Paul Williams: Still Alive

This is a wonderful treat for Paul Williams fans (of which I am one), and it's also a semi-serious portrait of recovery and survival from 1970's celebrity and the excesses that often came with that lifestyle.

My only problem with this film is that the director, Stephen Kessler, a self-professed fan, is a presence in the film the same way Michael Moore often is in his movies. Kessler is likable and it's apparent that the film probably couldn't have been presented without some insight as to how and why he made it (no way he could have been invisible). And some of the film's funniest moments stem from the awkward and sometimes intrusive presence of Kessler and his crew.

But I would have liked a better sense of Kessler as an individual and a passionate fan rather than a challenged documentarian (he's a constant presence but we don't get to know him well enough). His approach also left me wanting a more linear treatment, like that of an A&E Biography; Williams' output was so extensive that much of his career retrospective here seems rushed. Kessler includes a lot of awkward cinema-verite moments, many of which are entertaining, but for me there's not enough coverage of Williams' acting, writing and recording work and I would have liked more focus on that.

Still, I'm grateful that he made the film, and that Mr. Williams was a (sometimes) willing subject.

Writer/director Stephen Kessler is a working filmmaker in Hollywood. He's a fan of songwriter celebrity Paul Williams. Assuming Paul is dead, he is surprised to find out that Paul is still alive and still working. It turns out that he is sober just recently. Paul Williams was a big songwriter of the '70s. After a good performance on The Tonight Show, he became somewhat of a celebrity. He became hooked on various substances and fame. However his fame fades.

Kessler is somewhat of a stalker. It gets awkward at times. Paul chaffs at Stephen's insinuation that something is pathetic about his later career. Sometimes he's treated like a family member. Other times, there is this weird tension. But Stephen always seems to be a fan, and that adds a sweet charming feel to the movie.

This film is not a traditional biopic, but rather the director's recounting of the role Paul Williams has played throughout his life. How he remembers him from his youth, and how he figures into his current life. There are touches of Paul's early career and life, but the primary focus is on the friendship which grew between him and the director throughout the years of filming.

Stephen Kessler, a once hopeful, now floundering director, had been a fan of Williams' work growing up, but lost track of him somewhere around the early 80's. Much to his surprise, he found out that the entertainer was not dead, as he had long assumed, and was still making public appearances. He then went on a journey to discover where Paul had disappeared to for all those absent years.

The only flaw with this idea is that, for many of us, Paul never disappeared. Sure, his presence wasn't as strongly felt as it may have been a few decades ago, but even with his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse (now clean for 20 years), Paul was still making music and appearing in several films and TV shows. While I realize that Paul may have been flying under the radar for many, he was far from underground.

Kessler ignores these recent efforts, leaving blank Paul's creative history between 1980 and the late 2000s when he started filming this documentary. When asked during a Q&A following a screening of this film if he was still writing music, Paul lovingly jokes that he is and he thinks Kessler would have been happier to have found him living a trailer and eating out of trashcans, as it would have been better for his movie.

This film is not really one about Paul Williams, per se, it seems more about Kessler's search to find out something about his past, about his own slipping into obscurity, and the ways in which filming Paul transforms from an idea, to a crutch, to a renewed hope in his own career...and a friendship between the two.

While I feel like some discredit was done to Paul by lacking to mention the full spectrum of his work, I am glad to have a film that can renew interest in him and his many talents. The film is fully entertaining and Williams is delightful, albeit not quite the focus that the title might lead one to believe.

The reason I was interested in seeing "Paul Williams Still Alive" is because of his recent and entirely unexpected entrance into the limelight at the Grammy Awards. When the enigmatic French band Daft Punk won the award for Best Album, folks were wondering how they'd accept the award. After all, this group's members are anonymous-- wearing strange getup that conceal who they are. So their representative to speak for them was Paul Williams, as he'd produced some of their music. Imagine...a European electro-pop group whose front man is the 1970s TV and recording icon Paul Williams. His tragically unhip songs today (such as "Rainy Days and Mondays" and "Rainbow Connection") are not the sort of stuff you could imagine Daft Punk listening to, that's for sure! To me, THIS makes for a great story...and isn't even mentioned in any way, as the documentary came out just before his work with Daft Punk.

As for the documentary, I have very mixed feelings about it. On the positive side, it celebrates the huge number of hit songs he gave us in the 70s and 80s--song you heard all the time during that era. It also gives you a nice portrait of the man today--having worked on his substance abuse recovery to create a nice, but busy, life for himself. All this is great. But, the film also has a huge distraction--the filmmaker, Stephen Kessler. He is much of the film--as unlike many documentaries where you don't see or even hear from the filmmakers themselves (my favorites, by the way), much of the film is Kessler talking about himself and insinuating himself into Williams' life. And I didn't care that Kessler was like a proverbial 'ugly American' in that he refused to eat the local food when he was traveling in the Philippines...who cares if he's like this or not since the film is NOT supposed to be about him!?! Maybe I am reading something into it, but he just seemed annoying (his interviewing style was obnoxious at times) and I didn't want to hear about him and his love for Williams. I just wanted to see and hear Williams. As for Williams, he seemed like a nice guy--and put up with a lot and seemed to roll with what came. All in all, it was nice to see that he is a happy guy who isn't spending his time looking back but without Kessler's ever-present presence, i think it would have been a much better film.

To any filmmaker out there reading this, why don't YOU make a good documentary about Paul Williams? He's very interesting and a worthy topic for a film...and you couldn't possibly do a worse job than this mess!!

The gist of "Paul Williams Still Alive" (which I caught at its final SXSW screening in Austin this March) is simply this: would-be feature film documentary maker Stephen Kessler was so obsessed with the way the AM-radio hits penned by diminutive 1970s entertainer Paul Williams had made his teen-aged heart go all a-flutter that he decided to make a documentary about Williams -- without even realizing that his "late, great" musical hero was still very much alive!

This is a cinematic concept that should'nt have worked -- but, thank the Pop Culture gods, it did!

Mind you, it never would have come close to passing muster if Williams hadn't kept a veritably complete reference library of his clips on every bad music, comedy, variety, game and chat show that existed during the 70s and 80s. Nor would it have worked if Williams hadn't allowed Kessler full use of that library to reveal the inevitable downhill slide that nearly all of Hollywood's denizens of that time period were prone to follow!

For his part, Kessler reveals himself to be (potentially) the world's worst director of a film like this as well! It's only when he and his childhood hero miraculously find them-selves on "the same page" (courtesy of an encounter with third-world terrorism, of all things!) that the alchemy begins to take place and the hill of Tinseltown dross turns miraculously into a mountain of pure gold!!!

Fans of schlock will be delighted either way, as they roll about ecstatically in the slushy mounds of 70s celebrity offal expelled by the coked-up likes of Robert Blake, Karen Carpenter, Dick Clark, Kermit the Frog, Jack Klugman, Peter Lawford, Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Barbra Streisand, John Travolta and more!

But more sensitive viewers will find themselves fighting to hold back the tears as the characters refuse to merely remain the two-dimensional "stars" that we enjoyed chuckling derisively at on our little cathode-ray tubes.

Watch in stunned semi-silence as a slack-jawed star-gazer, obsessed with the tear-jerking tune-age that kept his appreciation of Paul Williams from advancing beyond the analytical level of a 12-year-old, metamorphoses into an insightful, savvy observer of character before your very eyes! Shudder in awe as the short-statured subject reveals himself to be more than worth the effort of analyzing!

Whether your personal reference point to Williams is The Muppets ("The Rainbow Connection"), The Carpenters (Rainy Days & Mondays"), or Brian DePalma's midnight movie cult classic "The Phantom of the Paradise", you can trust me at least on one thing about this film: it WILL make you glad that Paul Williams is still alive!

-- Kenneth W. Lieck