Monday, February 04, 2008

MoMA's Month of Life Stories - February 1, 2008 - The New York Sun:

"To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore" is Jeff Sumerel's portrait of the manic downtown monologist Theodore Gottlieb. "More exciting than being raped by a gorilla," Woody Allen quipped after an encounter with the late shock-haired émigré from Germany, whose hilarious semi-ironic tirades were equal parts S. J. Perelman and Georg Büchner.

Speaking with mock indignation, bulging white eyes, and a rolling Teutonic accent, Gottlieb sets a mood of otherworldly focus, presaging the imminent arrival of either doomsday or self-pity. Mr. Sumerel draws heavily from footage of performances from the 1970s forward, and from such acolytes as Eric Bogosian and Penn Jillette, before pivoting on the flummoxing revelation of Gottlieb's playboy past and flight from the Holocaust. That's a quintessentially 20th-century journey, but we're also stealing a glimpse at an influential underground figure from an increasingly bygone New York.

1:05 PM