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      Michael Roemer, Maker of Acclaimed but Little-Seen Films, Dies at 97

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      His “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry” drew critical praise but never found an audience. He said he took “a certain pride in not having been a success.”Michael Roemer, an independent filmmaker who earned critical praise for his keen understanding of character and his sensitive exploration of relationships in a slender portfolio that included “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry,” died on Tuesday at his home in Townshend, Vt. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Ruth Sanzari.Mr. Roemer’s interest in moviemaking began at Harvard in the late 1940s. In 1939, when he was 11 and living in Berlin, he and his sister had been among thousands of Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany and sent to England. There he would stay — writing plays to improve his English, he said — until he came to the United States in 1945, at the end of World War II.His career as a director began when NBC gave him the opportunity to make “Cortile Cascino,” a 46-minute documentary about slum life in Palermo, Sicily, that he made with Robert M. Young. It was also the start of a pattern in which his films would all but disappear for decades at a time.“Cortile Cascino” depicted a Sicilian life so grim that NBC executives balked at putting it on the air. It did not reappear until it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993.Long delay also befell “Nothing but a Man,” directed by Mr. Roemer and written by him and Mr. Young, a frequent collaborator. With Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln in central roles, it tells the story of a Black railroad worker married to a preacher’s daughter who struggles to maintain his dignity in the segregated Alabama of the early 1960s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      With ‘Dead Outlaw,’ the ‘Coroner to the Stars’ Is Getting One Last Act

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      For much of his early career, Thomas Noguchi spent his days as a civil servant toiling away in the basement of a building in downtown Los Angeles.But even in a city filled with larger-than-life celebrities, Noguchi, a Japanese immigrant, managed to become a household name. Because over a span of 15 years as the chief medical examiner of Los Angeles County, he inspected the bodies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate and many others to determine how they died. He was, as many around town called him, the “coroner to the stars.” And as such, he became something of a notorious star himself, delivering news that, he contends, people sometimes did not want to hear.“The public might not be ready, but I felt I had the responsibility to inform the public,” Noguchi, now 98, said in an interview at his home this month. “They might not accept it. But they actually heard it from the right source.”Now, more than four decades after he was demoted from his administrative post amid accusations of mismanagement, he is getting one last brush with fame. A fictionalized version of Noguchi pops up in several scenes in the Tony-nominated musical “Dead Outlaw,” and a new documentary about him, “Coroner to the Stars,” is making the rounds of the festival circuit. There’s even a new book.Thom Sesma singing the number “Up to the Stars” as Dr. Thomas Noguchi in “Dead Outlaw,” the Broadway musical about a long-lived corpse.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“With what I would find out from death investigations, the public and news people would be very interested in knowing what I feel,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Art Spiegelman Documentary Had Trump Criticism Removed Before Airing on Public TV

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      A segment in a documentary about the cartoonist Art Spiegelman was edited two weeks before it was set to air on public television stations across the country.The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels.Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump’s head — was a “breach of taste” that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series. But the filmmakers have questioned whether political considerations played a role. They have noted that earlier this year, according to Documentary Magazine, which first reported the “American Masters” decision, PBS postponed indefinitely a documentary set to air about a transgender video-gamer for fear of political backlash.Sams pointed out that their film had already been approved for broadcast — the filmmakers agreed it would be shown at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., so that certain obscenities would not need to be blurred or bleeped — and that the call came a week after a Capitol Hill hearing in which Congressional Republicans accused public television and radio executives of biased coverage (the executives denied that accusation in sworn testimony).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New Pee-wee Herman Documentary Peeks Inside the Playhouse

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      Though he is well-known for only one, the performer and writer Paul Reubens lived many lives.As the new documentary “Pee-wee as Himself” details, before he created his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, Reubens was a successful child actor in regional theater. Growing up in the circus town of Sarasota, Fla. (the longtime home of Ringling Bros.), he was surrounded early on by self-proclaimed freaks. He became an Andy Warhol-loving cinéaste; a serious collector of kitsch; and, by his 20s, an aspiring performance artist.Among the many revelations in the three-hour documentary — which premieres Friday on HBO, in two parts — is his acknowledgment that he is gay, and that he was out of the closet before deciding early to barricade back in.Reubens’s death, at age 70 in 2023, was another surprise; the cancer he lived with for years had been a secret to almost everyone. (The filmmakers, who captured 40 hours of footage with him, were unaware of his illness; he was still due to sit for his final interview.)In 2010, Reubens took a version of “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” which debuted originally in 1981, to Broadway. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times NYTCREDIT: Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEven more startling, and illuminating, is the audacity of Reubens’s lifelong ambitions — and his vast and continuing influence. During his heyday in the ’80s, with the hit movie “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and the Saturday morning children’s show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” he offered fans a world of outlandish creative possibility, where anyone could be anything they dreamed up. Also, chairs gave hugs, the floor talked, and a mechanical Abraham Lincoln cooked you pancakes.Pee-wee was bizarre at the time, too, but in retrospect, the global superstardom Reubens achieved is downright bonkers. With a B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, he viewed his creation as conceptual art. He also meant to be famous. He was an avant-gardist, but “he wanted to be a superstar,” said Matt Wolf, the director of the documentary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Review: ‘Pee-wee as Himself’ Finds the Man Behind the Man-Child

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      This fascinating though incomplete documentary tells Paul Reubens’s story despite the subject’s doubts about the project.The title of “Pee-wee as Himself,” the two-part documentary that airs Friday on HBO, is a bit of a ruse, or maybe a riddle.Pee-wee Herman, the manic, bow-tied man-child, was the greatest creation of Paul Reubens, who died in 2023. But Reubens was someone else, a self whose nature was obscured, sometimes by the overshadowing fame of his alter ego, sometimes by his own choice.The question that hangs over this fascinating and tantalizing film is how much Reubens the director, Matt Wolf, will get out of Reubens. Before his death, Reubens cooperated on the documentary — but not without reservations, which he airs from the first moment he appears onscreen.“I could have directed this documentary,” he says, but adds that he was told he would not have the appropriate perspective. In his interviews with Wolf, he still seems not entirely convinced. He wants to tell his story; he is not so sure he wants his story to be told for him. He wants to show us his nature, but it is not simply going to explode out of him as if somebody said the secret word on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”What unfolds, over more than three hours, is in part a public story: How Reubens channeled his genius into an anarchic creation that bridged the worlds of alternative art and children’s TV, then had his life derailed by trumped-up scandals that haunted him to the end.It is also partly a spellbinding private story about artistry, ambition, identity and control. What does it mean to become famous as someone else? (The documentary’s title refers to the acting credit in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” as a result of which Reubens remained largely unknown even as his persona became a worldwide star.) And what were the implications of being obscured by his creation, especially for a gay man in a still very homophobic Hollywood?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Deaf President Now!’ and the Biases of a Hearing World

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      The documentary recalls the 1988 protests that erupted at Gallaudet University when trustees rejected deaf candidates to lead it.In 1988, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University was preparing to announce its pick for the institution’s next president. That’s not an unusual task for a board. What’s unusual is what happened next, as told in “Deaf President Now!” (streaming on Apple TV+).Directed by Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim, the documentary plays like a high-stakes political thriller, but in an unconventional venue. The film chronicles the week of turmoil and transformation that followed the announcement of Elisabeth Zinser as president. (DiMarco is a Gallaudet alum.)Gallaudet University — founded in 1864 as a school for deaf and blind children, through a law signed by Abraham Lincoln — is the nation’s only liberal arts university designed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and it’s officially bilingual, with instruction in both English and American Sign Language. In 1988, however, Gallaudet had never had a deaf president. And Zinser, a hearing person with a background in nursing, had been chosen over two deaf, arguably more qualified candidates.To tell the story, “Deaf President Now!” weaves together archival footage and contemporary interviews with a number of the students and faculty, now middle-aged and older, who led or were involved in the protests. All of the interviewees, filmed against a simple black background, give their answers in ASL, with an off-camera voice (rather than subtitles) providing the translation for hearing audiences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘My Robot Sophia’: An Unsettling Look Into the Soul of a Machine

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      This film by Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle skirts gimmicks to examine a creator’s drive to build a humanoid device powered by artificial intelligence.In 2017, a robot named Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, a dubious move on many fronts. Real human women had only earned the right to drive a car in the country a month earlier, and robot citizenship was also, somewhat transparently, a publicity stunt. Sophia, which is humanoid and powered by a proprietary artificial intelligence engine created by Hanson Robotics, has participated in a number of stunts since then, including appearances on “The Tonight Show” and at a lucrative sale of its art during the 2021 NFT boom.All of these events and more appear in the new documentary “My Robot Sophia” (on digital platforms), but the film skirts gimmicks to go in a more tricky and unsettling direction. It’s an almost soulful portrait of the artist under capitalism, rather than another exposé on robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s a bit parallel to Alex Garland’s fictional film “Ex Machina.” And in the Frankensteinian tradition, the robot’s creator is not uncomplicated.The title of the film implies that Sophia belongs to someone. That someone is David Hanson, the chief executive of Hanson Robotics. A loner and an artist from a young age, he became fascinated with creating lifelike masks. His lab is crowded with them, rubber faces on little pedestals that seem, in the background of many shots, to be staring upward in open-mouthed wonder, or terror.That kind of image adds subtext, and it’s all the more astounding because it’s nonfiction. “My Robot Sophia” is littered with visual tells, and if you’re not actually watching with your eyes, you might miss what they’re saying. The two directors have experience telling these sorts of sprawling stories that require a lot of patience, time and observation — Jon Kasbe with “When Lambs Become Lions” and Crystal Moselle with “Skate Kitchen” and “The Wolfpack.” You see what they see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted’ Review: In the Deep End

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      The movie offers full-on immersion, or perhaps submersion, in the singer-songwriter’s musical world.Premises for documentaries don’t come much more casual than in “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,” a profile organized around exactly what the title says. As the singer-songwriter Swamp Dogg, born Jerry Williams Jr., awaits the completion of a custom paint job on his pool in Los Angeles, he hangs out on the patio with various friends (including, at one point, Johnny Knoxville of “Jackass”) who drop by to reminisce. The directors — Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson — observe.The movie offers full-on immersion, or perhaps submersion, in Swamp Dogg’s world. His daughter Dr. Jeri Williams, a neurologist (“I’ve got five daughters, but this is the main one,” Swamp Dogg says), likens his home in Northridge to a bachelor pad for “aging musicians.” For years, Swamp Dogg let some of his musical collaborators, like David Kearney, who performed as Guitar Shorty and died in 2022, and Larry Clemon, known as Moogstar, live there too.With Swamp Dogg as MC, the film dutifully checks off biographical highlights: how Little Jerry Williams came up through R&B beginning in the 1950s; how he changed his name to Swamp Dogg in 1970 (“Jerry Williams just seemed too soft”); how the politics of his music (he played in Jane Fonda’s touring anti-war show in 1971) led, he says, to questions from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.In addition, you’ll hear about how Swamp Dogg arranges the TVs in his home, about his recipe book (“If You Can Kill It I Can Cook It”) and about that time he put out an album of pets singing Beatles songs. At one point, the musician’s phone rings. He answers, “I’m in the middle of an interview. Call me later.” Somehow, an editor thought that was worth keeping — which should indicate how much this fans-only documentary gets bogged down with dull asides.Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool PaintedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More