| 'Finally - a doc about Doc' A new documentary offers insight into the life of obscure cultural figure Harold "Doc" Humes
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| DOC: A PORTRAIT OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HAROLD "DOC" HUMES
April 9, 7 p.m. & 9 p.m., Cinematheque
The name Harold Humes means different things to different people.
Humes' novelistic career crashed and burned in the late 1950s, even though both The Underground City and Men Die were well-received and fervently admired. At the time, Esquire Magazine named him one of the era's most promising young author but, today, both books have been relegated to obscurity and remain out of print.
A lone avant-garde film, Don Peyote, survives. A comical take-off on the Cervantes novel with a cameo by free jazz artist Ornette Coleman, its existence was only truly confirmed by the makers of this documentary. They've tracked down the last surviving print in the leading actor's backyard shed.
Others know Humes for creating the distinguished Paris Review literary magazine. He began the long-running quarterly by initiating a spontaneous conversation about the dynamics of the craft with Another Country author James Baldwin, but advisory editors William Styron and George Plimpton soon took all the credit. Still, both appear in the doc to give Doc his belated due.
To his students (or 'Docolytes') at Princeton University in the 1970s, Humes was an entertaining, informed hipster of an instructor, sporting ragged clothing, a bedraggled beard and a sack full of cockamamie theories. It's no surprise that one of his close friends during this period was LSD guru Timothy Leary.
To the director, Immy Humes, Humes was a negligent father. Despite the fact the two established a significant relationship only shortly before his death in 1992, her drumbeating may be the sole reason we're hearing of him today.
A clean-cut fellow in his younger years, Humes joined the navy during the Second World War but failed to see any action overseas. After the war, he moved to Paris, and his artistic life properly began. Hanging out on terraces, sipping espressos, Humes soon established himself by beginning a proto-Paris Review that centered on Parisian life for English expatriates.
After the publication of his two books, Humes' life took a turn for the worse. His planned third work, loosely autobiographical, never materialized.
There were a few more intellectually productive years, but drugs soon became an issue. Paranoia followed. By 1969, he was looking more like Captain Beefheart than his earlier, polished self.
His later years are barely touched upon due to a lack of material, but Immy, along with her sisters and brothers, helps fill in the gaps. Toward the end, there's preserved home-video footage of their father's waning days to rely on.
Although at least three of the talking-head participants in it are now deceased (Plimpton, Leary and Norman Mailer), rest assured this doc's brand new. It's an affectionately inquisitive, straightforward and warts-and-all look at a man who isn't as well known as he should be, given that his achievements were widespread.
Newfound respect is almost a given.
— Aaron Graham |
Uptown
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