Decline and fall of Barbara Kopple

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Newsweek, November 1, 1976

In 1973, a group of coal miners in Brookside, Ky., struck the Eastover
Mining Co., a subsidiary of the Duke Power Co. Barbara Kopple, a young
filmmaker who had worked on such documentaries as "Hearts and Minds" and
"Gimme Shelter," took a couple of cameras and a small crew to the scene of
the action. The result of that visit - which lasted three years - is HARLAN
COUNTY, U.S.A., a passionate and often suspenseful documentary that emerged
as the surprise hit of the recent New York Film Festival.

====

Newsday, October 6, 1990, Saturday, ALL EDITIONS

IN "HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A.," Barbara Kopple's Academy Award-winning 1976
documentary about a violent and inspiring coalminers' strike, an old woman
whose father died of blacklung disease sings a sound track full of rousing
union anthems, including: "Which side are you on? Which side are you on?"

There are no clear sides, no real villains, no bracing victories in
Kopple's new union documentary, "American Dream." When the Hormel
meatpackers in Austin, Minn., go on their long, exhaustively documented
strike, they wind up fighting each other more than they battle management.
This film has just one union song, at the very end - "Solidarity Forever .
. . Our Union Makes Us Strong" - and by then, the lyrics are ironic.

====

ADWEEK, October 14, 1996

Leo Burnett is working on a new campaign for Reebok to succeed the current
"This is my planet" effort. Reebok representative Dave Fogelson said the
new advertising will take a "new, documentary approach." He confirmed that
Academy Award-winning documentary director Barbara Kopple has been signed
to direct some spots.

====

The Times (London), April 25, 1998, Saturday

New York got its first glimpse this week inside the couple's [Woody Allen &
Soon-Yi] romance in a new film by the Oscar-winning documentary-maker
Barbara Kopple, called Wild Man Blues. The film, to be released in London
on May 8, captures fly-on-the-wall footage of the couple on a European tour
with Allen's jazz band. Already, however, New Yorkers are asking whether
the film is just propaganda for the actor. "A slick corporate film plugging
Allen," one critic complained. "A public relations corrective," sniped
another. The documentary stirred debate because the first potential
director, Jerry Zwigoff, rejected the project when Allen refused him the
right to the "final cut".

====

The Boston Herald, May 31, 2002 Friday ALL EDITIONS

My parents settled in the Hamptons almost 30 years ago. My father still
lives in a glorious stretch of land at the eastern tip of New York's Long
Island. He attends church every day and has a community of neighbors and
friends who go about their lives without glitz and glamour. They know about
the legendary Hamptons social scene from what they read in the local
newspapers. They know of the money, the excess and the reckless
self-indulgence from what they see around them - the mansions squatting in
former potato fields and the SUVs clogging the roads.

The Hamptons has a burgeoning population of retirees like my dad. But
filmmaker Barbara Kopple did not find many of these extraordinarily
ordinary people when she invaded the place last summer to make "The
Hamptons," a so-called reality miniseries that premieres Sunday at 9 p.m.
on WCVB (Ch. 5) and concludes Monday.

This is show biz, baby. And "The Hamptons" operates with a lot of heat and
not much light. The film is sumptuous with lavish pastel princes and
princesses of posh. There are throbbing beats of summer and crystalline
views of a place that, really, is fairy-tale gorgeous.

Kopple, an Academy Award-winning documentarian whose "Harlan County USA"
looked at West Virginia coal country, has traveled a long way. Now she
mines for glitter.


Louis Proyect
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