Ethan Cohen “Jerry Lee Lewis: Mental Problems”: Film Review | skin 2022

I knew a record-breaking veteran who saw all the artists and named at least one of them after the big break. He swore that Jerry Lee Lewis was the greatest of them whom he had seen countless times, including several shows at the star’s home near Memphis. Ethan Cohen Jerry Lee Lewis: Troubles in the Mind That’s what this superstar really wanted every time a lesser friend scoffed at his claims: a performance-packed mixtape video that showed how even a man who rarely wrote his own songs could find a place in the rock and roll pantheon. .

And that’s basically it: individual acting clips, mostly shot for broadcast TV, with snippets of archival TV interviews stitched together for hints of personal portraits. Aside from Lewis and his interrogators, the only ones allowed to speak (very briefly) are his ex-wife Myra (a cousin he shamelessly married as a child) and another cousin, country singer Mickey Gill. Cohen never talks about his subject, especially to his colleagues, fans, and scientists who could shed light on this very prickly character. “Look at this guy’s game!” – It’s said in the movie and that’s enough.

Not being Cohen’s director (works with editor Tricia Cook, her husband) Problem It would make its debut at a less spectacular festival than Cannes, where reviews would include “Hell, they have some really great clips!” Big fireballs!, a 1989 biopic starring Dennis Quaid. A musician who specializes in music — say, Tom Zimney, who created the gorgeous portraits of Lewis contemporaries Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash — can still get funding for the non-fiction of his life, the release of a legend, and the sequel. their musical heritage. A movie like this now seems far less viable.

this does not mean Problem He delivers the soul of his subject with zero discretion; The thing is, celebrities who sit on talk show couches often don’t show their true selves. Even when she’s covering lengthy TV interviews, Lewis shapes things around her life at the time, and it’s hard to make certain claims, for example, that she was completely misunderstood when her marriage ended her rock career. -Seriously.

Usually, clips from talk shows show a friendly performer who, for example, refused to let others perform before or after him because his action was more than enough. He briefly talks about the Louisiana race belonging to blacks, which he stole as a child, but does not specify what he learned from local musicians. He talks about traveling to Sun Records after hearing Presley’s first singles and brags that he never needed a second recording while recording his own hits there. But these biographical landmarks are dirty enough that Cohen offers title cards that contain a brief description of his career before he takes his credit.

A surprising inclusion offers what could have led to another type of film about Lewis’ life and art: the audio recording shows Lewis having a heated argument with Sun’s Sam Phillips over the conflict between rock and roll and opinions. Christians that Lewis still had. Seemingly criticizing himself in the midst of recording these unique wonders, Lewis worries that he has a demon inside him and does nothing to save the audience. The singer’s demons are often mentioned here, but Cohen doesn’t try to unravel the mythology surrounding events like his bassist’s accidental shooting and the alleged threat to Elvis’ life.

The mixture of feelings about the sacred and the secular is not unique to this musician. Little Richard, poster boy for these conflicts, appears in the middle of the truck driver’s film “I’ll Fly Away”. (Another duet, recorded elsewhere, stars Tom Jones.) And we have a short music video of Lewis’ other cousin, the outrageous TV evangelist Jimmy Swagart.

All of the above could have been very provocative in a film that only focused on Lewis’ Gospel work. ᲡActually, Problem It appears to have originated from a gospel session documentation plan produced by T. Boone Burnett and Joe Henry for Lewis. The singer’s website still contains the 2020 announcement that Burnett and Kali Khoury were producing a documentary about these sessions.

That project became that project, and interviews with Cohen and Cook echo Burnett’s suggestion that they were performing a pandemic miracle that would have them filming again, at a time when COVID isolation made retirement too dull. problems in the mind It can be mainly applied to root rock dihydrates and Coen Brothers supercomputers. But if he convinced Ethan Cohen not to give up on the movie, it was a movie worth a look.