Customer Reviews

Tell Them Who You Are

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Thank you, I received it very quickly and enjoyed receiving it. I collect Julia Robert Movies.

I am partial to those stories that really get at the heart of a family. Mark Wexler needed to do this film to work out his relationship with his parents. It worked. As you see this film forget that his father had a life where he worked with famous people. This story gets played out with most of us regular people. Worth seeing by all.

Haskell Wexler is one of a handful of cinematographers who have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, having won a pair of Oscars for filming "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Bound for Glory." Other nominations came for "Matewan" and "Blaze." He was also nominated for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" along with Bill Butler, because Wexler was fired during the shoot. Two minutes into this documentary, you will understand why that would happen. You will also quickly figure out that this 2004 documentary is not about a great cinematographer, but about the relationship between Wexler and his son Mark, who is the one making the documentary.

The title of the film comes from Haskell Wexler's advice to his son when Mark started getting involved in the business. What it meant was tell people your father is Haskell Wexler. Born into a privileged life, Wexler got into making documentaries and established a reputation as a first-rate cinematographer and as an outspoken liberal. The son of Wexler's second wife, Mark talks about the point in his life when he realized that the U.S. government was bigger than his father and became a conservative, more out of a need to tick off his father than out of profound ideological conviction. That becomes part of the inherent tension between the documentarian and his subject (Wexler refuses to sign the release form for the film despite Mark's plea to trust him), but there is also the fact that Wexler thinks he knows more about making a documentary than his son. He probably does, but the old man (Wexler is in his early 80s), has no compunctions about communicating his superiority.

There are some clips from Wexler's films, both well-known ones like "In the Heat of the Night" and "Coming Home," and his lesser known and more political efforts, such as "The Bus" and "Introduction to the Enemy," both of which he directed. There are interviews with actors (e.g., Julia Roberts, Ron Howard), directors (e.g., Norman Jewison, George Lucas), producers (e.g., Michael Douglas), writers (e.g., Studs Terkel), and a few cinematographers (e.g., Conrad L. Hall). But time and time again the emphasis is more on the man than on his work, and because of Mark's presence the conversations often turn to the topics of fathers and sons, although with no small degree of irony it is Jane Fonda who makes the most pointed comments on the topic of fear to both Wexlers.

What is probably the most amazing thing about "Tell Them Who You Are" is that Mark Wexler would attempt to finally get out of his father's shadow by making a documentary about him. But clearly this sort of public exorcism is what the younger Wexler required. However, the portends are not good when he ignores his father's advice and makes a big mistake early on when filming his father's 80th birthday party. Still, the fact that this could be the final nail in the coffin for the relationship between these two is what makes the present as important as the past in this documentary.

One thing you need to know is that the payoff for this documentary comes not at the end, when we find what Haskell Wexler is going to do next, but on one of the DVD special features when his son finally shows him the documentary we have just watched. If you have any doubts about what "Tell Them Who Your Are" is all about, what you see (and hear) there will settle the matter. There are also uncut interview clips with several of the actors and cinematographers who appear in the documentary, with the Martin Sheen one being the most fascinating of the bunch as he speaks eloquently about fathers and sons.

This documentary touched me deeper than any documentary to date. As a former editor for National Geographic Publications, I hired Mark Wexler to shoot still pictures for a National Geographic Book. He was talented then, and when he started making documentaries several years ago, I was thrilled by their insight and quality. But when Mark worked for me I didn't know he was the son of Academy Award winner Haskell Wexler. Only within the past year did I realize Mark's father was his father and a difficult guy to get along with. Like most children, Mark has only wanted to get a nod of appreciation from his dad. That nod in Mark's significant and acclaimed professional career was never forthcoming and was a source of sadness for a son who admired a distant father.

As the film reveals, Mark decided to produce a documentary about his dad as his dad approached his 80th birthday. The film is a little uncomfortable to watch at times and completely unscripted, yet I could not stop watching. From the opening scenes where Haskell is critical of Mark's questions and filming approach, to the closing scenes where Mark takes Haskell to visit Mark's mother and Haskell's ex-wife who has Alzheimers, there is a steady softening of Haskell's attitude toward his son. In the end, Haskell expresses (a rare event for his hardened ego) gratitude for his son and the connection between father and son is made, or at least a connection is started on a new emotional level.

In-depth interviews with some of Hollywood's greats about being the offspring of a powerful parent (or being a powerful parent) adds to the universal appeal of this great documentary. This movie transcends Hollywood. No glitz here. Just regular people who happen to be in the entertainment business. Highly recommended. Thank you, Mark, for making this film.

An inspiring, moving documentary.
What could have been a dreary, by-the-numbers clebrity bio becomes instead a profound and deeply felt investigation into the sometimes thorny relationship between acclaimed cinematographer/documentarian Haskell Wexler and his not-so-famous filmmaker son Mark. It's a film that is both humorous and heart-breaking, with many insightful moments from surprising sources. It's fascinating to watch this documentary expand far beyond the limits of its localized Hollywood subject matter and touch such a universal emotional chord with fathers and sons in all walks of life.
I thank both Wexlers for this brave film.

A son finds a way to form a relationship with his Dad - appeal to his vanity by making a movie about him and visit Julia Roberts together. Through the kindnesses of those interviewed we get to humanize our fathers from an Image to an ordinary man living in a time with less consciousness. More optimistic than My Architect and has left me feeling lighter about my own father.

I had no idea who Haskell Wexler was before I started watching this highly entertaining and well made documentary. One is quickly informed about the movies he was DOP for, and what numerous actors, directors and producers think of him. Not all favourable by the way. The gist of the movie is the relationship between son Mark (who made the movie) and father Haskell. They are entirely different people with Mark being more conservative to the outspoken and liberal Haskell. But herein lies the universality of the movie - even though we would sometimes deny it, we all strive for the approval and acknowledgement of our parents. You havent finished the experience of "Tell Them Who You Are" until you have watched Haskell's reaction to the movie in the EXTRAS of the DVD. Very moving!

This is a curious and oddly entertaining little film. The son of a troubled but talented director makes a movie about his realtionship with his father, in the process exploring his father's life and work while also focusing on family dynamics. Should he have done such a public expose'? See what you think.

If you're looking for soap opera, this film really doesn't stoop to that level. It can be painful to watch at times but I always got the sense that Mark Wexler always strove for the truth (as best he could) in his father's life and the reasons for their confrontations.

I came away from this one thinking of how families affect each other - for better or worse- and how the son of someone famous may have a special cross to bear...since genius can come with its own set of idiosyncracies, not all of them pleasant. Fascinating!

Tell Them Who You Are presents an achingly honest portrait of a fascinating and troubled relationship. It expertly examines the struggle between this father and son with real humor and raw emotion. Haskell Wexler is outrageously talented, famously outspoken, and unapologetically brash. The genius of this film is that it refuses to rely on the Mommy Dearest model but delves into the truths that lie between the lines. As we watch Mark discover the rare tenderness and surprising vulnerability in his father, we can't help but re-examine our own assumptions and relationships.

I enjoyed seeing Haskell Wexler in some candid moments, but I was continually rattled by the contrast between this film's portrayal of a truly accomplished cinematic artist, the elder Wexler, and the rather bumbling efforts of his son to make this film about his father. The father continually throws out ideas on how to make the film we're watching; while the son does pick up on some of these ideas, letting them reshape the film as it goes along, he never does so with much depth or panache. The filmmaker also repeatedly raises, but fails to explore, the contrast between his own conservative views and the leftist views of his father. I think the younger Wexler also seems unaware of the irony of his efforts to gain professional respect by cozying up to the elites at the top of the very power structure that his father spent most of his life railing against.

For a similar, but much more successful and artful portrait of father and son dynamics, I recommend Alan Berliner's _Nobody's Business_.