tiny tim: king for a day (johan von sydow, 2020)

This is the fifteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 15 is called "Different Drums Week":

Think outside the box: wear a giant papier-mâché head and front a band. Don't conform: master an other-worldy-sounding instrument. Blaze a new trail: start singing metal in your 90s. Be unexpected: bring pop to the opera and opera to the club. Embrace the unconventional: start a one-man band. Stray from the beaten path: become the greatest, worst singer ever.

This week's challenge is to march to the beat of your own drum by watching a film that marries documentary and decidedly non-mainstream music in a swirl of sound and storytelling that converges outside the popular consciousness. Thankfully, Mike Sean has curated a handy selection of fitting novelties on his delightfully esoteric Different Drums: Documentaries on Musical Curiosities list.

Johan von Sydow takes a stylistic kitchen-sink approach to his documentary on the singer Tiny Tim. He blends old performance footage with animated recreations, interviews with relevant people in Tiny's life and voice-over narration taken from Tiny's diary read by Weird Al Yankovic. There is a lot of love for Tiny Tim in the movie ... the film wants us to embrace the eccentricities in the man's life, wants to show us the art behind the man's presentation. We hear from avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and are reminded that Bob Dylan and John Lennon were fans.

There is no attempt to offer a complete version of Tiny's life. The film's short running time (78 minutes) helps ensure this, since von Sydow is covering the entire length of Tiny's life and needs to squeeze in what von Sydow thinks is important. We don't know what von Sydow is leaving out. The movie isn't merely a gloss on Tiny Tim. We see the ups and downs of his private life, including his three marriages (one of the interviewees is his daughter), but I never lost the feeling that something was being left out.

The film ends with a marvelous anecdote that I can't resist spoiling. The legendary Wavy Gravy, who knew everyone in Greenwich Village during Tiny's formative years, tells a story about he and Tiny Tim catching a ride with Neal Cassady. As Wavy tells the story, we see an animated representation.

We were driving up the west side highway in New York ... with Neal Cassady driving the car, and Neal and Tiny singing Bing Crosby duets as we drove along. Every now and then he'd go, "Oh Mr. Cassady, not so fast!" "Oh relax, Tiny, everything's cool! I'm just gonna roll this joint and drive with my knee.

Perhaps it helps if you know me a little bit. The idea of Wavy Gravy, Tiny Tim, and Neal Cassady together in a car makes my day.


20 books

Over the past few weeks, I have taken part in a, what do you call them, not memes I don't think ... on Bluesky:

"Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order."

Here are my 20 books:

Albert Camus, The Plague
Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Philip K. Dick, Now Wait for Last Year
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only
Greil Marcus, Mystery Train
Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Bill James, The 1982 Baseball Abstract
Annalee Newitz, Stories Are Weapons
Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
Ariel Schrag, Awkward and Definition