Anderson Cooper

  • Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) Rich people are not like you and me. For one thing, they can lead a film production during which they chat with their parents, and get the result broadcast on cable TV. Yes, yes, I do like Anderson Cooper a lot—he has been a CNN pillar for decades, and I’ve often been struck by his insights in a variety of contexts (including when he pops up as a talking head in other documentaries). But Cooper is a scion of the Vanderbilt family, and as such is not necessarily your perfect parasocial buddy—just watch his acid commentary on anything that has to do with taxing the rich to realize that he’s not a man of the people. Keep that divide in mind as you watch Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper, a feature-length therapy session in which Cooper talks to his mother Gloria Vanderbilt and comes to a better understanding of her life (and his!) through tumultuous confessions. To be fair, Vanderbilt has led a tough, rich life. Her early years were marked by a high-profile custody legal battle, she lost one son to suicide (which she witnessed) and was a confidante and lover to a variety of well-known people. As if that wasn’t enough, her life as a socialite was also marked by some success in visual arts, writing and fashion entrepreneurship. All of this is explored through mother-son conversations, clearly leading to a hagiographic portrait with plenty left unsaid. As much as this is a film designed to make you like those people, it’s hard to get away from some poor-rich-girl thoughts. If you want a clear example of how much privilege money can buy, consider the opportunities in visual arts, writing and fashion entrepreneurship denied to equally talented women without a Vanderbilt-grade trust fund. Also consider the dichotomy between Vanderbilt’s reputed fortune and her numerous sources of income, and the reports that her estate was barely worth $1.5M—surely there’s a story to tell here? None of this makes Nothing Left Unsaid a bad movie—in another mood, I’m sure I could let go of my class-struggle nitpicks and admire the film for being a moving portrait of a mother by her adoring son. But that’s not the mood I’m in right now, and someone’s got to be the irritating contrarian pointing out perfectly valid alternate interpretations. After all, Cooper himself often is.

  • A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) While Gordon Parks will forever be remembered for directing the blaxploitation classic Shaft, it actually takes more than an hour in A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks before the film even mentions Shaft, and even then, it’s as part of Parks’ directing career in general. No, this is a documentary that pays well-deserved homage to Gordon Parks’ photography, from his early days documenting criminals in New York City, to more ambitious assignments throughout his career. The most distinctive feature of director John Maggio’s film, fittingly enough, is spending a lot of time showcasing and sometimes analyzing (via the eyes of fellow photographers) what makes some of Parks’ individual photos so compelling. The lineup assembled to pay homage is impressive—sure, we can expect people like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay to be interviewed, but Anderson Cooper is a surprise. (The connection ends up being parental—Gordon Parks photographed Gloria Vanderbilt and kept in touch afterwards.) While the film generally takes a chronological approach through its subject’s life, it also comes with a speedrun through recent American history in matters of racial equality, and how Parks’ example continues to inspire others. The best parenthetical of the film focuses on Devin Allen, a photographer who picked up the camera from being inspired by Parks’ example and later had a picture reprinted on the cover of Time magazine. It’s impossible to dissociate Parks’ work from activist intent—as the title of the film (reprised from his autobiography) states, anyone who wants to create change has a choice of weapons—and Parks picked up the camera. This does add a lot of depth and emotion to the biopic, linking his work to much larger social currents and progress. Parks was not always well served by American society (as proven by Hollywood’s refusal to consider him a director of anything but black-themed projects) but he did far more than his part in trying to improve it. Shaft is far from being all of it.