At Sundance, Marlee Matlin and Pee-wee Herman take the celebrity doc to the next level
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PARK CITY, Utah — Welcome to a special Sundance Daily edition of the Wide Shot, a newsletter about the business of entertainment. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Good morning! It’s Friday, Jan. 24 and today’s forecast is for cloudy skies with a high temperature of 32 degrees.
Although the 2025 Sundance Film Festival is just getting underway, many eyes are already on 2027, when the event will have a new host: Boulder, Colo., Cincinnati or Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah.
With no announcement of a winner planned until long after this year’s edition is in the books, festival organizers have been tight-lipped about front-runners and dark horses. And as Times staff writer Mark Olsen reports today, each potential host has its pros and cons. How Sundance leadership will weigh novelty versus familiarity, cost versus culture and more remains to be seen, so to get a better sense of the search we asked boosters from Boulder, Cincy and SLC what those cities are bringing to the table — and what might help them bring Sundance (to a new) home.
READ MORE: Sundance is moving to one of 3 cities. Here’s what we know about their bids
The movies worth standing in line for
“Pee-wee as Himself” (Redstone Cinemas 2, 8:10 p.m.)
Through 40 hours of charming, chop-busting interviews, filmed over the course of a year before he became estranged from the project, Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens never discusses the cancer that would ultimately kill him, at age 70, in 2023. Yet in Matt Wolf’s extraordinary “Pee-wee as Himself,” the performer who for years hid his personal life behind the mask of his most beloved character reveals more about himself, and his work, than ever before. Aided by lifelong collector Reubens’ incomparable archive of still photographs and video footage, the portrait that emerges — sometimes humorously, sometimes sadly — is of a man fighting to reestablish control over his own story in the aftermath of the tabloid scandals that wrenched it away. Perhaps more important, though, the two-part docuseries perceptively and persuasively argues that Reubens, trained at the California Institute of the Arts, was more than the star of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” or “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” He was, in his commitment to Herman, his inventive world-building and his remarkable popularity, the greatest performance artist of the 20th century. — Matt Brennan
READ MORE: In deathbed audio, Paul Reubens recalled pain of being falsely labeled a pedophile
“Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” (Redstone Cinemas 1, 12:30 p.m.)
What the hearing viewer will notice first about Shoshannah Stern’s ingenious biographical documentary is not its silence. As Matlin scoffs at a studio description of her breakout performance in “Children of a Lesser God,” Deaf people don’t float through a soundless world — they have the noise in their heads to populate it. As such, “Not Alone Anymore” pops with built-in closed captioning and sustained attention to the expressiveness of sign language, revealing how filmmaker and subject perceive world as they unfurl it for us. (A single scene with Matlin’s hearing siblings possesses more thoughtful sound design than 90% of mainstream movies and TV shows.) Coupled with Matlin’s remarkable life, which has taken her from ingenue at the Oscars to domestic abuse survivor to political flash-point and back to the Oscars with “CODA,” Stern’s understanding, as a fellow Deaf person, elevates the film above your run-of-the-mill celebrity bio-doc. “Not Alone Anymore” is, in truth, something more like a manifesto, confronting hearing Hollywood with a sorry history and demanding better. As we should. — Matt Brennan
READ MORE: 8 movies to look out for at the Sundance Film Festival
Movers and shakers from around the fest
By the time it reaches its third act, “Ricky,” premiering 3 p.m. Friday at the Eccles in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, begins to unravel its protagonist’s progress so rapidly that you might find yourself on the edge or your seat — or watching it through your hands.
Director Rashad Frett’s feature debut, co-written with Lin Que Ayoung, follows its title character (played by Stephan James) as he navigates life outside prison for the first time since committing a robbery in his teens. And the many agonizing challenges Ricky faces along the way — holding down a job, commuting without a car, keeping his parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph) off his case — are derived from real life.
“We had a lot of consultants on this, both ex-offenders, families of ex-offenders,” Frett says. “A lot of things that we wrote about in the film were from actual instances that we heard of, either from our friends or family members, and we kind of just bashed it all together.”
Based on Frett’s thesis film at New York University and developed through the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program Labs, “Ricky,” shot in 20 days last summer in Frett’s hometown of Hartford, Conn., underscores the immediacy of its subject matter with a documentary-style aesthetic inspired by Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God,” Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” and Frett’s own work in nonfiction.
“My goal is to give the audience a visceral feeling,” Frett says. Mission accomplished.
The following has been edited and condensed.
Since you came up through the Sundance Labs, what does it mean to you to have your first feature in the official selection?
I was in shock. I teach directing, and I finished class and I was driving home and I got a call from Sundance, and they told me the great news, and I actually had to pull over for 45 minutes because I literally couldn’t drive. It took me many, many decades to get to this point. I’m truly humbled and honored and blessed to be in this position with my friends and colleagues.
In your director’s statement, you note that Ricky is a composite of ex-offenders in your own life.
Unfortunately, a good amount of my close friends and family members growing up in the inner city of Hartford went through the criminal justice system. And then when they tried to get out, I just watched them struggle. I watched the frustration of trying to get employed and getting turned away because of the record looming over their head. And I saw the recidivism. They felt like they had no choice but to resort back to their old ways, which in turn, unfortunately, landed [them] back in prison. Or, because a lot of my friends and family are of Caribbean descent, they would get deported. And they didn’t have any family down there because they’ve been away for so long.
The film also depicts the fiercely religious community that Ricky’s mom and parole officer both come out of. What is their spiritual world like and why did it make sense as a backdrop for this story?
I grew up in the church, and then, like Lin Que, went to Catholic school. We just always had it around us. Like, that’s my aunt that’s praying in the beginning of the movie. Growing up, this is what we would see: Friends that I went to church with, their arc was, they’re in church, and then in their teens, for whatever reason, get caught up in the streets. I’ve seen many times where someone was deported in a family, somebody of influence, and once they’re no longer around, [the person left behind], they kind of go off the rails.
There were times, growing up, I didn’t want to go to church. I was a kid. I just wanted to go play. So we kind of depicted that in the film, where Ricky’s getting prayed over in the prayer circle, and it’s like he doesn’t want to be there. The mom, the family, is trying to do whatever they can to help him transition, as best as they know how.
This question is a little bit lighter-hearted. I love the use of the word “deadass” in your film, and I was wondering if you could define it for the readers of this newsletter.
It’s another word for “facts,” like “real talk.” In the Virgin Islands, where my family is from, they say “serious talk.” I told the actors, “Read the lines, but forget the lines. Just embody it how you would say it.”
Where you’ll find us in Park City today
If you’re feeling the cognitive dissonance of jetting off to the Rockies while wildfires continue to rage in Southern California, Friday’s Earth Lounge activation may help you connect Sundance to your sense of purpose.
Hosted by Hollywood Climate Summit, a five-year-old organization that seeks to shape the conversation about climate change through popular culture, the free event is the festival’s first-ever climate-centered programming, according to organizers.
The schedule features a keynote panel with comedians Jenny Yang and W. Kamau Bell; a discussion about the depiction of nature onscreen; a session about amplifying stories of loss and recovery in the aftermath of climate disasters; and a look at ecosystem restoration curated by the filmmakers behind the documentary “Common Ground,” who launched a pledge for brands, farmers and individuals to transform 100 million acres with regenerative agriculture. Plus, plant-based food vendors will be on site throughout the day.
The Impact Lounge, Prospector Square, 2175 Sidewinder Drive, 1-8 p.m. Registration required. Optional donations to support Los Angeles fire relief efforts are encouraged.
Inside the L.A. Times Studios
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
We’ve thrown open the doors to the L.A. Times Studios on Main Street, where our Sundance team will be shooting portraits of filmmakers and sitting down for video interviews through Monday. Be sure to check back here for highlights from our photo gallery and links to all our chats.
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