|
Lily Janiak, Village Voice:
Fame and obscurity coexist happily, for the most
part, in Treva Wurmfeld's "Shepard and Dark", a look at
the decades-long friendship between Sam Shepard and his
onetime in-law Johnny Dark. The good-looking, easygoing
documentary settles in with its two subjects, offering not just
an intimate perspective on the playwright's biography
but some touching reflections on the comforts and perils
of long-term friendship.
Evidently prompted by a book project compiling letters
the two wrote each other through the years, the film
benefits greatly from Dark's near-obsessive archival
tendencies. Universities in Texas have acquired
mountains of material related to Shepard's plays, while
Dark kept not just every letter they wrote but boxes
full of photos and home movies. Since the two lived
communally for years - Dark's wife was Shepard's first
wife's mother, and the two couples lived together with
Shepard's son - the photographic record is especially
rich.
The home material affords a sideways view of Shepard's
career on stage and screen, but more attention is paid
to the personal demons that informed his writing - the
alcoholic, critical father; the broken relationships
with women; the tendency toward what Shepard describes
as "the blues." Time-traveling through a sheaf of
correspondence, the author observes "my life is falling
apart" and laments making the same mistakes again and
again.
But Wurmfeld wisely refuses to make her film one-sided,
taking plenty of time to draw Dark's character as well.
Friendly but hermetic, he's happy to live in the middle
of nowhere, working at a supermarket deli and spending
his off-hours with simple pleasures: books, baths,
introspection and marijuana. His isolation makes him an
excellent philosophical foil for Shepard, who divides
his time between the theater and compulsive road trips.
Their letters (which we hear them read in voiceover) are
full of thoughtful reflections on life and how to live
it; both men express astonishment that a seemingly
unlikely friendship could be so nourishing, despite
differences in geography and circumstance, for so long.
Poignantly, Wurmfeld captures a hiccup in the
relationship, as the two briefly share office and living
space while trying to whittle stacks of letters into a
readable book. Here, little differences in sensibility
bubble into major irritants, offering a first-hand look
at the kind of rift that looks petty to outsiders but
can appear insurmountable from within.
A.O. Scott, NY Times:
“Shepard & Dark,” a new documentary by Treva
Wurmfeld, begins with two writers at work. In Deming,
N.M., a silver-haired man touch-types at the keyboard of
a far-from-new desktop, chuckling to himself between
bong hits, flanked by bookshelves bearing volumes by
Tolstoy and Gurdjieff. Meanwhile, on a ranch somewhere
around Los Angeles, another fellow pecks at a portable
typewriter, transcribing densely lettered blocks of
prose from a worn Moleskine notebook.
That second guy, weathered and handsome, will look
familiar. He is Sam Shepard, one of the best-known
living playwrights and also a movie actor of
longstanding renown. Johnny Dark, his friend and
correspondent of about 50 years and his on-screen
conversation partner, is a different story. It would be
wrong to say that Mr. Dark never achieved fame, because
he makes it very clear that he never sought it. He works
at a supermarket, spends time with his dogs and has
settled into a solitary and self-sufficient existence...
The two men met in New York in the 1960s, when Mr.
Shepard was a rising star of experimental theater. Mr.
Dark married Scarlett Johnson, whose daughter O-Lan
married Mr. Shepard. The two couples lived together for
most of the 1970s in the San Francisco area, along with
Scarlett’s other daughter and Sam and O-Lan’s son,
Jesse, Mr. Dark’s stepgrandson. When Scarlett suffered a
severe brain hemorrhage, Mr. Shepard helped her and her
husband through a grueling and incomplete convalescence.
Through it all, they wrote letters full of loose-limbed
philosophizing, emotional candor and gruff wit. Those
letters, which fill cartons and binders, provide the
movie with its premise. Mr. Shepard decided to sell them to a
library in Texas and prepare a volume for publication,
along with some of Mr. Dark’s photographs.
The editing process does not go smoothly, and the easy
rapport between the old pals starts to fray, as
temperamental differences and asymmetries of status pull
them apart. Friendship is almost always built on
competition as well as solidarity, and respect can be a
mask for envy. Mr. Shepard, restless and ambitious,
takes for granted some of the privileges of fame but
also looks wistfully at Mr. Dark’s steadfastness and
contentment. Mr. Dark at one point complains about
feeling like Mr. Shepard’s “sidekick,” but at times in
“Shepard & Dark” it seems as if the reverse is true, as
if the plain-spoken, pot-smoking deli clerk possesses
greater charisma and deeper wisdom than the eminent
writer.
But in the end, who knows? The film points toward a rich
and complicated story that only partly makes it onto the
screen. Its subjects balance their forthrightness with a
certain reticence and resist their own nostalgic
tendencies. There was once something there, something
remarkable, but neither the film nor its main characters
can quite capture what it was.
Betsy Sharkey, LA Times:
There is a distinctive intimacy to a handwritten letter
between friends. You can feel the emotion behind the
stroke of the pen, layers of meaning in the choice of a
word. Put the letter writers in a room together and
there is both comfort and disquiet, as if the other
knows, perhaps, too much...
Watching the interplay, the men seem like two
curmudgeonly sides of the same coin. Shepard keeps an
ancient typewriter close. Dark works on an '80s-era
computer that looks like a museum piece. Both have
opinions about the papers and the process. There are
sticking points on what to include and what time to eat
dinner.
For all the similarities in their thinking — which
created the initial bond — they have different charms,
though both work well on screen.
The film takes us inside Dark's quiet, orderly life,
with his dogs and his kindness equally well known around
town. A steady supply of weed takes the edge off any
difficulties. Shepard is all edges, talking of the
mistakes he's repeated, the rootlessness he often feels,
plucking on his guitar late into the night.
When Wurmfeld lets them fall into old stories sparked by
a line in a letter, it's a nice bit of serendipity.
Allowing them to dissolve into laughter at some private
joke is not as satisfying. At one point the film and the
book stalled over Shepard and Dark's differences, the
filmmaker at the mercy of the whims of her unruly
subjects.
Anne Brodie, Monsters and
Critics:
If you want to put an impossible strain on a
forty-year friendship, make a documentary about it. What
starts as a delightfully upbeat and well-meaning look at
an enduring friendship between an award winning writer
and actor and a deli clerk evolves into something
entirely unexpected. It blindsides us with the force of
human will and intolerance and at a deeper level at our
inability to stop isolating ourselves...
Wurmfeld’s thoughtful and provocative documentary
illustrates the problems of their friendship and
personalities, as affected by time and age. We see the
wunderkind in new ways which not only explain why he is
apparently an unhappy man, but how he nurtures his art.
Dark explains his side of things and his growing
discomfort being the “sidekick to a famous person” in a
vivid and clear eyed manner.
The way the mood changes over the course of two hours is
just breathtaking. "Shepard & Dark" is a deeply engaging
experience that feels like a living two man play. And it
illustrates that our idols have feet of clay and worse
than that, have no money! From love to loneliness, it
reminds us that the ideal life we imagine takes work and
the willingness to bend.
Isabel Coixet, El Periódico de
Catalunya:
For over 40 years, Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark have
maintained a friendship that has stood the test of time
with a huge difference between their lifestyles. They
met in the New York theater scene of the 70s when Sam
Shepard was a young aspiring playwright and Johnny Dark,
a writer without publishing ambition, lived from odd
jobs (had up to 30 different jobs in his life). They
began to talk daily about authors and books they admired
and spoke also about their respective parents, who both
had a complicated relationship...
"Shepard & Dark" explores the unusual
relationship of these two men and is perhaps one of the
most lucid and poetic testimonies that I have seen on
male friendship. It's a fascinating portrait of two men
who have struggled to stay true to themselves...
Sam asks again and again why he repeats the same
mistakes. Why has he not found a balance between
solitude and company.
Dark knows that selling the college correspondence will
put to end to their economic problems although the idea
of leaving home to work arranging the letters and
photographs is deeply disturbing. The two men share a
home and office for a few days. But old grudges and
resentments come to the surface almost childlike which
kills the project. A depressed and taciturn Shepard
cannot stand the noise of the other, nor supports
rereading the letters that remind him of a buried past.
Dark, a man who has to bathe daily and have dinner at
five in the afternoon, has a horrifying break in his
routine and begins to realize that he has always done
things his friend wanted. He becomes distressed and
disappears from the house that morning. Shepard returns
to Dark all his letters with a dry letter which tells
him to do what he wants, that he is not interested in
the project. The odd couple breaks, but maybe,
hopefully, not forever.
The magic of this film is that we see two parallel lives
intersect and separate again with the same emotion that
we would see in the most passionate love story. And we
learn some things about loyalty and life on the road.
Danita Steinberg, Toronto Film
Scene:
"Shepard & Dark" is the story of
actor/playwright Sam Shepard and his best friend, Johnny
Dark – a friendship spanning over 40 years that is
documented in letters and photographs. As they come
together to compile and edit these letters and
photographs to sell, Shepard and Dark both wonder how
much more the friendship can withstand.
As much as I hate to throw around meaningless
descriptive words, "Shepard & Dark" can only be
described as fascinating. It is fascinating because how
often do you get an intimate glimpse into the life of a
temperamental celebrity? At his best, Sam Shepard is
moody. At his worst, he is unbearable. Through the letters, we often
hear about Shepard’s ongoing battle with depression. The
film is also fascinating because it is a unique portrait
of friendship – it is about the dynamics of two very
different men, one who is famous and one who isn’t.
I ended up feeling a real pull towards both Shepard and
Dark, but for different reasons. Shepard is certainly
having a hard time reliving the past through these
letters that Dark has kept, while Dark longs for an
emotional connection with his old friend. They are on
the same path heading in two separate directions. As a
fly on the wall, it is heartbreaking to watch as it is a
situation we can all relate to.
The film tends to focus on Dark, which he seems to enjoy
because the spotlight has always been on Shepard. While
Shepard is the movie star, Dark is enjoyably quirky,
with a lot of clever banter to humour the audience. I
delighted in getting to know Dark as a real person
beyond his friendship with Shepard.
Ken Eisner, Straight.com:
Despite the ubiquity of buddy movies, sincere male
friendships are rarely portrayed in depth on-screen,
making "Shepard & Dark" remarkable even apart from the
rock-star glow of its participants. Well, one of its
participants.
Actor, playwright, screenwriter, cowboy, songsmith, and
all-around handsome man Sam Shepard, who turns 70 this
year, has been corresponding with nebbishy, pot-smoking
Johnny Dark for more than 40 years. Both were bullied by
scholarly, alcoholic fathers and are mordantly funny
writers but otherwise couldn’t be more different. While
Shepard went on to 12 kinds of fame, Dark - who could be
played today by Dustin Hoffman - ended up alone in a
small-town New Mexico bungalow, working part-time at a
deli counter.
The donation of their letters, which Dark meticulously
collected, to the University of Texas prompted filmmaker
Treva Wurmfeld’s constantly surprising documentary about
this unlikely palship... Without
spoiling anything, I’ll just observe that fame seems to
offer no guarantee against despair, and money certainly
can’t buy self-knowledge.
Volkmar Richter, The Vancouver Observer:
This is a remarkable film because it gives you so much
to think and talk about. It details the vagaries of
friendship, or as my wife specifies, male friendship.
Men are much shallower than women in relating to their
friends and they don’t dwell on or face up to the past.
That was true also for Sam Shepard, the actor,
playwright, author, celebrity, and his long-time friend
(since 1963) Johnny Dark, a private, stay-at-home type
who worked part time at a deli meat counter. The two
loved to talk about books, smoke dope and listen to
Dylan.
They wrote long letters to each other when apart...Treva Wurmfeld’s
documentary catches Sam and Johnny together again, now
(and maybe for the first time) looking into their past
through a detailed record of their thinking over all
those years in those letters. The film shows them at
work, often happily, sometimes annoying each other, and
with the help of home movies and photos from Dark’s
comprehensive personal archives, gives an intimate,
surprisingly candid glimpse into their lives. Sam
regrets his mistakes and can’t shake the influence of
his Fulbright Scholar father who was also a drunk. Dark
is a perceptive critic of Sam’s work and content to be a
loner. This is a rich and thoughtful film.
Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader:
Timing is everything: filmmaker Treva Wurmfeld set out
to document the 50-year friendship between playwright
Sam Shepard and writer-archivist Johnny Dark, and wound
up recording its breakdown. Shepard is a restless
traveler and moody drinker, whereas Dark is a mellow
stoner who sticks to home. They lived together for over
a decade, when Shepard was married to Dark's
stepdaughter, O-Lan, and remained friends even after the
playwright left her. Shepard is shown living in a motel
and angling to sell his and Dark's massive collection of
correspondence, photos, and home movies for a book deal.
The stress of their reunion yields fascinating insights
into Shepard's work.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru:
The first 30 minutes or so of the documentary does feel
slightly dull, but it gets into more meaty and even
philosophical territory as it progresses because that's
when Shepard and Dark discuss their regrets and analyze
key moments in their lives such as the eventual break-up
of their friendship. Shepard says the most profound
kernel of wisdom when he talks about the importance of
finding the right balance between solitude and
companionship, a task that's easier said than done. It
would be safe to say that a good friend is a lot a
lover: in both friendship and love, one has to enjoy the
other's company and to embrace the good and bad
qualities of the other person while remaining honest.
Shepard & Dark might be more therapeutic for Sam Shepard
and Johnny Dark, but it offers enough food for thought
to ultimately keep the audience enlightened.
Bruce DeMara, Toronto Star:
Wurmfeld’s story walks us through the friendship as it
evolves over the many years, using excerpts from their
letters, voice-overs and loads of archival photos taken
by Dark. It’s actually a fascinating journey, unfolding
- just like real life - in ways that are honest and
unexpected and not always pleasant. Shepard, for one,
seems like a bit of an ass throughout, right up until
the present.
“How can we have been friends for so many years and be
so different?” Dark posits, the film’s central question.
Shepard is “peripatetic” and “rootless” while Dark finds
solace in his humble home. While Shepard is a
self-described “great enemy of sentimentality,” Dark
revels in “the excitement of small events.” What unites
them perhaps: difficult, disapproving fathers and the
love of ideas.
Robert Bell, Exclaim, ca:
Retracing their past while preparing old letters for
publication, the pair (Shepard and Dark)wax nostalgic
about the longevity of their relationship...
Much of the discussion is flowery, pot-fuelled and
pretentious, as can be expected from two men that
prattle on about "finding themselves" like it's
something external or tangible, but Wurmfeld's framing
of it all as a love story adds a layer of intrigue and
identity analysis.
Deli counter operator Johnny Dark discusses Shepard's
need to control his world. Everyone around him is merely
a cipher for his validation and presentation. Shepard
describes relationships as illusory, noting how their
presence merely masks the perpetual pain of loneliness.
Their collective observations about each other - in
particular, Dark's analysis of Shepard's
characterization of women in his writing - says a great
deal more to the audience than their straightforward
perceptions of self.
Wurmfeld is aware of this, bookending the story with
Dark's observation that realizations of the self don't
inspire change so much as they leave one wondering what
to do with that knowledge. This observation speaks to
the non-physical romantic relationship between these two
documentary subjects, who eventually realize just how
they use each other as vessels for recapturing the past.
Shepard would denote this as fate, whereas Dark would
characterize Shepard's fatalistic perspective as a lazy
justification of his flaws and past mistakes. Either
way, the observation here is that everything ends.
Nick Shager, A.V. Club:
The past is a source of both joy and sorrow in
Shepard & Dark, an intimate documentary about the
47-year-long friendship between famed playwright and
actor Sam Shepard and writer Johnny Dark...
When not casually enjoying the company of its subjects,
Wurmfeld’s documentary cannily melds the sound of Dark and
Shepard reading their old dispatches to aged snapshots
and home movies of the two in earlier years. That
aesthetic structure creates a haunting sense of the
simultaneously wonderful and sad feelings both men have
about lives and loves now gone, never to be recaptured.
When, toward film’s end, Shepard ditches Dark and the
letter-publishing task altogether, it’s yet another
example of how excavating the past can open old wounds,
as well as the way in which, no matter how aware they
are of their foolish and hurtful behavior, some people
are forever fated to repeat the same mistakes time and
again.
Wisconsin Film Festival Review:
For nearly 50 years, Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark
have fit in a weird way. Shepard is the acclaimed actor
and playwright. Dark works the deli counter at a
supermarket in Mexico. And yet, somehow, they’ve been
friends most of their lives, and the engaging
documentary “Shepard & Dark” shows how.
The laconic Shepard describes himself as rootless and
solitary, someone who keeps moving on, even if that
hurts the ones closest to him. Dark, meanwhile, is happy
staying put in his cozy little house in New Mexico,
surrounded by his dogs and his books. Seeing them
together, there’s an easy broken-in rapport, as they
tease each other and trade Dylan lyrics. But the
question can’t help but occur as it often does with long
friendships - if they met each other on the street
today, would they become friends?
The pair have exchanged letters for decades, and a
university wants to buy them for their archives and
perhaps turn the correspondence into a book. So they
settle down with their boxes of old letters and try to
make sense out of them. Dark in particular is almost
obsessive when it comes to archiving his past, and the
occasion causes the pair to reminisce about their long
history together.
This delights Dark, but rankles Shepard, who has some
things in his past he’s not eager to revisit. His
abusive, alcoholic father looms large in his psyche, and
there was a notorious incident in 1983 when Shepard left
his wife and son for another woman. Dark, as it turns
out, was married to Shepard’s ex-mother-in-law, and
ended up staying to pick up the pieces of Shepard’s
decision.
That’s a lot of shared history, and it’s perhaps
inevitable that Shepard and Dark are heading for a big
reckoning. Mixing interviews with old photographs and
film from Dark’s personal collection, filmmaker Treva
Wurmfeld has made a lovely and insightful film, not just
about this friendship, but all friendships, and how
having people in your life who know you so well can be a
comfort and a curse.
Wurmfeld said during the post-show Q&A that she first
met Shepard while making one of those making-of
documentaries for the film “Fair Game.” She thought she
would make a documentary just about him, but when she
met Dark during the first week of filming, she knew the
friendship would be the real subject of her film, each
man providing insight into the other.
As intimate as “Shepard & Dark” gets, Wurmfeld said both
subjects were extremely open and giving with their time,
a bit of a surprise given Shepard’s reputation as being
somewhat mysterious.
“I was always surprised about what he was willing to
share,” she said. “They were both extremely generous in
terms of answeering questions. Johnny was incredibly
open with his old archives. It was really a treasure
trove of material.”
Kyle Smith, NY Post:
A disarming but low-impact documentary that
amounts to an odd dual biopic, “Shepard & Dark” can feel
a bit like intruding on a conversation between two old
friends...
The film is insightful and touching, particularly as the
friends, who sold their 40 years of correspondence to a
university, discuss their memories of jointly caring for
Dark’s wife after she suffered a brain injury that
eventually killed her. But the film is visually
uninspired and meanders, as old friends’ chats tend to
do. It also avoids delving too deeply into touchy areas.
Norman Wilner, Now Toronto:
You probably know Sam Shepard, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor who wrote
"Buried Child" and played Chuck Yeager in "The Right
Stuff". You’re far less likely to have heard of his dear
friend Johnny Dark, who works at a deli counter in Santa
Fe, New Mexico.
Shepard and Dark have known each other for half a
century; they met as young men in Greenwich Village in
1963, became fast friends and maintained their
connection through some very complicated times. That
connection is the subject of "Shepard & Dark", a
documentary by Treva Wurmfeld that follows the two over
a year or so as they prepare to deliver decades of their
correspondence to the archivists at Texas State
University.
There are hundreds of letters and plenty of history to
be sorted, not all of it pleasant... It’s
a rare friendship that can survive something like that,
but of course that’s why Wurmfeld is recording it, and
why we’re watching. She’s also smart enough to give her
subjects equal standing rather than frame them as a
celebrity and his pal from the sticks. You’d want to
hang around with them, too.
Noah Taylor, Dorkshelf.com:
A touching though sometimes lagging
story about enduring friendship, "Shepard and Dark"
highlights aspects of the half-century long relationship
between playwright/actor Sam Shepard and his friend, an
everyday grocery clerk named Johnny Dark. The impetus
for the documentary is the archiving (and eventual
publishing) of hundreds of letters that passed back and
forth between them over the decades. As much about the
individual men as their correspondence, one can’t help
but feel this lingering film would have been much more
compelling as a documentary short as opposed to feature
length.
Despite Shepard being the clear celebrity of the two,
the film is bit more Dark heavy. A predominant theme is
the inherent differences between the kindred spirits,
where Shepard never seems to stay in one place for very
long, Dark is very much a homebody. At first Dark comes
off as a bit of a boring old man, but as the film goes
on we begin to see his quirks and idiosyncrasies. An
unabashed pothead with some Dude-esque qualities, it
becomes apparent why simple living and part-time low
wage jobs suit him. There are also a few casual
references to his penchant for theft which unfortunately
are never elaborated on, leaving us to wonder if this is
an ongoing habit and if there are legal issues at play.
"Shepard and Dark" walks the fine line between
sentimental and nostalgic with the subjects managing to
keep it grounded on the sentimental side. Shepard is a
sensitive, introspective man but not one to romanticize
past events...
While excerpts from the letters are read out loud
occasionally, the film would have benefited from sharing
more of their content rather than showing the writers
thumbing through the pages while making idle chit chat,
perhaps they are saving some gems for the published
version. Ultimately the entire project, the book as well
as the accompanying documentary, feels a little like
Shepard’s attempt to help his financially struggling
friend who basically raised his son. A very unromantic
stance to take, but I don’t think Shepard would have it
any other way.
Cosima Amelang, TIFF:
One of my favourite films at the Festival so far,
out of a particularly impressive program of
documentaries, is "Shepard & Dark". Harking back to a
pre-digital age, the film celebrates the lost art of
letter writing and archives the very process of creating
an archive, with all the personal dramas it can
entail...
When Shepard and Dark decided to publish their
correspondence in 2010, director Treva Wurmfeld began to
observe their experience. In "Shepard & Dark", we tag
along as she follows the two buddies over the course of
eighteen months, pouring over old letters and reflecting
on the past. Throughout the film, Wurmfeld is able to
capture valuable moments in which the men share humble
pearls of wisdom – Dark from his living room chair,
surrounded by his dogs, and Shepard from wherever on the
road his cowboy way of life takes him.
With Shepard and Dark’s relationship, Wurmfeld has
excellent subject matter, and the simple eloquence of
her filmmaking manages to do it justice. Shepard is well
known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning playwriting, along
with his work as an actor and director, while Dark has
remained content juggling an assortment of odd jobs,
from dogcatcher to deli worker. What’s refreshing about
Wurmfeld’s film is that it doesn’t focus on Shepard’s
fame, leaving more room for all the complexities of a
years-long friendship.
The film nuances the age-old story of how opposites
attract and, despite the flare-ups that often arise,
remain connected for a lifetime. We come to know Shepard
and Dark as two different incarnations of beatnik
philosophy: Shepard is always on the move, struggling
with the alcoholism in his family, while Dark, admitting
to his laziness, prefers to stay at home getting stoned,
immersing himself in writing and photographs. Indeed,
the two remember Jack Kerouac with great affection, and
together sing Bob Dylan tunes. In this respect, the film
offers a more humble take on the beat-inspired culture
explored elsewhere at TIFF, namely in Walter Salles’s
new film "On the Road".
Tensions emerge as Shepard and Dark sort through their old material, speaking to
universal experiences of friendship that we can all relate to. Balancing out
these sad, even uncomfortable, moments are the comedic touches that are
generated by their quirky personalities. Dark, especially, comes into his own
here, as in the scene when he eats hash cookies before sitting down to work at
The Santa Fe Institute. The duo’s ineptitude with technology also gets some
laughs. It’s amusing to see two great minds stumped by the function of a USB key
– a scene that reminds us that Shepard and Dark come from a different age of
scribbled lines and typewriters, and sometimes struggle to keep up with the
times.
As the friendship oscillates between these highs and lows, we come to understand
the bond between Shepard and Dark beyond their communication, as an unspoken
connection that is also able to withstand the periods of silence which come with
conflict. In her portrayal of this implicit bond, Wurmfeld offers a more poetic
vision of the bromance that has recently exploded on screen. We see the two men
without their women, attempting to define themselves as individuals late in
life. Ultimately, they are joined together by their respect for each other’s
solitude, remaining both alone and together for their whole lives.
Nick McCarthy, Slant Magazine:
"Shepard & Dark" addresses, and acutely analyzes, the way
friendship can bend, and occasionally snap, over time.
Pals for over 47 years since meeting in Greenwich
Village in 1963, Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark spent just
as many of those years together as they did apart.
During the times they weren't physically in each other's
presence, they would write to each other, and there now
remains a canon of lucid letters between the two.
Director Treva Wurmfeld catches these two men - Shepard,
a playwright and actor, and Dark, a label-less mensch
currently working at a supermarket - at a perfect time;
they're reuniting to publish, through a Texas university
press, a book of their letters...
Dark quickly points out that he and Shepard are
different, yet "complement each other," but Wurmfeld
does a fine job avoiding proscribed juxtaposition, often
allowing the interplay between Dark and Shepard to speak
for itself. Shepard is solipsistic, driven by
wanderlust, and tortured by selfish decisions despite
repeatedly making them; Dark, on the other hand, is a
more hermetic, dog-loving pothead who spends most of his
time in his tiny New Mexico bungalow writing
Beat-influenced prose.
Mostly due to the modest yet eloquent duo, observed
apart as much as together, Wurmfeld is able to coax out
a portrait that's refreshingly casual in its sage
wisdom. While the documentary's form is rather
conventional, Wurmfeld is able to carefully and sparsely
use snippets of the aforementioned letters and
photos/footage from the past to full effect. The moment
most indicative of this friendship, however, is a
wonderful moment when the twosome walk out of a diner
and Shepard starts to sing Bob Dylan's "Buckets of
Rain." Without hesitating, Johnny listens, and tries to
add a bit to Shepard's vocals, and they reach a harmony
that's both innately aligned and yet syncopated.
Screen Daily:
While "Shepard & Dark" hits a few grace notes, it’s strictly conventional
small-screen fare, likely to find audiences wherever Shepard is a known
commodity.
For 18 months, filmmaker Treva Wurmfeld documented the aging men, traveling back
and forth between their homes and, eventually, to Texas, where the duo began
sifting through their old letters.
It’s quickly apparent that the two men are very much an
odd couple. In the film’s opening moments, Dark admits
that friends don’t need to be alike; rather, they are
“complementary.” Indeed, Shepard is peripatetic, always
on the road, struggling to balance his needs for
solitude and companionship; Dark is hermetic and happy
to stay at home with his two dogs - “I don’t like
knowing people,” he jokes...
Because Dark is an amateur archivist, saving every scrap of writing, photo and
video from his past, Wurmfeld has a wealth of material to draw from:
Particularly affecting is video footage of Dark’s wife Scarlett, as she
struggles to recover from a brain injury and the family tries to take care of
her.
And while we see brief glimpse of rehearsals of a Shepard play with Nick Nolte
and Sean Penn, "Shepard & Dark" is less about Shepard’s creative work than his
personal relationships. In fact, audiences who don’t know Shepard’s background
will be left in the dark as the documentary offers little details of his
accomplishments.
"Shepard & Dark" is also light on personal revelations. But when they do come,
as when Shepard makes the surprising admission, “I continue to make the same
mistakes,” the short-lived moments are powerful. However, Shepard, a man who
doesn’t believe in all that psychology stuff and actively resists reliving his
past, doesn’t make for the most compelling documentary portrait. At another
crucial moment of painful introspection, he turns away from the camera: “I can’t
do this,” he says, choked up about either his break-up with Lange or the regrets
he has for leaving his family. We’ll never know which.
If Shepard is closed, Dark is open, and a far more eccentric and interesting
character, with a penchant for marijuana, Jack Kerouac (whom he knew),
care-giving and walking his dogs. But, alas, Shepard being the celebrity,
viewers may leave the documentary wanting more.
Megan Scanlon, DOC NYC:
When it comes to writing, Johnny Dark likes to go
off on a tangent, saying that “the tangent is sometimes
more interesting than the body you started off with.”
And so it is with "Shepard & Dark", a film that became
director Treva Wurmfeld’s tangent to what was originally
going to be a documentary about playwright and actor Sam
Shepard. The film examines the nuanced relationship
between Shepard and his longtime friend Dark, whose
friendship formed back in the 1960s in Greenwich
Village. Over the span of forty years, the two men wrote
to each other about their “lives, fears, hopes, and
problems in letters.”
Wurmfeld spent two years chronicling the friends as they
pored through the old letters to compile them for a book
about their exchanges. We learn that Shepard,
self-described as a peripatetic and rootless in nature,
prefers the power of photography over words. Yet, it’s
the rehashing of these pages of letters, so carefully
and lovingly organized by Dark, that seems to transport
Shepard to a place of guilt and pain...
Tender in its delivery of the friends’ views on aging,
truth, relationships, individuality, and coping
mechanisms, "Shepard & Dark" shows the audience two
diametrically opposed views of self-awareness. Shepard
believes in destiny and fate, and says, “We have this
illusion that we can change ourselves–it’s all
horseshit. Nothing fundamental changes.” In contrast,
Dark believes that “life can change with
self-awareness.”
In the Q&A after the screening at the IFC Center, Dark
was asked if his friendship with Shepard often changed
throughout the years, to which he replied, “The
friendship only changed once, and she filmed it.” The
epiphanies revealed to Shepard and Dark as they
reflected on their lives and perceptions resulted in a
moving, bittersweet story - one that Dark told the
audience he advised Shepard not to see.
Scott Macauley, Filmmaker Magazine:
In Treva Wurmfeld’s "Shepard & Dark", Shepard and his various well-crafted
personas are engagingly captured in all their correspondences and
contradictions. And, cleverly, Wurmfeld has managed to make a great Sam Shepard
documentary by making it about something else entirely - namely, his 40-year,
often epistolary friendship with Johnny Dark, a quiet writer and archivist who
works days behind the counter at a Santa Fe deli.
While “bromance” may be a trendy term in today’s independent film world, there
have been few good films, fiction or documentary, about male friendship. But
that’s the theme that Wurmfeld says she was drawn to here. “Theirs is a
friendship that comes through in letter form,” she says, “where the boundaries
of ‘friend’ and ‘family’ are blurred - something that is a product of a
romanticizing of what friendship is.”
Anna-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film:
When Johnny Dark and Sam Shepard met in New York in
1963, they began talking "as sons," right from the
start. Shepard, who calls himself "rootless
essentially," and has "done everything not to become my
father," keeps writing about his father "endlessly."
The two men wrote letters for more
than 40 years. "We complement each other," says Dark,
who works behind the deli counter of a supermarket in
Deming, New Mexico. "Self-contained - it's not a
lifestyle, it's who he is," says Shepard, Pulitzer Prize
winning playwright and Academy Award nominated actor,
about his friend.
Why are these two men friends? What
does friendship mean? Why do we have this illusion that
we can change ourselves?
In Treva Wurmfeld's well-structured
documentary, a complicated relationship is exposed
through the juxtapositions of what is seen and heard,
remembered and not remembered.
Rob Nelson, Variety:
The ups and downs of a decades-long friendship are
charted with warmth and sensitivity in "Shepard & Dark,"
documentarian Treva Wurmfeld's intimate portrait of
playwright-actor Sam Shepard and his far less
accomplished buddy Johnny Dark. Spanning 18 months, the
pic follows the pair as they sift through the reams of
soul-baring correspondence that have passed between them
and ponder how to package the letters in book form.
Somewhat taking the place of that unrealized project,
Wurmfeld's film subtly reveals the tensions that emerge
between two kindred spirits with vastly different views
of work.
Shepard devotees will naturally find
the film essential, in part for its unstinting focus on
the artist's early '80s decision to leave the surrogate
family he had established with Dark. At the same time, Wurmfeld is
careful to locate the universal truths in the men's
friendship and to engage even those who've never heard
of Shepard. Among the picture's gently observed subjects
is that of whether a couple's collective talent for
disclosure and reflection inevitably threatens to turn
toxic over the long haul.
Michelle Orange, Village Voice:
"Shepard & Dark" explores the bond between
playwright Sam Shepard and his friend Johnyy Dark,
forged in 1960s New York and still strong despite their
radically divergent paths. Or at least it seems that
way, until late in Treva Wurmfeld's thoughtfully
observed portrait of a romantic friendship, when a
collaborative project proves stressful, and the pair's
complex alchemy falters.
Unseen Films blog:
The film follows the complex and unlikely friendship
between Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright/actor Sam
Shepard and close friend for nearly 50 years, Johnny
Dark, a present day homebody, amateur archivist who
works odd jobs and has a penchant for writing and
getting stoned...
The friendship gets put to the test after they decide to
publish their letters and are presented the daunting
task of sorting through endless pages of letters and
photos while reliving and confronting the past.
The film is fun to watch because the director Wurmfeld
has great subject matter to work with. Shepard speaks
with a charming midwestern twang and despite his fame,
lives like a cowboy with an old fashioned attitude
toward women while struggling with the balance between
solitude and companionship. Dark is a likeable character
because he is genuine. He enjoys the writings of Kerouac
and The Beat Generation, the companionship of his dogs
and getting high on marijuana. Go see this film about a
truly odd couple! It is a film that sheds light on the
imperfections of humanity and friendship with an
excellent Bob Dylan soundtrack to boot!
Drew Taylor, IndieWire:
The thorny dynamics of heterosexual male friendship is a
fascinating black hole that few narrative films ever
bother looking into. Instead, most choose to focus on
simplistic, superficial social maneuvering (or the
all-important bromance) without ever investigating the
knotty emotional undercurrents that course through every
lengthy male friendship. One of the chief pleasures of
“Shepard & Dark,” which concerns the relationship
between Sam Shepard and his buddy Johnny Dark, who now
runs a deli counter at a New Mexico supermarket, is that
you get to see all the wonderful, horrible, emotionally
raw components that go into male friendship and how
those can go from being solid building blocks to puddles
of muck...
As Treva Wurmfeld’s documentary begins, the two are
reuniting in an effort to consolidate the massive sprawl
of correspondence for an art exhibit and a book (the
book, now finished and handsomely reproduced, is also
out and quite good). This is something of a big deal,
not the least of which because Shepard has long refused
to write an autobiography, so the book of letters would
serve as an unparalleled look into his innermost
thoughts and feelings.
When the movie starts, it’s very clear that these men
are living two wildly different lives: Shepard you would
recognize from seeing him in “The Right Stuff” or from
attending one of his plays; Dark is slinging coleslaw
down at the local food shopper. But as you watch Shepard
go visit Dark at work, you can tell that there is a
closeness, that these men aren’t all that different,
especially when you watch Shepard on the phone
explaining the project mostly as a way “to make some
bread,” something that never seems to even occur to Dark
(even though they’d both walk away with half a million
dollars, and Dark could use this money a whole lot more
than Shepard)...
Both men are fascinating, hangdog characters; each
outlaws in their own way. Shepard would go on to produce
plays of vitriolic outrage with deeply nuanced
characters, while Dark - who, through the reading of his
various letters, is often just as accomplished a writer
as Shepard - would retreat inward, especially following
his wife’s death. We watch as he lives his simple life,
attended only by his dogs. At one point Shepard, in an
interview, marvels at the level of hermetic loneliness
Dark has accomplished, one without a single friend or
acquaintance, and a lifestyle choice that ends up
ultimately destroying their attempts at reconciling the
material together.
There’s something both hilarious and sad about the men,
and about their story, and about the way that they try
to reconnect but can’t… quite… do it. There’s always
been something romantic and powerful about relationships
primarily built on letter-writing, and that’s true for
Shepard and Dark too. Soon, though, the artistic
ambitions of the project give way to petty jealousies
and hurt feelings. The problem, of course, is that the
movie lacks any kind of definitive resolution, and the
filmmakers don’t exactly go out of their way to reassure
the viewer that, yes, they did end up finishing the book
and, yes, you can read it right now (it’s a corker).
Instead, after all that effort being put into showing
this relationship in its fullest terms, they allow the
men to, true to their mythic southwestern surroundings,
simply walk into the sunset, without so much as an
envelope addressed “return to sender.”
Jackson Scarlett, SF Film Festival:
“I don't like knowing people.” Perched in front of a
bookshelf, writer, archivist and habitual pot-smoker
Johnny Dark delivers the first of many memorable lines
in Treva Wurmfeld’s documentary "Shepard & Dark". Oddly,
it’s almost easier to imagine the same words spoken by
his close friend, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and
actor Sam Shepard...
For men with such an avowed commitment to solitude, the
bond between Shepard and Dark remains curiously strong;
at nearly fifty years their friendship has outlasted
movements, marriages and sometimes even memories.
Shepard’s fear of flying, by now a handicap of
mythological proportions, has begotten a lifestyle of
roadside solitude, and Dark, now a grocery clerk, spends
his time at home, building what he calls “books of
people” - documentation of his epistolary relationships
with friends seldom seen, Shepard amongst them.
A lull in Shepard's personal life prompts an offer to
publish their correspondence as a book, and the two meet
to begin editing, uncovering ancient camaraderie and old
scars in equal measure. In a comfortable and unassuming
style, Wurmfeld probes the intimate dimensions of their
relationship as they work on the document that their
differences may ultimately prohibit them from ever
completing.
Jonathan Richards, Santa Fe New Mexican:
The most interesting documentaries are the ones that
stray off course. Time is an ingredient, and during the
time it takes for this filmmaker to follow her subjects
and observe their interaction, a shift in their personal
dynamic takes place. It’s the observer effect, which
posits that the act of observation causes changes to the
phenomenon being observed...
When the documentary first brings them together, the
moments feel a bit stilted, but gradually we get more of
a sense of the two as individuals and as friends. They
read over passages of the correspondence, often roaring
with a hilarity that doesn’t quite translate to the
viewer. They reminisce about their fathers (anti-role
models from whom they tried to distance themselves),
about their years as a communal family, about roads
taken and not taken. Dark comes to Santa Fe to work on
editing the letters, but things don’t always go
smoothly.
Mark Hinson, Tallahassee Democrat:
When director Treva Wurmfeld first introduces us to
Shepard, it is 2010 and he is still smarting from his
recent break up with Lange after more than 25 years
together. The newly-single Shepard decides to distract
himself with a literary venture that involves gathering
several decades’ worth of correspondence with Black to
compile into a book. The Pulitzer Prize-winning
Shepard’s motives are mixed. Sure, it’s a gesture of
kindness and a chance to help out an old friend, but
it’s also an excuse for the notoriously unsentimental
Shepard to take a journey through the past. It’s a
nostalgia trip wrapped in the cloak of a writerly cause.
Dark is the polar opposite of Shepard’s taciturn
Marlboro Man. The talkative, outgoing, pot-puffing Dark
is a bit of a hoarder who lives in a modest house in
Deming, N.M. He doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t follow popular
culture and buries himself in books. For money, Dark
works down the street in a deli, where most of the
customers speak Spanish. Remember, this is a guy who
still writes letters in longhand and sends them through
the snail mail of the U.S. Post Office.
The two first get together to go over material at a
local Denny’s restaurant and pick up their friendship
where it last left off. They joke, compare notes, sing
lyrics by Bob Dylan and kid each other. You know, the
way old friends like to do. As the project progresses,
though, the letters dredge up old memories that are not
so pleasant... Shepard’s booze-swilling dad, who was not
exactly big on affection, is never too far away from the
surface. It quickly becomes apparent that Shepard does
not have a strong relationship with his first-born son,
Jesse Mojo Shepard, either. The mistakes of the past
keep repeating themselves.
Shepard does not try to stage-direct Wurmfeld or nudge
her into painting him in a better light. He’s a crusty,
sharp-tongued, self-centered loner. You have to give him
credit for having the guts to reveal his true self in
front of camera. And that is truly rare for someone from
the theater world.
David Fear, Time Out:
One is a bold playwright and actor whose work mined the
existential restlessness of the American mind-set; the
other is a go-with-the-flow everydude who now works at a
grocery store. But regardless of their different paths
in life, Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark have remained best
buddies since they met in Greenwich Village in the early
’60s, their lives intertwined over the decades through
interfamilial marriages and endless reams of eloquent
correspondence. Treva Wurmfeld’s tender, extraordinary
documentary starts with the duo sifting through boxes of
old letters, photos, etc., an excavation that eventually
causes friction between the old pals. But the more
"Shepard & Dark" rewinds through their shared history,
the more the film blossoms into something far richer
than a simple tribute to a long, beautiful friendship -
it becomes an ode to a long-lost era of bohemia, an
insightful look into male psychology and pathology, a
valentine to the art of letter writing and an
illustration of how the past is never dead, because it’s
not even past.
|
