User Reviews

Joe Gould's secret, for me, regardless of what it was for the real-life or the movie JG, is this: nobody wants to be a nobody. We want our banal conversations and interactions--the stuff of our lives---to mean something, we want there to be a connection between ourselves and what's labeled "history", the big picture.

In this film from a real life story, everyone wants Gould's oral history of the little people to exist--to thrive, to be published. What a grand idea! The nobodies will be somebodies and their words will form a picture of their times from the street level, rather than the lofty perspective of the usual published histories.

The poignancy in the film is double-barrelled. When Joe Mitchell's character confronts Joe Gould about his self-deluding ways, questioning whether his oral history is a fabrication, he punctures the man and his entire mode of existence, calling cap in hand on any and all sympathetic souls for contributions to his "fund." The capper, however, is that once Mitchell himself finally reveals Gould's secret, writing about him years after his death, he himself is silenced as a writer.

The suggestion from scenes in the film is that Mitchell may have found too much in common between himself and the madman/would-be artist whose grandiosity he documented. In the film, Gould says to Mitchell, in his sadly sane time in a mental hospital, "it was never a question of laziness", trying to refute Mitchell's harshest accusation. He needs to assert that even if he has failed, it's not for want of trying. In a sense, every artist has to be a little mad, to hold onto a vision of their work and a sense of self-importance stronger than the barriers the conventional world erects to creative endeavour. The possibility of failure has to be thrust aside, a kind of delusion has to be maintained, that denies the possibility of failure.

The fact that Mitchell was silenced by recording Gould's colourful and memorable failure is a shocking footnote in the closing moments of the film. Gould's laughable claiming of Mitchell as his biographer early on not only becomes the truth, but the biographer appears to be brought to ground by the subject of his biography. Gould's secret becomes Mitchell's denouement, "nobody wants to be a nobody, but everyone actually is a nobody, and what can I say to you about anything, as a nobody?" Joe's secret is everybody's secret, his history is ours, it's Mitchell's, and it's an everyman tragicomedy.

This is a movie of failed promise. It stars Stanley Tucci (who also directed) and Ian Holm as the two main characters, with appearances by Susan Sarandon, Patricia Clarkson, and Steve Martin in small (too small) parts.

SPOILER: I reveal Joe Gould's secret -- I don't think it matters, though.

In my humble opinion Stanley Tucci is one of the two best actors working in this millennium (Robert Downey, Jr. is the other), and Ian Holm is excellent as well -- in fact, all the actors I've mentioned in this movie deserve credit for their excellence. However, Mr. Holm never quite finds his character as Joe Gould, and the other appearing actors have very small parts. Tucci, of course, is fabulous as Joe Mitchell. Although the potential of the movie was great, it yielded much less than the material offered.

The gist of the story is based on reality: Joseph Mitchell was a writer for the New Yorker Magazine whose beat was the off-beat in Manhattan. In the early Fifties he stumbled across Joe Gould, a homeless but brilliant bum who was suffering from some mental problems. Mitchell wrote a New Yorker article about Gould, bringing him to prominence for awhile.

Mr. Holm had a lot going for him in the roll, but he never quite convinced me when he was acting the crazy side of Gould -- who apparently could be lucid but never for long. Mitchell would write an article about what could be the seamy side of New York, and then he moved on to the next off-beat character. Joe Gould objected to being "an article" and then being moved back into obscurity. After Mitchell's article, Gould became one of the talks of the town, people mailed in letters and money to the New Yorker, the letters and loot were passed on to Gould, but then the novelty wore off and Gould sank back into obscurity. Gould did not like that. I assume Mitchell brought a lot of riffraff into the light for 15 minutes of fame, and that all the riffraff then sank back into the dark. Gould, in the movie at least, objected. Unfortunately, the script let him voice his objections and moved on.

In the movie when Gould and Mitchell first met, Gould mentions that his father wanted him to be a physician -- like the father and the grandfather -- but Gould became a reporter instead (before spiraling down to a life on the street). Being a reporter with a Harvard degree, Gould was a disappointment to his father. Mitchell mentions that his father wanted him to carry on the family business in North Carolina, but he was a writer for the New Yorker instead; Gould observes that they both, then, were disappointments to their fathers.

There was a lesson in there that the script entirely misses. Joe Gould tells everyone that he's working on an oral history of the United States and that the works so far is so massive it's unpublishable. Despite many efforts by Mitchell to see a copy, Gould never produces any of the oral history, just some rambling writings of Gould's own observations. It becomes clear that the oral history doesn't exist and never did. At the end of the movie as the credits scroll we learn that the article about Joe Gould is the last thing Mitchell ever did. That he went in to "work" every day for decades and never produced another article for the New Yorker. The same massive writer's block that Joe Gould suffered also inflicted Joe Mitchell. That pairing is never explored; we never understand any hint of what about Gould so affected Mitchell. The movie never shows us a connection that affected Mitchell, and we have no clue what the cause of Mitchell's writer's block was. I understand that in real life no one knew the cause of Mitchell's block, but this is a movie, for pete's sake. Let's have some connection that lets us ponder what it's like being the biographer of a homeless man who then can't shake the change wrought by the experience.

So I had two potential learning experiences: a man being used, then dumped; brought into fame for a few weeks, then dropped back down into obscurity; a disappointment to his father. And second, the effect on the person bringing fame then departing, with the effect on the relationship of the two and the effect on the fame-bringer, a disappointment to his father. These are homeric in their potentialities, and script never went there. William Faulkner would have wrung the entire Civil War out of these premises. (The screenplay is by Howard A. Rodman, based on two books by Mitchell about Gould.)

On the good side, Tucci as director does a wonderful job of recreating the Fifties. I remember wearing the shirts and jackets that we see the little boys wearing. I remember the Vivian Vance perms they show. The courtesy and manners are still there, even in Manhattan.

All that's missing is the connection between Gould and Mitchell that leads Mitchell down the same path as Gould. I'm sorry to say what character development there is in the movie, takes place after it ends when Mitchell finds himself lost in his own mind.

Joe Gould's Secret (2000): Dir: Stanley Tucci / Cast: Ian Holm, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Hope Davis, Susan Sarandon: Intriguing comedy drama about a bohemian named Joe Gould who wrote a book called An Oral History of Our Times. This book contains numerous overheard conversations, which led him to believe that what people say is a form of history. Stanley Tucci plays a New York journalist whom Gould approaches to write his biography. The structure is often predictable with scenes that aren't always necessary. Part of the problem is that Tucci's directing is sloppy to the point where the boom mic is sometimes looming in view. Ian Holm is excellent as Gould who is seen as a misunderstood individual. He is seen as somewhat of a nut case whose voice is aching to be heard through his writing. Tucci plays the journalist more successfully than he directs. He wishes to do the right thing but unsure as to whether Gould is telling the truth or just plain mad. These two performances are at the centre of the film while supporting roles by Patricia Clarkson and Hope Davis are not as broad as they should be. Susan Sarandon on the other hand, steals a moment posing for Gould's attention on last time. This is a poorly made independent film with warrant themes. It explores that part of the mind overwhelmed with knowledge but unable to maintain stability. Score: 5 ½ / 10

Warning, spoiler here . . .

I thought this was quite good - much better than I expected - but I think my

appreciation of it was based on the fact that it was a faithful and sincere

condensation of the book by Joseph Mitchell, which I had read several years

before. The fact is that the book is a non-fiction memoir written by one of the best news writers this country has ever seen and it is very hard to transfer

Mitchell's miraculous voice to film, though Tucci does an admirable job. The fact is, some people have said it has no ending, but I would argue that dooming a

man like Mitchell to a psychological prison where his written word - the only way he could truly express himself and chronicle the world around him - no longer comes out is a pretty eventful ending. As a writer, I see the loss of your craft and your voice as devastating. But this is a subtle, inner turmoil, and if you can't see it as valid as a dramatic ending, then you can't. I would urge everyone who has an interest to read the book. It will fill in the spaces that the movie does not answer and it will also serve as a springboard to more of Mitchell's work. He is one of the finest writers this country has seen, up there with Mark Twain, and he deserves some attention beyond the scope ot the literary world that adores him. Maybe this movie will at least afford him that.