With brother David, helped create the cinema verité documentary.
The Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter (1970) -- Directed with David Maysles and Charlotte Mitchell Zwerin. Everyone concentrates on the guy being stabbed to death in this movie, but that's only a small part of it. The only thing I'll say about that is you'd never see anyone stabbed at a Belle and Sebastian concert. The entire movie is pretty entertaining, though, and (in spite of its title and subject matter) it's not really a movie about The Rolling Stones. I enjoyed it, and I'm not especially a fan. A dark little movie by the Maysles. B
The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit (1991) -- Directed with David Maysles, Susan Froemke, and Kathy Dougherty. Though this longer version was eventually released in 1991, the original 1964 version was released as What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA. It would be difficult to find that older title, and also pointless, since this is the definitive edit. The movie itself is an hour and a half of the height of Beatlemania, complete with screaming girls, Ed Sullivan, mop tops, and all the stuff we've come to love from the early days of the four most charming and uplifting motherfuckers to ever collectively walk this planet earth. The best parts of the movie work as "eye of the storm" footage, where we're right there with the Beatles themselves, relatively quiet in comparison to all the noise around, whether crammed inside a limo or up high on the balcony of a hotel room. We can be thankful the Maysles were around to grab this. A
Copyright (c) Nov 2005 by Rusty Likes Movies