From: mleeper@optonline.net   
      
   In KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME, a biography of Kurt Vonnegut,   
   most of his early life is told mostly with home movies.  Later the   
   narrative is composed from photos of his articles, books, first   
   pages of manuscripts, and footage shot by director Robert B. Weide   
   and others.  Weide took almost forty years to make this film (he   
   started planning in 1982, and shooting in 1988).  Weide is best   
   known for documentaries about famous comedians, and for the movie   
   and series CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM.   
      
   After Vonnegut is introduced as being either insane or the only   
   person not insane, the documentary reverts to a more traditional   
   biography.  His family was fairly well-to-do, but they were wiped   
   out by the Depression.  They lost their home, and he had to leave   
   private school.  In public school, he became immersed in pop   
   culture, and a fan of comedians such as Laurel and Hardy.  Vonnegut   
   was the family comedian from when he was young, and described his   
   books as "screamingly funny."  During World War II, he was a POW in   
   Dresden during the fire-bombing there.  (Vonnegut claimed he   
   actually saw Dresden in a premonition before it happened.)  He went   
   to work after the war for General Electric as a publicity writer,   
   but finally had to choose between an industrial career at GE or a   
   career of writing.  It was not much of a fight.  He quit GE and   
   wrote full-time.   
      
   Vonnegut seemed to live by phrases he uses repeatedly in his   
   writing.  "Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time." "So it goes."   
   It is not clear that they mean much beyond Vonnegut's attachment to   
   them.   
      
   At the end of his life, Weide says, all of Vonnegut's books were in   
   print.  One person said of him, "Vonnegut was championed by the   
   people, not by the critics," although eventually he was given   
   critical acclaim by the literary establishment.  Either way,   
   Vonnegut was a writer whose outlook was shaped by his fear of   
   failing.  Some of his books made it and some did not.   So it goes.   
      
   Releases theatrically 11/19/2021.  Rating: high +1, or 6/10.   
      
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   What others are saying:   
      
      
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   Mark R. Leeper   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)