Television

The Life of Reilly (Directors: Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson, USA, 2006): If you grew up in the 1970s like me, you couldn’t avoid Charles Nelson Reilly. He was on Match Game, Hollywood Squares, Lidsville, Uncle Croc’s Block, and made reg­ular appear­ances on The Tonight Show. What I didn’t know about Reilly was that he had been a Tony Award-winning actor on Broadway in the 50s and 60s, and that when he dis­ap­peared from tele­vi­sion, he went on to become a beloved and respected acting teacher.

This film doc­u­ments a per­form­ance of Reilly’s long-running but also long-retired one-man show, “Save It For The Stage: The Life of Reilly.” The dir­ectors con­vinced him to take it out of moth­balls for one last per­form­ance in 2004, and the result is this film. There is a bit of archival footage mixed in, and some music, but what the dir­ectors have done is essen­tially edit down a three hour long stage per­form­ance into some­thing half that length. Which is why although it’s an amazing story, it’s just not that great a film.

Reilly has had a most inter­esting life, and he’s a great storyteller. That he even forged a career as an actor is incred­ible, con­sid­ering his unbe­liev­ably dys­func­tional family. His descrip­tions of his soul-crushing mother are hil­arious, but also very sad. And when he even­tu­ally got an inter­view with the head of NBC in the early days of the tele­vi­sion era, he was told, “They don’t let queers on tele­vi­sion.” His pro­lific appear­ances in the 1970s almost seem to be his way of exacting revenge.

But because his story was so inter­esting, I wanted to know more. There’s very little about the fact that he is gay. No stories about crushes, romances, rela­tion­ships, and only the NBC story about any kind of dis­crim­in­a­tion. One thing that emerged from the film was Reilly’s long and (to me) sur­prising friend­ship with Burt Reynolds. I would have loved to have heard a few more anec­dotes like this about his friends. It just seemed like there was so much more to tell, and knowing that the stage show was longer, it made me ques­tion the dir­ectors’ decision to cut material. As well, apart from Reilly’s riv­eting per­form­ance, the film­makers didn’t add much ori­ginal work.

Although that makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy the film, that would be untrue. I wanted to hear even more from this fas­cin­ating man. Unfortunately, the show is back in moth­balls, and I don’t see him touring it again, not at 76 years of age. Pity.

May 28, 2007: I just found out the very sad news that Charles Nelson Reilly has passed away. I’m very glad this film was able to convey a sense of the won­derful drama of his life and his skills as an actor. Try to see it if you can.

October 23, 2007: Good news. The film will be opening across the US next month, and the film’s web site has been newly redesigned with lots of con­tent. The film will be playing at the Bloor cinema in Toronto from November 30 until December 13, according to the site. Don’t miss it!

Official site for the film

(7/10)

Tagged as: Documentaries, homosexuality, Inside Out, Television

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