Celia Maysles' Wild Blue Yonder

To call the Maysles Brothers (Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens) iconic in the world of documentary filmmaking is a little bit like calling the sun yellow, the grass green, the price of oil outrageous… Well, you get our point. So it was a particularly ballsy move on the part of Celia Maysles to pick up a camera and dig into the backstory of her deceased father David and somewhat-estranged uncle Albert.

We haven’t seen her new film, Wild Blue Yonder, yet, but we hear Al doesn’t come off that great in it… and apparently, Al agrees. “[A]s you see in the film, I come off as the bad guy,” he told The Reeler in a piece published two weeks ago. (Thanks to SpoutBlog for the link.)

Check out the Chronicle‘s SXSW Film issue (on the streets and the web next Thursday) for Anne S. Lewis’ interview with Celia Maysles, and about a gadjillion other SXSW Film-related pieces.

This article appears in February 29 • 2008.

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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...