Paul Williams Still Alive

Paul's Fans are Still Alive Too
I'm strongly recommending this film, although only to those "super-fans" of Paul Williams (and I can proudly count myself as being one of them).

I've been listening to Paul Williams ever since my father brought home his LP "A Little Bit Of Love" way back in 1974. I was only 10 or so, but his songs resonated with me even as a young boy. The album was so vastly different from any of the typical country twang that my father was accustomed to playing that it really stood out, and it remains a favorite of mine even to this day. In the mid 70's, Williams released "Phantom of the Paradise", an incredibly creative glam/horror cult film and soundtrack that truly solidified my love for Paul and his music.

STILL ALIVE recounts the many TV guest appearances and cameos Paul made during the 70's, and as a fan, it was so pleasurable watching these film snippets. It was like traveling inside a television time capsule, and I was struck at the sheer volume of projects Paul was...

A misguided but surprisingly compelling story...
Tossing aside the poorly chosen title, the film has one significant conceit that harms it... the idea that Paul's existence was solely dictated by his TV popularity. He WAS a staple of 70's TV talk shows, but let's face it, A) the talk show format died, Paul didn't, and B) if that is what you love Paul for you're obviously not as interested in Paul as you think you are. Director Stephen Kessler takes us along on a fascinating ride which on the surface comes across like a stalker/star relationship wherein the stalker uses the camera to leverage access, which lends the first half of the film a great deal of uneasy tension between the subject and the director. How many filmmakers WANT to advertise that their presence made their star itch?

The film still manages to pull a rabbit out of it's hat as Paul's life is explored in sometimes deep levels and other times very shallow ones (an effort to gloss over Paul's work for Alcoholics Anonymous is brushed off nearly as easily as...

A missed opportunity....
The premise of director Stephen Kessler's film, Paul Williiams Still Alive, is that Kessler, a fan of legendary singer-songwriter and 70s pop culture icon,Paul Williams, since childhood, wrongly assumed that Williams was dead. Once Kessler discovered, in fact, that Williams was 'still alive,' he decided to look Williams up and make a documentary about him, or so he says. That premise sounds shaky to begin with. If you are a fan of someone's work then wouldn't you feel compelled to keep up with what they have been up to, creatively speaking? WIth such a self professed love of Williams' music, you would think that Kessler would give us some insight into the man and what he's been up to during the last three decades. Instead, what you get here are numerous opportunities spent trying to get Williams to emote on camera with very little regard for what makes him tick as a person. There are some interesting and amusing clips of Williams' 70s variety and talk show appearances but, other than...

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