'Rudy! A Documusical' Review: Cut The "Musical," Keep The "Rudy!" [Tribeca Review]

“A priest in a pinstripe suit.” That’s how Andrew Kirtzman characterizes Rudy Giuliani early in Jed Rothstein’s “Rudy! A Documusical,” his chronicling of how America’s erstwhile mayor became America’s most embarrassing punchline. Kirtzman, Giuliani’s biographer, makes a reasonable simile. Giuliani did ponder priesthood in his 20s; after all, if you can imagine for a minute that he was ever 20 years old. He looks like Bat Boy’s frazzled mascara-smeared grandpa. Youth, much like scruples, integrity, and the capacity for going 5 minutes without making an ass of himself, passed the man like a ship avoiding an iceberg.

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But Kirtzman isn’t necessarily paying Giuliani a compliment with his description. Recall the number of priests responsible for diddling innocent altar boys while hiding behind a wall of frocks, clerical collars, and well-thumped Bibles. Of course, Giuliani isn’t a sex offender, though as “Rudy! A Documusical” clarifies, he did marry his second cousin. But he has spent much of his career wiping his keister with the law that once upon a time he seemed to revere. Rothstein goes straight to Giuliani’s beginnings as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and glosses over his involvement with the Reagan Administration because, perhaps, that’s a much less important (or sensational) moment of Giuliani’s life and times; it appears far more valuable to Rothstein’s thesis to land on the moment where Giuliani started his slow metamorphosis into the public figure we all know him as today.

Fair enough. The Reagan years may be the few Giuliani spent where he kept his head low enough to avoid looking like a raging dimwit. “Rudy! A Documusical” isn’t out to assassinate Giuliani’s character–he’s done a good job of that himself through the last six years–but the film almost can’t help bludgeoning him at every opportunity. That’s what happens to your reputation when you flush it down a gold-plated toilet. The effect is an unavoidable one-sidedness, a feature rather than a bug, because “one-sided” and “fair” don’t have to share the same sandbox. “Rudy! A Documusical” isn’t fair to Giuliani. His own biographer and former confidants aren’t fair to him, whether Ken Frydman, who served as press secretary for Giuliani’s ’93 mayoral campaign or Wendeen Eolis, a friend and advisor, as well as, in her words, a “serious, internationally recognized poker competitor.” (In her spare time!)

“Fair” in “Rudy! A Documusical” constitutes facts; once upon a time, Giuliani was seen as an incorruptible crusader against the corrupt. The thing is, corruption happens when a man has an ego, and Giuliani, the movie argues successfully, has a colossal ego. After his efforts at parlaying his post-9/11 celebrity status into national office and entrepreneurial accomplishment, he latched onto a certain yam-hued authoritarian pig as a remora to a shark, except sharks have instinct and intelligence that the pig and the remora both lack. Rothstein doesn’t need to convince his likely left-leaning audience either of Giuliani’s crimes or raw stupidity; he doesn’t need to remind them that Giuliani was instrumental in persuading rankled cattle to storm the nation’s capital. We know this. We remember it. The wounds haven’t healed. The memories haven’t spoiled. 

Instead, Rothstein plays the role of cartographer and carefully illustrates a map of how Giuliani tumbled from his pedestal and face-planted in sewage. He takes to the role with stern determination, perhaps inspired by the mythic figure Giuliani once cut according to Kirtzman, which makes the second half of the film’s title all the more confusing. What in the wide, wide world of American politics does a musical, apparently orchestrated to serve Rothstein’s thesis, have to do with the case against Giuliani and a recounting of his downfall? Inconsistently woven throughout “Rudy! A Documusical” is a quintet of musical numbers that, in effect, explain without enhancing the movie’s plot; Rothstein’s documentary is fine enough on its merits and shouldn’t require the application of artifice for buttressing theatrical detail. The music lacks pop. It’s missing animation. Worse, it clangs with the actual reporting.

Rothstein should have cut each number. Why and how he cooked them up in the first place is baffling. They do not benefit the movie in any way, and in fact, they undercut its sobriety. Giuliani is a clown. “Rudy! A Documusical” reads almost equally as clownish by the inclusion of these musical interludes, which add drag to Rothstein’s filmmaking and make the experience nigh-intolerable each time he transitions from journalism to showmanship. Granted, “Rudy! A Documusical” would only total to about 85 minutes without the musical element rather than 95. What a mercy that might’ve been. Roger Ebert said it best: “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.” He didn’t live to see “Rudy! A Documusical,” but if he had, he might have pointed to it and said: “Told you so.” [D]

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