An unconventional portrait of an unconventional author that not only chronicles the extraordinary life, work and legacy of Kurt Vonnegut but also his decades long friendship with the filmmaker who set out to document it.
Vonnegut took huge social, philosophical, existential, and religious issues and filtered them through this great sense of humor, this sort of grounded, simple, Midwestern sensibility.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2022
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time 2021
Many years in the making, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time proves a worthy tribute to the writer of such classic novels as Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions, as well as a compelling introduction for the uninitiated. In harmony with Vonnegut’s own self-referential style, the documentary is also an elaborately meta making-of-itself, telling the story how co-director Robert B. Weide (best known for producing and directing Curb Your Enthusiasm) first started working on the film four decades ago only to become lost to the mercy of time himself.
“A gorgeously rendered, unexpectedly moving appraisal of the life and craft of one of the best-loved literary voices of the late 20th century… Borrowing its title and structural cue from Vonnegut’s 1969 breakthrough novel, Slaughterhouse-Five in which the past, present and future are uniquely intertwined… the production takes a nonlinear approach to its subject matter… With co-director Don Argott instrumental in shaping interviews with Vonnegut contemporaries and family members, and terrific archival footage into a cohesive, seamless whole… For the two-plus hours that we are allowed to share in its protective glow, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is time most rewardingly spent.” — Michael Rechtshaffen, LA Times