Few filmmakers know how to kick start a movie better than Toronto’s Brigitte Berman: the Oscar-winning writer/director dives into Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel with an uproarious remark by rocker Gene Simmons (a world-famous womanizer in his own right) that hooks the viewer with star power, humour and insight . . . not bad for the first 15 seconds.
Fortunately, Berman is able to live up to the promise of her opening with this fascinating, if longish portrait of the father of the sexual revolution. Some reviewers have taken Berman to task for going too easy on Hefner but the film balances praise from the Playboy founder’s supporters with recriminations from feminist Susan Brownmiller and Christian activists Jerry Fallwell and Pat Boone; Mike Wallace, Charles Keating and Dennis Prager aren’t Hef fans either.
“Hef says his life is like a Rorschach test,” notes Berman. “How people react to his story says more about them than it does about him. The film is the same way; some people say it’s even handed others say it’s totally unbalanced.”
Berman considers herself a “friend” to Hefner although she insists that the personal relationship had little bearing on his portrayal in the film, which details his legal struggles with censors, the U.S. Postal service and segregationist lawmakers.
There’s no doubt that Playboy — Hefner founded the magazine in 1953 — contributed to the objectification of women but it also helped to emancipate them by popularizing birth control and giving women more control over their own bodies.
“I’m a friend, yes,” confirms Berman, “but I’m a documentarian first. And Hef was totally hands off, I had complete creative freedom. He never interfered and that’s very important to me; my background is in journalism.”
It was Berman’s excellent 1981 doc about jazz legend Bix Beiderbeck (Bix: Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet) that brought the director to Hefner’s attention. She dipped into the jazz ouvre again for her 1987 documentary, Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got. The Shaw film bagged Berman an Oscar and a whole lot of grief to go with it; Shaw sued her repeatedly for control of the film, a 12-year battle that left Berman bruised but victorious.
“I’m grateful for the Oscar,” she says. “It was an incredible honour and to have Oprah present it to me . . . but you know with that Oscar also came some pain. I don’t want to cry about it, it gives me more strength. Artie Shaw was really horrible and at the same time I was doing interviews talking about his wonderful music.”
Berman notes that music is also critically important to Playboy, Activist and Rebel: “There is no narration in the film,” she points out, “and that was very deliberate; I didn’t want to guide the audience toward a conclusion. But the music (by composer James Mark Stewart) acts as a kind of narration, especially at the end. In the final scene you see Hef walking alone, and you very rarely see him walking alone, the camera clicks and I cut to Tony Bennett singing ‘You Can’t Love ‘Em All.’ As Hef’s brother Keith says in the movie, ‘Love is his rosebud’ (a reference to Citizen Kane), the thing he has spent his whole life pursuing.”
WHERE/WHEN: Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel opens in Toronto August 6 at the Cumberland (159 Cumberland Street, 416.964-9359) followed by Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal August 13 and Vancouver August 20.
Photos: Brigitte Berman at home in Toronto with her Oscar by Christopher Jones; Berman with Hugh Hefner and one of his scrapbooks by Elayne Lodge, shot of Hefner outdoors with Berman by Bryant Horowitz.
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