I think Stephen Kessler watched too much TV growing up. But let me get back to that.
This documentary film, opening July 13th at SIFF Film Center on the Seattle Center campus, is about Paul Williams, the five-foot-two (in his own words) formerly-blond baby-faced singer/songwriter most popular in the 1970s, who wrote songs for the Carpenters, the Muppets, Barbra Streisand and many others. It is not about Paul Williams the rock-critic founder of “Crawdaddy!” magazine, or Paul Williams the singer for the Temptations, or Paul Williams the singer for Juicy Lucy, or Paul Williams the saxophonist, or Paul Williams the UK composer. “One of them should have adopted a memorable nickname to live by,” comments my friend Brian, not comprehending (just as I didn’t at the time), how many memorables we’d need.
But to director Stephen Kessler there is, was, and shall be only be one Paul Williams. And any American with a TV, record shop, or movie theater close by in the 1970s would most likely agree. Anyone born after 1975 might not know the name/music/tunes—I’ve got documentary proof, from various bar and living-room pollings, that Charles Lindbergh, the Beatles, Jim Brown, Tori Amos, Kevin Seal, and the term “computer hacker” mean nothing to Generation Z, Generation AA, whatever we’re calling people born after Reagan left office.
But if you fit the demographic, you probably at least remember him with the Muppets. He loved those Muppets and they loved Paul Williams right back. He co-wrote the songs to the original “Muppet Movie.”
I found Williams through his songs for the tweener gangster film “Bugsy Malone”—although “tweener” would not come along as a term for a few decades more. Obsessed with “Bugsy,” I got the soundtrack as a gift, learned all the songs, jumped around in the living room with my brother playing gangsters (“gangstas” lay in the future too), and even made up my own version of the film, although those details you’ll have to beat out of me.
Later I lamented the film’s limitations—for starters, that all the “musical” kids were lip-synching to adult singing voices. I wasn’t allowed to stay up late enough to catch Williams’ incessant late-night talk-show hostings, though I saw him in a ruffled-shirt tuxedo enough to get him mixed up with Meat Loaf. I never saw “A Star Is Born,” didn’t get to “Phantom Of The Paradise,” which I love, until even later. I went punk rock with a side order of Vanilla Fudge. Paul Williams slid away from my forebrain.
Still, I’ve never forgotten “Bugsy Malone’s melancholy, resigned-to-loneliness “Ordinary Fool”—covered more smoothly, less jazzily, and less impressively by the Carpenters – or the melancholy, resigned-to-fate “Tomorrow” (no relation to the sunny “Annie” number) and its chilling line, “A playground always locked/Trains no winning teams.” I’ve used that one a few times when I felt someone holding more than his/her/their fair share of the chips.
So Paul Williams, and everyone else on the tube, kept a lonely, misfit-feeling Stephen Kessler company. This much I understand. This much I sympathize with. But when Kessler finally meets Paul Williams, something strange happens. Paul Williams isn’t the man that Stephen Kessler wants Paul Williams to be.
And Stephen Kessler tries to turn Paul Williams into the Paul Williams that Stephen Kessler created in his own head. Kessler uses editing, editorializing, and a whole slew of 1970s TV clips to bolster this image of Paul Williams.
But Paul Williams simply says, as calmly as he can to this man who’s invaded his life and seems ready to stomp his own imprint onto that life, that he is not that Paul Williams anymore. Paul Williams is clean, and sober and works occasionally as a drug dependency counselor. He’s happy to have some people remember him. He’s happy to have something resembling a musical career. But his major concern is family. And family, beyond his wife, who tries to be polite, and a few obligatory grinning-with-the-kids shots, is not something he’s willing to share with this interloper.
I haven’t seen a documentary in a long time where the subject pushes back so hard against the filmmaker. I haven’t seen one in a long time where the subject’s denials crack and finally shatter the convenient illusion of a smooth narrative flow. Stephen Kessler finally gets the shot he wants, the one of the Oscar, and the Grammies, sitting on Paul Williams’ shelf. Paul Williams would rather you concentrate on the man, named Paul Williams, who stands over in the kitchen, unobtrusively doing the dishes.
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