke would scornfully tell people), she screened a film that afternoon which in...
- 9/19/2015
- by Tavia Nyong'o
- The Guardian - Film News
Read More: The Wisdom of Jason Holliday: 10 Quotes From Shirley Clarke's 'Portrait of Jason,' the Original Viral Star In 1966, legendary underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke invited the exuberant New York street hustler Jason Holliday to her Manhattan apartment and filmed him telling colorful stories from his life over the course of a 12-hour shoot. The resulting one-man odyssey, "Portrait of Jason," finds the alternately hilarious and tragic figure proudly explaining his lifestyle while growing increasingly intoxicated. A radical, progressive look at an openly gay metropolitan figure both ahead of his time and trapped by it, "Portrait of Jason" was warmly received but only found broader acclaim decades later, when a restored version was released in 2013. Now, filmmaker Stephen Winter has revisited the project with "Jason and Shirley," a freewheeling, comedic look at the rambunctious "Portrait of Jason" production that imagines the...
- 7/10/2015
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Milestone Film & Video is one of the finest and most well-established U.S. distributor of docs and arthouse features. They have such great films like the classic "I am Cuba" and have been working on compiling all they can on the filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") whose film in the 60s, "The Cool World," made me one of her avid fans forever. Their film, "Portrait of Jason," also by Clarke, premiered at Idfa 2014, the premium doc festival in the world and I was lucky enough to see it at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. Its clarity and humanity moved me so much that I feel obliged to publish this here. When Amy Heller and Dennis Doros of Milestone speak the way they do in the following blog, I listen. Since the film "Jason and Shirley" just premiered at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline Film Festival, both wonderful events, I think it is important for everyone to know what they have to say. "In 25 years, we have never weighed in on anyone else's film (except to recommend those we love), but Dennis and I felt the need to go on the record about Stephen Winter's new feature Jason and Shirley."
'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'
by Amy Heller
In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.
Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.
Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.
We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.
We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).
We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.
So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."
Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.
They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”
Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.
Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.
Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.
We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.
And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."
Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":
In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.
In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.
In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.
In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.
There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)
“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.
In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.
The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.
Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.
The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.
On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."
Yours in cinema,
Amy Heller and Dennis Doros
Milestone Films...
'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'
by Amy Heller
In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.
Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.
Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.
We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.
We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).
We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.
So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."
Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.
They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”
Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.
Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.
Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.
We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.
And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."
Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":
In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.
In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.
In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.
In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.
There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)
“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.
In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.
The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.
Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.
The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.
On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."
Yours in cinema,
Amy Heller and Dennis Doros
Milestone Films...
- 6/23/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
“Free love? That’s the only love I can afford!” Stephen Winter’s Jason and Shirley is no mere behind-the-scenes reenactment of the circumstances that would add up to Shirley Clarke’s seminal 1967 Portrait of Jason, but rather a full-bore interrogation of what Clarke’s documentary cost its participants during shooting. To those ends, the film’s rendition of gay hustler Jason Holliday (portrayed here by Jack Waters) is remarkable: it sketches out Jason’s dreams and nightmares in brazenly emotional flights of inward fancy, made all the more jarring by Waters’ unflinching, body-pressurized performance. As Clarke, writer Sarah Schulman gives off an uncanny with-it […]...
- 6/17/2015
- by Steve Macfarlane
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
“Free love? That’s the only love I can afford!” Stephen Winter’s Jason and Shirley is no mere behind-the-scenes reenactment of the circumstances that would add up to Shirley Clarke’s seminal 1967 Portrait of Jason, but rather a full-bore interrogation of what Clarke’s documentary cost its participants during shooting. To those ends, the film’s rendition of gay hustler Jason Holliday (portrayed here by Jack Waters) is remarkable: it sketches out Jason’s dreams and nightmares in brazenly emotional flights of inward fancy, made all the more jarring by Waters’ unflinching, body-pressurized performance. As Clarke, writer Sarah Schulman gives off an uncanny with-it […]...
- 6/17/2015
- by Steve Macfarlane
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
The 57th BFI London Film Festival line-up has officially been revealed, and it is led by a slew of incredibly promising films, many of which have already been buzzing on the festival circuit, and a number of which will be making their debuts here in London.
As previously announced, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips will open the festival next month, and John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks will close it, book-ending the festival with Tom Hanks leading two highly prominent, Oscar-primed movies.
Stephen Frears’ Philomena was also previously announced as the Lff American Express Gala, with The Epic of Everest announced as the Lff Archive Gala.
And leading the line-up alongside them this year will be some of the most Oscar-buzzed movies of 2013, including Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (in 3D), Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem,...
As previously announced, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips will open the festival next month, and John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks will close it, book-ending the festival with Tom Hanks leading two highly prominent, Oscar-primed movies.
Stephen Frears’ Philomena was also previously announced as the Lff American Express Gala, with The Epic of Everest announced as the Lff Archive Gala.
And leading the line-up alongside them this year will be some of the most Oscar-buzzed movies of 2013, including Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (in 3D), Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem,...
- 9/4/2013
- by Kenji Lloyd
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Regular readers of S & A know that we have been extensively covering the restoration and progress of Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason.The film is an unflinching one man portrait of "Jason Holliday, “a queer, black hustler who built his entire life around transgressing the boundaries of segregated, pre-Stonewall America. Out, proud, and politically incorrect."As Jason recounts his story to Clarke, as well as her collaborator Carl Lee and the audience, he tells unbelievable tall tales, performs routines, and challenges the decorum of Clarke, Lee and the audience alike.The restored film made its premiere at the Berlin Film...
- 5/27/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Any regular readers of S & A know that we have been extensively covering the restoration and progress of Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason. The film is an unflinching one man portrait of Jason Holliday, “a queer, black hustler who built his entire life around transgressing the boundaries of segregated, pre-Stonewall America. Out, proud, and politically incorrect." As Jason recounts his story to Clarke, as well as her collaborator Carl Lee and the audience, he tells unbelievable tall tales, performs routines, and challenges the decorum of Clarke, Lee and the audience alike. The restored film made its premiere at the Berlin Film...
- 5/2/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
"I used to work [while wearing] sunglasses," laughs Jason Holliday (né Aron Payne) in the documentary Portrait of Jason. "That was so they couldn't see what I was thinking." Though speaking of his specific circumstances working as a houseboy for often racist bosses, Holliday also—in two succinct lines—lays bare the survival tactic at the core of that most imitated and misunderstood of cultural commodities: black American cool. The roles of affect and artifice in mediating the realities of racism, homophobia, and poverty are perhaps the true subjects of Shirley Clarke's landmark doc, now gorgeously restored by the technicians at Milestone Film.
Shot over the course of 12 booze-fueled hours one night in December 1966, and released the next year, Po...
Shot over the course of 12 booze-fueled hours one night in December 1966, and released the next year, Po...
- 4/17/2013
- Village Voice
By 1966, underground New York City filmmaker Shirley Clarke had already directed two of her seminal works: the trailblazing mockumentary "The Connection," about a bunch of junkies in a Greenwich Village loft, and the Harlem ghetto portrait "The Cool World." Clarke could have stopped there and provided an ample overview of various social tensions at the center of bohemian counterculture and African American society in the throes of Civil Rights. But then came "Portrait of Jason," which boiled down many of the earlier films conceits on race and class into a single memorable subject. Jason Holliday (birth name: Aaron Payne), a black, gay hustler with a lifetime of stories to share, spent a booze-filled evening in Clarke's apartment rambling about his wild experiences and sharing his darkest feelings. In one take after another, Holliday bares his soul, boasts of his profession, bursts into tears over his regrets and inexplicably giggles at his own private jokes.
- 4/15/2013
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Tambay has been covering Milestone Films' heralded effort to raise funds to restore pioneering filmmaker Shirley Clarke's groundbreaking 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason, which chronicles the life of a gay black man - Jason Holliday (real name Aaron Payne) - Here. Having seen the film many years ago, I can attest that it's a remarkable and honest film that is never less than compelling. Fortunately, Milestone's fundraising efforts were successful and they completed the restoration work on Clarke's film, and announced that news would be coming soon about an eventual release. Now Milestone has just announced that the restored Portrait of Jason will make...
- 2/12/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
An update, since we pushed the Kickstarter campaign here on S&A... Success to the folks at Milestone Films who just made their fundraising goal, raising $26,000 at the end of the campaign (yesterday); they originally asked for $25,000. Recapping... Considered a landmark of non-fiction film, Shirley Clarke's Portrait Of Jason (a film I first saw in a rare screening at in NYC 2 +years ago, from a not-so good print) is, as the title suggests, a portrait of Jason Holliday (real name: Aaron Payne) - a flamboyant, charismatic cabaret performer. Filmed over the course of one night at the Chelsea Hotel, in New York City, Holliday dishes on a myriad of...
- 12/11/2012
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Considered a landmark of non-fiction film, Shirley Clarke's Portrait Of Jason (a film I first saw in a rare screening at in NYC 2 +years ago, from a not-so good print) is, as the title suggests, a portrait of Jason Holliday (real name: Aaron Payne) - a flamboyant, charismatic cabaret performer. Filmed over the course of one night at the Chelsea Hotel, in New York City, Holliday dishes on a myriad of topics: racism, homophobia, parental abuse, show business, drugs, sex, prostitution, the law, and much more. As the night progresses, he pretty much tells the story of his life, gets increasingly intoxicated, and thus raw with his revelations, eventually ending up in...
- 11/5/2012
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
I recently interviewed a prominent—Oscar-winning, yet!—director for the DGA Quarterly, and the piece isn't yet published so I feel it wouldn't be quite cricket to discuss it overmuch, except that one thing this director said is quite germane to what I'm gonna talk about here, and the thing he said was, when all is said and done in cinema, nothing can hold your attention more than a human face.
It could have been based on this principle that Shirley Clarke made Portrait of Jason (1967) the way she did. Almost all of this nearly 100-minute film is made up of close-ups or medium closeups of its subject, one Jason Holliday (his latest name; his logic is that changing personas changes one's luck, and he announces that having been "Jason" since returning to New York after some travels, things have worked out nicely for him), a one-time "houseboy" turned hustler who,...
It could have been based on this principle that Shirley Clarke made Portrait of Jason (1967) the way she did. Almost all of this nearly 100-minute film is made up of close-ups or medium closeups of its subject, one Jason Holliday (his latest name; his logic is that changing personas changes one's luck, and he announces that having been "Jason" since returning to New York after some travels, things have worked out nicely for him), a one-time "houseboy" turned hustler who,...
- 3/16/2010
- MUBI
Considered a landmark of non-fiction film in its day, Shirley Clarke’s Portrait Of Jason, is, as the title suggests, a portrait of Jason Holliday, a daringly flamboyant, charismatic cabaret performer. Filmed over the course of one night at the Chelsea Hotel, in New York City, Holliday dishes on a myriad of topics — racism, homophobia, parental abuse, show business, drugs, sex, prostitution, the law, and much more.
As the night progresses, he pretty much tells the story of his life, gets increasingly intoxicated, and raw with his revelations, eventually ending up in quite an intensely emotionally vulnerable state.
Unavailable for many years, the late Ingmar Bergman called it “the most fascinating I’ve ever seen.” IFC theatres in New York City will screen it on Monday, March 29th, at 8Pm, with an introduction by Rodney Evans, writer/director of Brother To Brother.
Here’s a clip from the film:...
As the night progresses, he pretty much tells the story of his life, gets increasingly intoxicated, and raw with his revelations, eventually ending up in quite an intensely emotionally vulnerable state.
Unavailable for many years, the late Ingmar Bergman called it “the most fascinating I’ve ever seen.” IFC theatres in New York City will screen it on Monday, March 29th, at 8Pm, with an introduction by Rodney Evans, writer/director of Brother To Brother.
Here’s a clip from the film:...
- 2/26/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
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