- A Leaning Tower of Camp: John Early on “Maddie’s Secret” (July 7, 2026)
The first thing you need to know about comedian-turned-actor-turned-filmmaker John Early‘s performance in “Maddie’s Secret” is that it is, at its core, deeply serious. It is also, at least in Early’s estimation, not drag, despite the central character at the heart of Early’s feature directorial debut being played by Early in a wig and women’s clothing.
That’s the tonal tightrope that “Maddie’s Secret” (and Early) walks: the film sits somewhere between sincere pastiche of the woman’s pictures of the 1950s and the NBC TV movies of the week (like the Meredith Baxter Birney-starring “Kate’s Secret,” from which “Maddie’s” borrows several core concepts and plot beats) and the camp irreverence of John Waters. In the film, Maddie is a thirtysomething woman struggling to balance her newfound notoriety as a food influencer with the eating disorder that has plagued her since her youth; along the way, we just so happen to get jokes about trendy condiments like Fly By Jing and Conner O’Malley as an unhinged producer for a Bon Appetit-like food content mill.
But then, “Maddie’s Secret” gives way to its protagonist’s emotional fragility, and her attempts to gain a sense of control over her life even as everyone around her—from best friend Deena (frequent Early collaborator Kate Berlant) to her husband Jake (a supportive, sweaty thicc hunk played by Eric Rahill)—land her in a rehab facility for adults suffering from eating disorders. Even there, she deals with the wacky quirks of her fellow addicts (including Vanessa Bayer) alongside surprisingly probing conversations about the nature of disordered eating.
It’s a curious project for the Nashville-born Early, 38, who started out in stand-up before landing standout guest roles in shows like “Broad City” and “Difficult People.” Not long after that, he starred for four seasons of HBO’s “Search Party” as Elliott, the flamboyant, selfish gay mess who was frequently willing to sell out his values for another crumb of notoriety. Add to that Terry Goon in Theda Hammel’s cult COVID-era movie “Stress Positions,” and Early has proven his penchant for self-absorbed characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In Maddie, Early finds a new evolution of those roles, channeling his love for the numerous films that influenced his debut into every thread of this picture. Squint hard enough, and you’ll see the flamboyant fight for fame in Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls”; the psychosexual mother-daughter drama of Hitchcock’s “Marnie”; virtually every role Divine ever played, but chiefly in Waters’ melodrama satire “Polyester.” The bra fits, so Early wears it.
Shortly after the film’s wide release, Early sat down with RogerEbert.com to talk about his relationship to his deepest media references (and his relationship to our relationship to them), the way his film talks about food, and how melodrama can sometimes bring out our deepest, most painful truths.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some spoilers ahead for the end of “Maddie’s Secret.”
This is a film deeply steeped in reference, a recurring marker throughout your career—from lip-syncing in “The Characters” to shot-for-shot remakes of “Showgirls.” You seem to have such a unique relationship to reference, and I wondered how you, as a creator, work to go beyond reference and turn it into something new?
You know, I don’t know. It’s kind of an unconscious instinct I just end up doing. I think I’m a very devotional person and artist, and part of why people are devotional is that you lose yourself in the act of devotion to another person, a piece of work, a being. That’s very appealing, but it’s also an illusion. In the case of “Maddie’s Secret,” I thought by doing this kind of “Supermarket Sweep” approach to reference and pastiche, just grabbing at anything that excited me and throwing it in, I guess I felt protected. That I was making something so far out of the realm of me.
It almost feels like, if you’re grabbing from a gumbo of references and tones, you have a security blanket. “Maddie’s Secret” doesn’t have to live or die on how well it emulates “Kate’s Secret” or “Showgirls.”
Yes, certainly with the budget level I had. I would never be able to truly emulate some of the more…well-funded references. But I quickly realized, as I was writing the movie, that through referencing all these things, I kind of ended up leaking out all over the place. It was surprisingly personal in ways I couldn’t even explain, and still can’t. I really thought I was getting away with it; I thought I was making a totally safe, leaning tower of camp. But actually, it’s a profoundly personal piece of work.
That makes sense for people who love film, media, and culture—in a way, we sort of are the product of those influences. For this project, you’ve been able to wear those influences on your sleeve by talking about the films that inspired “Maddie’s Secret” and even programming some of them at places like Metrograph. What’s it like to get the chance to use this movie as a showcase for the things that you love?
It’s very nice… I get a little frustrated with how much the media ecosystem is obsessed with reference; it feels a little surveillance-y sometimes, the Letterboxd thing of “What are your four favorites?”, the Criterion Top 10, what do you pick in the Criterion Closet? Interviews these days seem to be very focused on references. This is ultimately a net positive, mind you; I think there’s a cinephilia in the air that is driving people to older movies, and that’s really cool, and to my movie as well. But I get a little….
And the thing is, I’m such a willing participant in it because I love talking about the movies I love, and I want people to see some of the ones I feel are underseen. I fall right into the trap, and I don’t think it’s all bad. I want to be very clear. But there’s this weird kind of gamifying or math-equation approach we’re trying to take with the references, where we’re not also acknowledging the fundamental mystery of what we’re doing or making. It’s a weird trap I find myself in right now.
But the truth is that I love that I’ve gotten to program these things. The Alamo Drafthouse let me program a few movies as “Maddie” inspo, and American Cinematheque did too. The fact that I got to put “The Brady Bunch Movie” on the big screen, are you kidding? That’s my life.
You mentioned that so much of you came out of this process, and I wonder how that translates to your relationship to Maddie as a character. What was it in the soul of her that you really wanted to inhabit? There’s this camp element, of course, but there’s a sincerity that comes with knowing her struggle, even if the stuff around her is a little over-the-top.
At the end of the day, I’m a deeply feeling, schmaltzy kind of person; to quote Deena, “It’s cool that you care.” And then Maddie goes, “It’s pathetic!” That’s the two sides of me, you know? I care, and I’m embarrassed that I care. So I try to layer on, I don’t know how many layers of irony, to mitigate the caring—to make less of a firehouse of sincerity and intensity. So I chose an archetype and a sensitive issue to work from, I think. This all moved so fast that it really felt like I didn’t know what I was doing.
But as time went on, and the more distance I got from it, I think I deliberately chose something so hot-button. It’s not relevant, of course; people have been talking about bulimia since the ’90s. But it is sensitive. I knew the only way through was to approach it with total commitment and sincerity. So, without realizing it, I created a project where I would be at the proverbial gunpoint and tap into the part of me that is a deeply feeling person who cares and is very sentimental.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
I think that’s what modulates the tone of “Maddie’s Secret,” especially in the scenes between Maddie and Deena. I’m curious how your longstanding collaboration with Kate Berlant informed those two characters, especially Deena, who sits between Maddie’s sincerity and a more overt parody of these kinds of pictures.
Those two sides of Kate are so integrated; there’s the broadness, the physical comedy, her proficiency in clowning. Then there’s the wetness of her eyes; there are so many moments in this movie when she looks at Maddie, and she’s like a child. I don’t know, I think her performance elicits such big laughs, which is so necessary for this movie to balance out so much of my trackiness. But at the same time, her performance is so full of longing.
I’ve always been of the school that likes expressive performances—not because I like fakeness or artificiality, but because I actually know those people. I’m one of them. I had the great displeasure of seeing some interview I did to promote this movie this morning, and I saw myself roll my head back and laugh so heartily at something that was not funny. I saw myself do that, and thought, oh, you poor baby, why are you laughing so hard? Who are you trying to please?
I know so many people and friends like that, and Kate does it with total abandon in this movie. But it’s all balanced by these tiny flickers of pain and humanity.
There’s a pathos to her, too, because of this unrequited yearning for Maddie that she lets take her so far in these extreme directions.
Deena breaks my heart, and so does Kate’s performance.
One of the other more presentational elements in the film is these dance sequences at the queer gym, which obviously have a lot of “Showgirls” in there. I’m curious about those, because they go so far beyond the gym movement classes in “Kate’s Secret” that clearly inspired them, from this very severe, theatrical movement to the expressive camerawork. Talk to me about that tonal tightrope you had to walk.
Dance is so amazing; if you’re like me, and you write dialogue that is so blunt, you find that dance can express the inexpressible. It’s also very efficient, and it’s such a quick path to feeling. I knew I was working in a very blunt, pedestrian, low-culture style, and I was missing this dreamlike or expressive element. I didn’t want to so rigidly say I was doing a parody of a TV movie. So I was excited when I realized there could be a narratively motivated five- to eight-minute dream ballet at the center of this movie. Like in “Oklahoma!”
Of course, it’s absurd, but queer dance classes are a real thing. There are queer gyms in LA, and when Deena says, “It’s radically inclusive, no toxic gym bro stuff,” that is directly lifted from the website of queer gym. I have friends who attend these classes; I’ve seen footage of them leaning into vogue-inflected choreography. It’s all in the name of cardio, but it’s not as pragmatic as an aerobics class. There’s this other level of self-acceptance, almost like social justice kind of thing. Anyway, it’s actually real.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
I have to imagine it was exciting for you, as a filmmaker, to get the chance to work both in the dance sequences and, more broadly, to find creative ways to hold and move the camera. I’m even thinking of some of the early scenes at Gourmaybe, where long tracking shots follow you and Deena, and even dolly around you to a comically dizzying degree.
I worked with Max Lackner, an incredible cinematographer. This is his first feature, and he’s a friend of mine; it’s a beautiful relationship that I hope will last forever. Because of our amateurishness, we were really ambitious—maybe if we were more experienced, we could have convinced ourselves not to be so visually expressive. But because our budget made that hard, we naively, like Nomi Malone herself, were like “why not? Let’s make this look like ‘Showgirls’!”
We had a gigantic whiteboard where we broke down every scene and tried to distill each one into a single key word, so every scene felt like it had a very clear aesthetic or tonal goal. The first word in the first scene was “horse!” because she’s jogging, and we wanted to be off to the races. The style was always in service of the larger pacing, and this feeling of getting on a train and it not stopping until you’re careening off the cliff.
Maddie’s relationship with food is also complicated by her work pressures at Gourmaybe, which lets you kind of rib at the kind of programmatic, performative way that a lot of food creators talk about food—even the way Maddie would rattle off trendy ingredients and describe a dish in this formulaic manner, even in casual conversation, is really fascinating. What’s your relationship to that school of food culture?
I like that kind of food. I go to the places they go, and I shop at the places they shop. I’m right at the epicenter of it here in LA, and when I’m in New York, too. Even where I’m from, in Nashville, they’ve become very orange wine-y. I’ve passively absorbed it through ironic consumption.
Plus, it gives Maddie job pressures that Kate of “Kate’s Secret” doesn’t have, because she’s just trying to survive as a mom and deal with an emotionally unavailable, potentially philandering husband. Maddie, meanwhile, has no kids and a supportive husband in Jake; one curious deviation from “Kate” is that Jake is the perfect gentleman to Maddie, to the point that it’s stifling.
To me, what that’s about is that, by presenting this angelic image to the world and hiding these darker parts of herself in her self-presentation, Maddie inspires a kind of simplistic devotion that proves unsustainable. If she’s perfect, she’s gonna have Deenas and Jakes in her life go, “You’re perfect.”
And there’s pressure to maintain that perfection.
Yeah. Maddie plays a huge part in what’s wrong with those dynamics.
It’s that need to curate an impossible version of yourself to appease people.
Maddie reminds me of another character you’ve played recently: Terry Goon in “Stress Positions.” They’re both such inwardly drawn characters who are riddled with anxiety. What draws you to roles like that?
Here’s me saying “I don’t know,” while I bite my nail. [Laughs.] I don’t know, really. I think the truth is both Terry and Maddie are presenting as housewives, in that archetypally, they’re both neurotic. They’re very different, though. Terry is bitter and has this cancerous kind of rage, whereas Maddie is more hopeful and sweet. But they do both fall into this woman’s picture archetype of the troubled housewife.
I think they want to find security in the domestic. But I do think there’s a little bit of rage burning at the core of Maddie, too.
Oh, Maddie’s got some rage for sure. But she doesn’t direct it at other people, just at herself.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
Which we see more of in the film’s back half, when she’s in treatment. That section seems to have the most work to do to straddle the dramatic and the comedic; as you got to these places in the story where you’re in a clinical, rehabilitative setting, what considerations did you have about toeing the line one way or the other tonally?
The main thing I told myself was not to be scared, to throw myself into the Greek stakes of these TV melodramas. That’s every eating disorder movie: They go into treatment, there’s no avoiding it. And there’s always rebellion, resistance to the treatment, and some kind of escape. I also watched this movie “Thin,” which is a very harrowing documentary about an eating treatment center I got a lot from.
There’s the “Cuckoo’s Nest” of it all.
Yes, and “Girl, Interrupted,” and my friends’ experiences, who have been in treatment centers for eating disorders. They gave me beautiful details. I knew the biggest mistake I could make was, once I got there, to suddenly seize up and feel I had to handle things delicately. I have been totally shocked by the emotional responses to it from people who have been in treatment programs, who tell me, “It’s so accurate.” That’s thrilling to me, but it’s not necessarily what I was going for.
I was having a lot of imaginary fights with people on Twitter while I was writing this movie, and imagining these terrifying Q&As. None of that has happened, but I had to really try not to get lost in those thoughts, be an artist about it, and not forget the tonal needs of this style. My north star with the treatment center was to still go for it and not pump the brakes on the intensity, the crudeness, or the fun. That was a big thing, too; I didn’t want the audience to feel betrayed, as if we were suddenly in this grim, punishing part of the story. I wanted it to still be full of bright characters, soft colors, and adventure. I think we achieved that.
The film ends with Maddie jogging just as she did in the beginning, but it feels so different, and she feels so different. Where do you feel like Maddie’s running to?
I wanted that last shot to have a feeling of freedom—her hair is no longer half up, half down; it’s now fully down. There’s a little smile right at the freeze frame. I think Maddie has no immediate plan, but….I don’t think they’re long for this world, Maddie and Jake. What they go through in this movie is a tough thing to bounce back from. But by the end, she’s an integrated woman, and she wants to see what her life would be like elsewhere.
- Short Films in Focus: Bob’s Funeral (July 7, 2026)
I should have written about “Bob’s Funeral” last month for Father’s Day, since it is about fatherhood and how some get it right and some get it wrong. It’s a documentary told from a son’s point of view, someone trying to get answers about his family’s past and why his grandfather’s funeral was so somber while his dad’s was more celebratory. It is also about how one side of a family is estranged from the other, and the drama that still unfolds whenever they are in the same room.
The “Bob” in the title refers to filmmaker Jack Dunphy’s grandfather, who died in 2019. The film opens on the morning of Bob’s funeral. Dunphy cannot help but bring his video camera everywhere he goes. He takes all the blame when the family runs late for the funeral, a church service where everyone struggles to deliver a heartfelt eulogy for the deceased. What does this say about Bob, his family, and how he raised his kids?
Dunphy’s own father, Mark (son of Bob), seemed to be a much more gracious and well-liked person. He died of stomach cancer just a few months after Bob passed away. Through some crude but charming cut-out animation, Dunphy talks about some of the more embarrassing memories he associates with his father, including an incident involving magnum-sized condoms. He also delves into some of the more hurtful aspects of his relationship with his father. At the same time, he reiterates the important role humor plays in his family, which seems to be the opposite of how Mark was raised by Bob, his father, who ran a pretty strict household.
Dunphy’s film is heartfelt and revealing, even though he is told on many occasions by his family members to put the camera down or “get that camera away from me.” He has that documentary filmmaker’s instinct to dig deeper into the family dynamic and ask all the uncomfortable questions people would think twice before answering. As a result, he sometimes gets non-answers from his family that say just enough for us to interpret something substantial.
In the end, the film is about how we’re remembered and how that memory determines the tone of your funeral. Bob’s funeral was difficult, and for good reason. Mark’s memorial service, which took place in a flower shop. Reminded me of my dad’s Celebration of Life a few years ago. Everyone worked hard on their eulogies. Everyone had a funny memory. Tons of people turned out for it, way more than we expected. Dunphy’s film is a funny and sincere tribute to a life well-lived, flaws and all.
- Peacock’s “The Five-Star Weekend” Is Way More Than Pedestrian Housewife Melodrama (July 6, 2026)
We certainly have a glut of these shows—you know the ones where thin white people convene on a cold beach to compare notes and solve intrigues. Nicole Kidman has practically made a cottage industry out of them: “Big Little Lies,” “The Undoing,” “The Perfect Couple.”
But somehow, “The Five-Star Weekend” manages to surprise, even though so many of its beats are predetermined.
Adapted from the Elin Hilderbrand novel of the same name by developer Bekah Brunstetter, Peacock’s latest series takes us to that favorite place in the white imagination (a character literally calls it “a white-person clam island”): Cape Cod. Jennifer Garner is the queen bee there, as Hollis Shaw, a recently widowed baking influencer who grew up on the island. Now she’s back, trying to figure out this grief thing by hosting a grown-up sleepover with four friends from various stages of her life. Together, they’re “the five stars”—get it?
And no, Hollis does not find a dead body in that first episode, uncover a local cult, or learn that her husband was part of some international crime syndicate. Based on a book of the same name, “The Five-Star Weekend” goes for more quotidian drama. Its concerns are the five-and-a-half women (Hollis’s nearly grown daughter comes, too) and the personal inflection points they’re facing.
That might make for a dull miniseries. But after just a few episodes, it’s easy to find yourself caring for these women despite yourself (and the genre trappings of amazing outfits, soft lighting, and a bucolic setting).
THE FIVE STAR WEEKEND — Pictured: (l-r) Jennifer Garner as Hollis, D’Arcy Carden as Brooke, Regina Hall as Dru-Ann, Gemma Chan as Gigi, Chloë Sevigny as Tatum — (Photo by: Greg Gayne/PEACOCK)
Certainly, the stacked cast goes a long way in selling this journey of middle-aged discovery. There’s Regina Hall (a standout) as Dru-Ann, a sports agent who’s facing cancellation during her weekend on the Cape. Hall gives her plenty of hard edges and doesn’t forsake them even as she reveals the heart behind Dru’s tough love.
Chloë Sevigny embodies another difficult woman with some soft spots. As Hollis’ childhood friend is left behind, Tatum is quick to judge and happy to play the bad guy—even though she’s the only one in the bunch in a healthy romantic relationship. And the scenes of her husband supporting her are some of the show’s most poignant, even as Sevigny turns her signature difficult-to-love vibe up to eleven.
D’Arcy Carden plays the insecure-mom friend who needs to figure out who she is, while Gemma Chan is the newbie with something to hide in the show’s one and only attempt at a (very-guessable) twist. They’re all easy to root for adults who make mistakes but soldier on.
And in the center is Garner, playing the type of woman other women say “has it all together.” And “The Five-Star Weekend” does something smart here—it doesn’t argue that Hollis is secretly a mess or should be. The series never pushes Hollis past the breaking point.
Instead, “The Five-Star Weekend” investigates what it costs to have it all together—how Hollis’ control hurts her relationship with her daughter, how it makes her a less reliable friend, and how it may make it harder for her to achieve happiness. Because Hollis is a woman who makes a detailed agenda for this five-star weekend, including Instagrammable meals and outings, and uses that agenda as a crutch. What should you do when your sense of peace has shattered? The next thing on the agenda—even if it’s as ill-fitting to the occasion as a pizza party! There’s always another photo shoot-worthy attraction ahead.
THE FIVE STAR WEEKEND — Pictured: Timothy Olyphant as Jack — (Photo by: Seacia Pavao/PEACOCK)
And in this way, “The Five-Star Weekend” gently nudges Hollis to confront herself. She has to ask whether the whole order still suits her, or if she gives herself some leeway to be less than perfect? And it’s a daunting question not only because her livelihood depends on a high-level of curation. These questions are asking her to buck so many of the promised rewards of her particular brand of femininity – she’s figured out how to be the fit, beautiful homemaker and monetize it. She’s achieved the zenith of white womanhood, and it is not enough.
Which is to say “The Five-Star Weekend” is a show for grown-ups. It has plenty of humor, beauty, and fancy things to covet, but mostly it’s a gentle look at the human condition; don’t let its prestige casting and setting fool you. These women are not antiheroes; they’re just people trying to make their way. And that basic struggle is big enough to propel this eight-part series along (and maybe power more—the book doesn’t yet have a sequel, but the show leaves the possibility open).
More than powering the plot, though, the show’s focus on the regular problems people face – when to switch careers, how to deal with loss, how to trust yourself – is downright refreshing, particularly given the cast’s female focus. Here are a few hours spent in a narrative that takes women’s internal lives seriously! Perhaps it’s not new, but it does feel different in our wash of murder mysteries everywhere, from teen dramas to white bourgeois affairs.
And that newness, along with the sheer talent radiating off this small screen, is enough to tune in and keep watching. Oh, and the beautiful shots of food help too.
- KVIFF 2026: The Guest, Dao, The Match (July 6, 2026)
The 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is still in its early stages, but it’s already showing a wealth of wonderful films. In this dispatch, you’ll find three films of differing origins. One is a world premiere in the festival’s main Crystal Globe competition, while the others previously debuted at the Berlinale and Cannes. They also, interestingly, concern memory and the heirlooms of the past we carry within ourselves.
One of the great early discoveries of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is Mads Mengel’s deeply uncomfortable Nordic family drama “The Guest.” Playing in the Crystal Globe Competition, the film is set at a seaside resort where eager parents, Emilie (Mette Klakstein Wiberg) and Karl (Simon Bennebjerg), have invited family to christen their newborn baby Elliot. As mother and father settle in, the invitees—Emilie’s parents, Frank (Peter Gantzler), and Kirsten (Petrine Agger), along with Karl’s sister, Rikke (Josephine Park)—arrive. The resort they occupy is pristine and manicured, with no unwanted detail left for the eye to capture. That is, until Karl’s estranged mother, Vibeke (Trine Dyrholm), arrives unannounced with a flurry of energy that seems to make the air shift direction.
It doesn’t take long before we learn why Karl didn’t invite his own mother to her grandson’s christening: Unsolved trauma and buried angst belonging to a difficult childhood helmed by a mentally ill mother soured Karl on Vibeke long ago. And despite many around him, including his own wife and sister, telling him to empathize with her plight, the bridge between mother and son might as well be on two different continents.
Consequently, “The Guest” takes a nuanced interest in forgiveness, understanding, and the kind of emotional and personal growth that urges one not to pass the scars of the past on to the people of the present. This taut, controlled, crucible of empathy, which relies on cutting cross zooms to up the sadness of the situation, is supremely well acted: from a restrained Bennebjerg, who acutely counter-balances the frayed Park, to the charged Dyrholm, whose depiction of this bellicose yet vulnerable woman never crosses over into the overwrought. These feel like the right people, delving into real pains, with a cautious openness that treats the difficult obstacles in their way with the complexity and respect they deserve.
Mengel’s feature directorial debut, therefore, is a stunner not solely because of the tough situation it presents, but primarily because it moves beyond an engaging premise to become a work whose well-drawn characters invite hard-earned poignancy without begging for easy forgiveness.
Arriving at KVIFF from the Berlinale, writer/director Alain Gomis’ soulful, three-hour epic family drama “Dao” moves with an immense awareness of time, culture, ancestry and kin. It begins, cheekily yet sweetly, as a documentary: Gomis speaks with the actors during their auditions about what parts they’d like to play. As the film progresses, these documentary segments cue the film’s hefty topics (there’s an instance where each actor is asked about their relationship to their father).
From this form, Gomis often pivots in and out of something formless. In fact, it might be better to say that he slips into spaces, moments, and memories with the suddenness of a breeze that passes through two events. The first, set in France, concerns a wedding between Nour (D’Johé Kouadio) and James (Mike Etienne). The second follows Nour and her mother, Gloria (Katy Correa), as they travel to the latter’s village in Guinea-Bissau for a ceremony commemorating the one-year anniversary of Béa’s father’s passing. It’s not immediately clear whether Gomis wants to contrast these ceremonies (one is clearly more Western-infused, while the other is steeped in a different tradition) or to parallel how both inspire community.
Oftentimes the score’s plaintive jazz motif (the director’s previous film was the Thelonious Monk documentary “Rewind & Play”) signals an abrupt jump between spaces: the countryside cathedral that’s the site of Nour and James’ wedding and the colorful village that’s filled with indelible individual faces. Conversely, by the final third of the picture, the score binds these ceremonies together through the common occurrences that happen whenever varied friends and family mix past lives with booze.
Gomis, of course, dives into more than these characters’ interpersonal dynamics. There’s the imperativeness of oral storytelling, the specter of the slave trade (particularly as it relates to the diaspora), the multifacetedness of Blackness—which can traverse through bi-racial or bi-ethnic categories—caused by colonization, and the struggle of retaining traditions and finding success faced by those who decide to emigrate to the West.
With such sprawling interests, Gomis hasn’t rendered a plot-based film. Nor does he move with a conventional rhythm. Scenes digress, the camera imperfectly roves, and the pace speeds and slows without any concern for how these narrative or temporal choices might be perceived. Much like one of the film’s best scenes, a near acapella wedding rendition of the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” whose stirring immersion recalls Steve McQueen’s “Silly Games” scene in “Lover’s Rock,” the film translates the lived experience of Blackness into practice. What does that mean? “Dao” understands that Blackness is never still and rarely controlled; it’s unconventional only to outside eyes, but it never lacks interest in how the moment relates to one’s kin. “Dao,” therefore, is a beautiful communion with the cinematic and ancestral spirits.
In June 1986, an event with wide-ranging ramifications occurred: Argentina faced England in the World Cup quarter-final. The game would feature one of the most infamous goals in soccer history, “The Hand of God,” delivered by its brightest star: Diego Maradona. More than a sporting contest, the confrontation was the culmination of a fractious relationship between two countries and the leveling of a long-uneven geopolitical playing field. Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco’s entertaining documentary, “The Match,” which originally premiered at Cannes, recalls that game and the context surrounding it through the recollections of those who lived it.
English striker Gary Lineker and Argentine forward Jorge Valdano provide the accessible frame for this poppy blast from the past. They, along with their former teammates, watch the projected footage with nostalgia, admiration, and sometimes pain. Lineker also guides us through each sequence’s key bullet points, recalling the earlier 1966 meeting between England and Argentina, the 1982 eruption of the Falklands War, and the doom that Thatcherism wreaked on both countries. References to these historical components are often inspired by whatever is happening in the match, causing the film’s continuum, which operates similarly to “The Last Dance,” to shift back and forth between the past and the present subject.
Sometimes the heavy narration can make one feel like “The Match” doesn’t remotely trust its audience, dragging one from subject to subject with the subtlety of a ball to the head. But these overworked explanations do fold in neatly with the consciously overcooked use of music, which often matches soaring classical music to the game’s highlights—inciting a cheeky grandeur to take hold. Other highlights include the breakdown of the “Hand of God” evidence (did Maradona commit an illegal handball?) and some marveling by the subjects of what’s often considered the goal of the century. All of the former participants respect Maradona, even as some still hold a grudge against him for not personally admitting that he cheated (tellingly, John Barnes, the only person of color among the Englishmen, is the most forgiving).
At its worst, “The Match” is repetitive and circular in ways that don’t always serve the material. But when it’s humming, which it often is, Cabral and Franco’s ode to soccer glory is as earthshaking as its absorbing subject.
- You Have to Commit: Robert Richardson on “Robert Richardson: The White Devil” (July 6, 2026)
In Czech director Jana Hojdová’s raw, brazenly honest documentary, “Robert Richardson: The White Devil,” the legendary director of photography finds himself in a curious position. After decades capturing a plethora of towering films: “Platoon,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “A Few Good Men,” “Casino,” “Kill Bill: Volume I & II,” “Shutter Island,” “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” and many more—the three-time Academy Award winner finds himself in front of the camera.
In “Robert Richardson: The White Devil,” which, after six years of filming, had its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the cinematographer forms an unlikely friendship with Hojdová that begins when the Czech filmmaker emails him to request an interview for her Master’s thesis. What started out as a simple project soon evolved into a personal excavation of the filmmaker that involved searching through his personal archive of home movies, storyboards, scripts, and journals.
The result, partly born from Hojdová and Richardson hunkering down during COVID, when a lockdown kept the filmmaker from returning to her country, is a truthful summation of an artist, a father, and a spouse—one that features words from his long-time collaborators Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, to show the heavy toll achieving cinematic greatness can often exact.
Robert Richardson sat down with RogerEbert.com during KVIFF, where he was on hand to receive the festival’s Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contributions to world cinema. He reflects on his archives, the weight of winning Oscars, and the cautionary tale he hopes this film provides.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In the film, you mention that when Jana [Hojdová] reached out to interview you for her Master’s thesis, you responded because the questions she sent were personal rather than technical. Most creatives today would prefer to shy away from the personal. Why did that draw you in?
I’ve found that’s true in most interviews. Even when I would do the ACR articles, American Cinematographer, they’re constantly searching for questions about the lighting, this, that, or what have you. I’d rather you interview the production designer, the editor, the director. You can talk to the gaffer.
I don’t just want to talk about which lenses I chose. I prefer that you talk about what inspired us to make this movie rather than how we shot it. So, when I got the first series of questions from Jana, I was all in.
How long did you correspond before you met her?
A couple of years. She told me she has 400 pages worth of our conversations.
She could make a docuseries!
She wants more. She has her thesis and wants to turn it into a book.
This film began as her written thesis. How did it jump from that framework into a documentary?
Well, we hadn’t met initially. She actually traveled across the States and ended up meeting me in New Zealand. I was finishing “Adrift” with Baltazar [Kormákur] and Shailene [Woodley] when she arrived. And while she was there, she asked more questions and did some behind-the-scenes shooting. I was like: Shooting behind the scenes? What are you doing? [he responds as Jana in a hesitating voice] Well, I’m, I’m, I’d like to, would you? I told her to get it out. What do you want to say?
She wanted to make a documentary. By that point, I’d already told her everything about my life, so I thought, let’s go for it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But six years later….
Six years and COVID later! She arrived to interview you at your Cape Cod home for what she thought would be a week or two, but ended up staying with you for three months because of the lockdown in the Czech Republic. What was it like having the camera follow you around?
What was great about it was that I had a downstairs, which you see in that scene in the documentary when we’re walking down, and I had archives that included boxes that I hadn’t looked at in years. Suddenly, she was yanking out some of the films I’d been searching for that my grandfather had shot in 16mm. We had boys’ and girls’ camps on the water, and he had done a lot of work with the camera. So, I bought a projector, and we put it up and started looking at the footage.
She also found boxes and boxes of tapes, from Hi8 to cassette, to et cetera, et cetera. She’s watching all those, and she’s making me even project them on the wall. And when she started, it never stopped. She just did not stop. She took all my books out of the boxes and put them on the shelves. So for me, it was like a plus because with her doing that, I didn’t have to do anything.
The scene you’re talking about is when you enter your basement: all the boxes are lined up in a row, and later we see you sitting in front of shelves now filled with the contents of the boxes, holding your journal.
Before she arrived, there were only boxes and some empty space. The boxes also had DVDs, laser discs, and books. I bought shelves, and then she put up four of them and started filling them with books—they’re all film books.
The journal you’re holding is one of your personal diaries. Throughout the film, there are also a lot of home movies you shot of your wife at the time and your daughter. Were you conscious of keeping a personal archive?
I just never threw stuff away because a lot of them are family tapes. They just get stored because at a certain point you lose any way to actually move them over. You’ve got a MiniDV, and then your sizes change, your Hi8, your this, your that. But I always carried a camera. I filmed everything all the time.
There’s so much home material shot by you.
And sometimes it’s too much! But a lot of those things let you see how some things started. There are little films there that I made with cuts in the camera. I also had footage of my father; I had John Lennon’s voice.
You also have storyboards in your basement, like the moment when you pull out the storyboard for “Platoon.” There’s another moment when you talk about being hired on “Casino” and sending a 10-page memo to Scorsese with suggestions.
Scorsese basically said he received my notes and he would never read them. Though he did offer that when he finished the script, he would send me every shot. When I first got his phone call after the memo, I actually thought I was getting fired.
You thought you had crossed some creative boundary?
I don’t know. I had asked the AD, who he had worked with on many different films, and the producer, who is now his ex-wife, Barbara De Fina, and they told me to send it.
They laid a trap for you?
I don’t think he did. I think she might have. But I don’t know what happened.
You talked about always having a camera on you, and as I said, you have these diaries. It seems like every day of your life, you’ve either journaled by hand or digitally. Where does that desire to keep a record of your life come from?
It stems from two different worlds. The camera is the way I want to see all the time. I just love having a camera and seeing through a camera. It’s often a way of protecting myself from the event. Keeping me back here. [puts his hand over his face like a lens] Not over there. The journals are always devoted to the film. So as you start, it’s like pre-prep and this and that. And then you do Polaroids. So back then, that’s how you calibrated your lighting, with the Polaroids through gray scale. I would take pictures of things and then make notes.
Then there would always be the thought of how the day went, what happened on that day, or what the attitude was. Sometimes it would be a series of very personal things. Sometimes observations about people who were on the set. They just collided, and then they meshed. That’s just the process I went through.
But it wasn’t intentional —like, I want to record my life—it was more like, this is how I live. I shoot all the time. I’m either making a film and taking notes on it, or I’m at home taking pictures, or on vacation, or whatever. Now we do it with this [he picks up my phone]. You shoot all the time. I’m sure you do. It’s the same idea. Except if you have a video camera.
There’s a moment in the film where you talk about the stages of winning Oscars: the first is recognition, and the second is that people are afraid of you. What did you mean by the “afraid of you” part?
The first nomination actually is the opening for people to respect you. I got a second one with “Born on the Fourth of July,” and then when the first came through with “JFK,” there was this: Ah, okay. Then you get called more, and that’s when Marty began to consider me, along with other directors, like Rob Reiner. You’re moving up the ladder and getting acceptance from certain directors. I worked with John Sayles on two films, and then suddenly I’m with a different director, in a different sphere, with bigger budgets and this and that.
But when you win that second one, then only a certain tier of directors wants to make a call. People are more assured: He’s a two-time Academy winner. Would I feel comfortable asking Meryl to do my movie? He must cost a fortune. We can’t call him. When it’s your third, you might as well just go hang yourself for a while until a top-notch [director] shows up, somebody who really is not afraid of anything.
That’s actually happened before. I did “A Private War” with Matthew Heineman, and it wasn’t even a vague question mark. Just come on, let’s make this low-budget film. Even Baltazar doesn’t care. I mean, he’s a serious man. He just didn’t care about my accolades. He just wanted to work with me. Those are the kind of people you need. Because it starts to take away the question marks people have about you: Can I handle this? Do I want to deal with this? What kind of person are you? Are you an asshole? People worry about your attitudes.
They’ll say: I hear he’s an asshole. He’s really hard on this crew. Thank you. My crew has been with me for 40 years. How hard could I be? Quentin [Tarantino] said that I’m really hard on my crew. Well, Quentin, those people have been with me for 20 years before they even got up to you. I might have been an asshole, and I didn’t see it. It’s highly likely he’s correct.
In the film, Quentin mentions that you softened to your crew in between “Kill Bill” and “Inglourious Basterds.” Do you think you changed?
Here’s what happened on “Kill Bill.” We decided to shoot the film three perf. I didn’t know Quentin well enough at the time, and the producers didn’t help with this decision. We did three perfs because you saved almost one-quarter of your budget by doing three perfs instead of four. But he likes to print everything and then project it. With three perf, that doesn’t work. You can project three perf, but it’s a much more complicated situation. So, I now take that upon myself as an issue. Because it’s great for going to the DI, but he’s a printer. You can print, but you have to go through a whole different process: three perf, then you make a dupe, and so forth. That whole process was different for him, and he prints every take that he selects. So, that caused friction between us that we got through, but it was not so cool.
I assume you’ve seen the film…
I haven’t! I’ve seen various parts of the film in different manifestations. I haven’t seen the final mix or the film’s final formatting.
Do you have a hope of what other people will think when they see the film?
I do. I want it to say that when you make a career choice, and you do it with utter abandon, my life is what happens. Here are the consequences you’ll run into. They’re not all positive. You’re damaging people along that route. Marty says it very beautifully at some point in the movie where he says: You’re going this direction and you hope the other person comes this direction with you. It doesn’t happen.
Quentin says something like: When you’re climbing Mount Everest, no one else is going with you on that trip. I think that’s the case. During that time, the loss of my family was what was taking place. I lost all my family and relationships with my daughters that I’ve never retrieved. To this day, the two oldest daughters are still angry at me. I hope this makes others know that you can make choices. But if you do take them, you take them, and you live with them. You commit to it.
