Director: Kelvin Mao
Cast: Billy Campbell, Thomas Jane, Joe Johnston, Dave Stevens
Have I Seen It Before: No. I’m finding it a real failure of our supposedly comprehensive algorithmic age that this film hasn’t come across my radar up until this point.
Did I Like It: My normal critical scale for a documentary might be a little moot in this situation. The film is competently—if not engrossingly—shot. It might be at home as a special feature on a 35th anniversary re-release of The Rocketeer (1991). It has an unusually strong level of access to its subject, offering up previously unseen footage of Stevens pontificating on his work, which makes the film all that more special.
But neither of those mattered all that much, when we come to the third criteria: My level of interest in the subject. I love Stevens work, and not just the movie it wrought. Reading The Rocketeer is a completely different experience from seeing the (still relentlessly terrific) Disneyification of Stevens character. His predilections that wouldn’t have fit with the mouse house are relentlessly terrific for completely different reasons, and this film certainly examines those. Bettie Page—and Stevens friendship with the real Page—is all throughout this film. I might have liked a little more study of his affection for pre-Superman pulp heroes, but that aspect speaks for itself in the work, and if you don’t pick up on it, no documentary is going to make it clearer for you.
I feel I know Stevens the man a bit better—or as well as anyone did—after seeing the film and the people whose lives he impacted. He was an artist who was never fully satisfied with his work, despite our collective adoration of it. He was also fond of curvy women. Respect. To gain that knowledge and respect has got to be the reason we started making documentaries, wouldn’t you think?