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TagsDocumentary traces folk singer's rise and fall
BY MIRIAM RINN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
MOVIE REVIEW
Most of the folks who remember Phil Ochs are about ready to sign up for Medicare, but they can probably still recall some of the words to "I‘m Not Marching Anymore." A star of the folk/protest song movement of the early sixties, the handsome Ochs was overshadowed by his friend and rival Bob Dylan, and overtaken by the rapid societal shift from the idealism of the Kennedy election to the disillusionment and cynicism of the Nixon regime just ten years later. He also was haunted by worsening mental illness, which drove him to suicide at the age of 35.
Kenneth Bowser's complimentary documentary "Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune" traces Ochs' rise and fall through concert footage and plenty of interview material with the people who knew and admired him: Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Peter Yarrow, Pete Seeger, and Jerry Rubin, a co-founder with Ochs of the Yippies. It also presents his life and career as symbolic of a generation of idealistic liberals who believed, at least for a short time, that they could change the world. Many of those people adjusted to a disappointing reality and went to law school or got MBAs, and some flamed out through drugs or other self-destructive behavior. Over the long term, their political activity led to huge changes in American society, some of which they welcomed and some no doubt led them to despair.
Ochs was born in 1940, the son of an American doctor and a Scottish woman. As his brother Michael (his manager and one of the film's producers) recounts, they were the only two Jewish kids in their school and soon learned to fight. Ochs' father suffered from depression and was committed to a mental hospital for long periods of time. Ochs' mother seems to have been a hard, cold woman, and he was sent to a military academy in Virginia in 1956. It was at Ohio State University that Ochs discovered leftist politics and the music of Woody Guthrie. In 1962, he moved to Greenwich Village and fell in with the growing folk music scene there.The film alludes to Ochs' relationship with Dylan several times. In the early Village days, they were friends and collaborators. But the much more tough-minded Dylan soon turned away from politics, taunting Ochs that it was all crap. As Dylan's lyrics became more complex and surreal, Ochs continued to write songs such "Draft Dodger Rag" and "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." Ochs' beautiful voice could not compete with Dylan's musical adventurousness and lyrical brilliance, and he never became the musical star that he so much wanted to be. While Ochs cared deeply about his political ideals, he also desperately wanted to be famous. It may be that he was limited by the size of his natural audience ----- there were never as many radical hippies as the media or our middle-aged nostalgia suggested ----- and Americans quickly tired of social upheaval.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago seems to have crushed Ochs emotionally, and he recorded his last studio album in 1970. His mental state began to deteriorate, and some of his decisions were downright bizarre. He appeared on tour in a gold lame suit reminiscent of Las Vegas Elvis (made by Elvis's costumer), and he started to drink much more heavily. There were long periods of travel abroad to Chile and Africa, a lot of risky behavior, which resulted in a mugging that damaged his vocal chords, and the beginnings of paranoia. This was the dawn of the age of psychotropic drugs, but there's no information in the film as to whether Ochs received treatment for his bi-polar disorder. Whether he did or not, it wasn't effective and his end was not pretty.
Bowser has made several documentaries about performers and artists, including films about John Ford and John Wayne, Preston Sturges, and Frank Capra. His last feature documentary, an official selection at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, was "Easy Riders/Raging Bulls" about the 1970s renaissance of American film. "Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune" is a solid piece of filmmaking that tells the sad story of a talented, hopeful man who was ground down by his own disabilities as well as the whetstone of history.
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Anyhow, I'm very happy this exists. It reminds me there are other people who know about him, even though I never ever meet any. Hell, it's hard enough to find anyone who knows anything about Muhammad Ali in my generation or younger. These are among the most important personal stories in modern human history and I hope people take a look. A tribute to those who really tried to make an impact, whether they failed or not may come down to wrong place, wrong time...or simply not appealing to the masses. I've met the masses. It's not a mark against you if they don't get it...They just don't want much, think much or desire much. Whatever is given to them in the mass media is downright good enough. Even then they only scan the headlines. What a dull race we humans are. That's why is so great when someone like Phil Ochs comes along and leaves such a legacy.
Did I go off point a bit? Well...I love Phil Ochs. Can't wait to see this.