Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie (2013)

Don't Believe the Hype

Best movie ever!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

When CNN advertised that they were showing this film, I was very interested and excited. I was in my late 20's when this show was aired, and thought it was terrible, but watched parts of a number of shows, as it was like watching a train wreck. Still, since Mort was so out-of-control, I thought this would make a fun and interesting documentary to watch. Uh-uh. About half way through, I was bored, although I continued to watch it until the end. At 90 minutes, the movie was way too long, and would have worked more effectively as a one hour show on HBO, or even CNN for that matter. There were weird animation scenes, and weird flashbacks, particularly of his father, who was a famous singer of an earlier era. In short, I didn't think it was possible to have an uninteresting, uninspired documentary on Morton Downey Jr., but guess what? That's what the filmmakers did.

The Morton Downey Jr. Show blazed like an incendiary comet for about two years on television in the late 1980's only to crash and burn due to the all-too-human flaws and foibles of its exceptionally crude, rude, and abrasive host Morton Downey Jr. Notorious for the ruthless way he ferociously bullied and berated guests that he disagreed with, Downey Jr. played the role of the angry and abusive ultra-conservative right-wing wacko to the deliciously slimy hilt. Naturally, it was basically all a cunning and calculated act, but Downey Jr. still managed to achieve significant iconic status with a huge segment of the disenfranchised American public as a kind of say-it-like-you see it blue collar folk hero. Born to show business parents (his mother was a dancer and his father was a famous singer), Downey Jr. initially made an abortive attempt to become a singer like his much-despised father before going on to work for the Kennedy family as a liberal senator (!) in the 1960's prior to recreating himself as a hostile Republican loudmouth rabble rouser in the 1980's.Fortunately, this documentary neither glorifies nor vilifies Downey Jr; instead it presents him warts'n'all as an extremely angry and insecure man whose fragile ego and continual desire for acceptance caused him to self-destruct in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible (Downey Jr. infamously staged an incident claiming that he had been attacked and brutalized by skinheads in an airport bathroom, which this documentary states for the record was an outright hoax concocted by Downey Jr. to get one of his wives to feel sorry for him). The clips from The Morton Downey Jr. Show are every bit as outrageous and hilarious as one would expect -- obnoxious gadfly Al Sharpton was knocked flat on his then fat pompous keister on one legendary episode which made the news -- while the latter footage of habitual chain smoker Downey Jr. transforming into a staunch anti-smoking advocate in the wake of being diagnosed with lung cancer registers as remarkably poignant and heart-wrenching. Mort's daughter Kelli Downey Cornwell and his best friend Lloyd Schoonmaker offer touching insights into the more human side of Mort while Chris Elliot, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Pat Buchanan discuss Downey Jr.'s legacy as a true trash TV pioneer who kicked politeness and civility out the door and replaced it with roaring rage and fury. Moreover, producer Bob Pittman admits he feels guilty about providing Mort with an ideal forum in which to bring about his own ruination while writer Jim Langan and bodyguard David Giegold tell some colorful stories about their wild ride working for Downey Jr. Although not without its flaws (for example, this documentary completely ignores the fact that Mort was a gay baiter who had a homosexual brother with AIDS who appeared as a guest on his show as well as glosses over Mort's subsequent career as an actor after his show went down the tubes), this documentary still overall sizes up as a fascinating chronicle of a singular 80's icon.

I stumbled onto this at Netflix. WOW! It's not only totally nostalgic seeing the crazy opening credits to the show - apple pies, flags, Ayatollahs, Castro, American icons of all kinds, with MDJ's face in various expressions in stop motion animation, culminating in the open toothy mouth - but it's fascinating seeing the start of the obnoxious style of political commentary we have in the media today.I was not very politically aware when I was younger, so I missed most of the importance of his show when it was first on.The Morton Downey Jr. show at its peak was a bold experiment in audience participation - the one criteria for the show's production seemed to be to get the audience to actively participate in the harshest and loudest way possible.I didn't realize how patrician MDJ's background was - he was a neighbor of Teddy Kennedy's family at Hyannis Port, Mass and his father was a well known Irish singing star from the 1920s and 30s. I thought he had come out of nowhere to speak the truth as he saw it - since I was younger I had no clue about the dad's singing career. But the truth is that he stumbled into the MDJ Show format after stumbling earlier into some talk radio shows and after doing some right-to-life activism that taught him that outrageousness and populism sells.The MDJ Show pioneered the basic idea of the ideologically combative, very one sided talk format that we see today. And leveraged audience participation at an extremely populist level, which we don't see so much. Hannity, The Ed Show, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow, and to a lesser extent Bill O'Reilly are all basically the MDJ Show in spirit, but each with a very pure ideological tilt and no live studio audience. And, really, the modern shows make a lot more coherent sense than MDJ ever did.That is another key difference with MDJ and our current popular media left and right wing ideologues: MDJ was not pure in any way ideologically: he usually went to the right but would often adopt leftist or liberal points of view which he liked. The basic idea seemed to be that he postured for "obvious" decency (obvious to the studio audience, anyway) and simple answers to complex questions. For instance, while he usually draped himself in the flag (quite literally), he also backed Al Sharpton in the Tawana Brawley incident.This documentary is not only about the MDJ Show's life cycle but also the rise and the fall of MDJ himself. Watching this film, I was quite sad for him toward the end of his tenure as a public figure. He was quite obviously extremely insecure as a person, and just drank up the publicity, groupies and attention that the show gave him. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1996 and passed away in 2001. It's probably too much to say that he was a broken man after the MDJ show but the show caused him to burn himself out with his worst tendencies and appetites.The film never mentioned drug use. I find it difficult to believe that his frenzied attacks on the show were *him*. But apparently they were.I also got the answer to the question as to why the MDJ Show was canceled, since I didn't pay a lot of attention to it in its heyday. Essentially, the format drove away all substantial guests, since they knew that any dissenting opinion would cause them to be crucified by the audience mob and by MDJ himself. So at the end, the show had a lot of novelty acts, like the amputee lady who played patriotic anthems with her tongue on a keyboard, or transsexuals arguing their lifestyles.The life cycle of this show was a great warning to anyone who believes that populism and direct rule by the public is the answer to all complex social issues and debates ... such as current political movements (Tea Party, "Occupy") that are tied directly to anger and outrage. The MDJ Show started with a "high concept" that eventually dissolved because the show lost any credibility it had at the outset. This is a warning to both sides of the aisle to understand that mobs don't have answers, they just have emotions. The things that made the MDJ Show popular for a time were the same things that eventually buried it.In terms of production and the documentary itself - I thought the presentation was exceptionally effective. Several commentaries from Pat Buchanan lend credibility and gravitas throughout the film, and he did a great job of tying MDJ to today's political climate. The weird graphic novel style animations which have been mentioned by other reviewers as distracting - I found them perfectly complementary to the movie. A recurring meme in the animations was the ghostly image of MDJ's father's face, grimly nodding "no" in disapproval to junior. The animations were impressionistic - a reflection of Downey's id and internal obsessions.

Before reality television allowed just about anybody to say just about anything in front of just about any audience AND before polarizing radio/television personalities such as Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill Maher and Sean Hannity proved there is an audience that craves shock-talk when it involves putting-down and insulting others, the world had one person who did this on a regular basis and who was actually different than all who followed as he was an honest, equal-opportunity offender who spoke his mind and was not earning tens of millions of dollars from corporate sponsors by manipulating those dumber than himself to believe everything he said. Yes, sorry, but if the shoe fits one's left OR right foot ... wear it.Morton Downey Jr. was a foul-mouthed, bug-eyed, chain-smoking hothead who had hoped to follow in his father's footsteps as a crooner; but as the intelligent man's talent wasn't in music he found a place for himself on television as a host of a short-lived yet notorious and controversial talk show that bore his name -- The Morton Downey, Jr. Show -- that aired in syndication from 1987 to 1989.It was called "3-D television" by some because of the numerous quasi-violent outbursts -- flinging chairs! fistfights! shouting matches! -- that occurred on the show between the verbally volatile frequent and not-so-frequent guests such as Rev. Al Sharpton, Gloria Allred, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Curtis Sliwa, Allen Dershowitz and some (ignorant) random klansmen. His show was also described as "rock and roll without the music" because of its attitude, pacing and aggressive format. Downey Jr. was "in your face" and rarely apologized and always had an opinion which turned off plenty of viewers although it revolutionized the television format/genre. It could be compared to Jerry Springer; but Downey Jr. emphasized politics and race and hot-button issues and did not openly embrace trashy topics like promiscuous married bed-hoppers or naughty male nurses or stripper mothers. He believed his show was important.Downey Jr. had a very quick rise to his infamous fame but also had a very fast fall as a stunt of his backfired and he lost much support. Evocateur is at its best when it showcases the man's career rise and fall but also provides a bit of touching, human reality by including the man's late health scare and battle with lung cancer (he claimed to have smoked upwards of 3 packs a day at the height of his career and he openly chronicled much of his early cancer battle with various television audiences). The doc falters a bit when it mentions his late-life love story with his third wife that wasn't necessary for the film but perhaps the filmmakers wanted to show he had a heart and was capable of loving another.His show aired in the late 80's and I remember it being on and hearing some of his more shocking claims ... that probably are not as shocking to an audience today as they once were. Evocatuer is an adequate tribute to a man who did revolutionize television even if the man never knew to what extent.Without doubt, he did take things too far but he did speak his mind openly and honestly which is more than can be said about so many that have followed him and are doing so for larger paychecks (as it has become ALL about the $).