A Lost Art

 

BOB ROSS: HAPPY ACCIDENTS, BETRAYAL & GREED (B) - For a guy who drew happy clouds and happy trees, he sure gets quite the melancholy treatment in this documentary biography. That's mainly because the film is more of a look at Bob Ross' sad-sack son, Steve, and less about the pleasant painter who entertained and inspired PBS audiences for years.

On my smart TV, there is a conglomeration of channels, some devoted to a single subject. One is a Bob Ross channel, airing the 11 seasons of his series from 30 years ago on a continuous loop, one painting appearing before your eyes every half hour. The visual and his voice are soothing, and can be a balm before bedtime. As you might expect, his life was not so placid. 

Documentarian Joshua Rofe's previous efforts seem to have a grit to them. Here he digs for the conflict behind the smile and the frizzy perm. Rofe targets Anne and Walt Kowalski, the gurus who backed Ross at the beginning and eventually took over his empire after Ross died of cancer at 52 in 1994, controlling his intellectual property to this day. Steve Ross spins tales going back to his childhood. He chafed at his dad's efforts to push him to paint in front of the camera and at his dad's apparent infidelities.

Friends and former colleagues of Bob Ross are on hand to give a sense of early camaraderie and an appreciation for the paint-by-numbers genre of pulp picture-making. That includes Gary and Kathwren Jenkins, whose own niche industry in flower-drawing was undermined by the rapacious Kowalskis. Rofe spins a sort of brooding soap opera, a paean to a more innocent but repressed era. You may learn a lot about Ross, but you might prefer to skip this and instead prefer to bliss out in the Mr. Rogers bubble of his time-warp, never-ending world of yesteryear. Either way, happy viewing.

BRESLIN AND HAMILL: DEADLINE ARTISTS (2018) (B+) - This reverent, gauzy look back at the 20th century era of the gruff newspaper columnists focuses on Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, two New York legends and masters of the crafts of reporting and writing. Three next-gen journalists, including former media critic Jonathan Alter, share directing duties to bring to life the accomplishments of the brawler Breslin and the smooth-tongued Hamill.

Talking heads include a mix of former colleagues, longtime contemporaries, and family members to give a well-rounded picture of two guys who banged out column after column for decades. Breslin bristles at the term "journalist" -- "I'm a reporter." And he was; he literally wrote the book and was the shining star for new journalism, with even Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese on hand to defer to the master. Breslin, as always, comes across as a warts-and-all, emotionally damaged champion of the working class. The documentary doesn't gloss over his outburst against a Korean co-worker in the 1990s but puts his postwar persona in perspective. It features all his greatest hits, including JFK's gravedigger and the Son of Sam killer.

Hamill earns kudos for his more literary (but no more powerful) writing style, and he is admired for his way with the ladies (including Jackie Onassis, Shirley MacLaine and Linda Ronstadt). His battle with the publisher of the New York Post is fondly recalled. (Both men eventually cycled through just about every paper in New York except for the Times.)

The two men -- who have died since this was released three years ago -- sit together for a contemporary final set of interviews. They come off as proud of their accomplishments but not overly egotistical. Their contemporaries are reverent but not starry-eyed. This is an ode to an old style of newspaper work, and it's a valentine to a rougher, livelier era that no longer exists, for better and for worse.