We all know who Albert Maysles is, right? The godfather of cinéma vérité, Maysles, along with his now-deceased brother David created such documentary greats like, the Rolling Stones at Altamont film, “Gimmie Shelter” and chronicled Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ batshit crazy relatives in “Grey Gardens.”
And we know that the surviving Maysles bro is probably going a little senile now that he’s agreed to direct a documentary about fucking Fall Out Boy. Albert isn’t taking it easy on family members either. You can never charge him with nepotism, that’s for sure.
His niece Celia Maysles (David’s daughter) made a documentary about her filmmaking father called “Wild Blue Yonder” (which has its U.S. premieres at SXSW in March). Cool, right? Tribute to dad?
Guess again. Albert was making his own autobiographical doc and is seen in ‘Yonder’ denying Celia access to his vast archives. “People who worked with him are appalled that he won’t share the material,” Celia told Vogue in 2006. “I feel my father’s story should be told — and I’m the person to tell it.”
Apparently Albert was banned from seeing the movie for some time, but he finally got a peek at it recently (thanks to Spoutblog for the good lookin’ out). What did he think?
“Terrible…Unnecessarily, I come off badly. I wanted to cooperate with her, but I was — and am — making my own autobiographical film at the same time. I couldn’t just let her pick whatever she wanted. I wanted the two of us to cooperate in that process. She took that as an offense. And as you see in the film, I come off as the bad guy,” Maysles told the Reeler at a screening.
Later on in the interview, the filmmaker concedes that the film was “fairly well-made,” but calls her out for exploiting their beef and says the film “benefits so much from the ruckus between her and myself… it’s unnecessary.” Then he says certain things about the film are “totally wrong” and she wouldn’t have put them in the film if she knew her father better. Ouch.
One things for sure, Thanksgiving dinner next year is gonna be hella awkward.