Tag Archives: Jeff Lieberman

Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: DAY OF THE LIVING ME: ADVENTURES OF A CULT FILMMAKER FROM THE GOLDEN AGE (2020)

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Memoirs from filmmakers tend to be a mixed bag. The best ones balance useful and entertaining trivia pertinent to the field along with mildly salacious insider stories (AKA “gossip”). It’s an added bonus when they actually illuminate the career of people whose work you found interesting, but whom you didn’t really know much about.

Jeff Lieberman is one of those “interesting” filmmakers. His work may not consistently qualify as “weird,” but he has a cult following. He makes movies that are twisted and satirical, as anyone who has seen Blue Sunshine (1977), Squirm (1976), Just Before Dawn (1981), Remote Control (1988), or Satan’s Little Helper (2004) can attest. “Day of the Living Me” collects his reminisces of the making of those films; although not in extreme detail, there’s enough to satisfy the casual reader or fan of the films.

The most interesting anecdotes concern Lieberman’s life and career outside of these films. He started as an editing assistant at (pre-Golan-Globus) Cannon Films, then took a stint in advertising,  which inspired his award winning short satire “The Ringer.” He also worked at Janus Films (before their partnership with the Criterion Collection), repurposing their titles into new product. The insider bits include entertaining tales of working with Rod Serling and Sidney Poitier narrating documentaries; early encounters with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman; coming up with the concept of the ad campaign for Ken Russell‘s Tommy (1975); and how providing help on selling Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) led to a night out with George Burns. There’s plenty more, but those anecdotes should be left for the reader to discover.

Lieberman is an excellent raconteur. Even at 192 pages, the book feels like a solid read; it’s like spending an informal evening with someone who you already suspected was interesting, only to find out they’re even more fascinating than you imagined.

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE – BLUE SUNSHINE (1977)

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DIRECTED BY: Jeff Lieberman

FEATURING: , Robert Walden, Mark Goddard, Deborah Winters, Ann Cooper, Ray Young, Charles Siebert, Richard Crystal, Alice Ghostley, Stefan Gierasch, Brion James

PLOT: A plague of victims go bald and turn into psychotic killers; the one common factor appears to be a variety of acid, Blue Sunshine, taken during their college days.

Still from Blue Sunshine (1977)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Blue Sunshine usually gets classified as a horror/thriller with a brilliant premise behind it, but it’s also a twisted satire about what would later come to be known as “The Big Chill Generation.” It’s a lot tougher and less self-flattering than The Big Chill turned out to be. Maybe if The Big Chill had an unhinged leading man and psycho killers… but Blue Sunshine is the next best thing.

COMMENTS: “Did you ever hear the words ‘Blue Sunshine’… ?”

If it had come from grindhouse producers, a good alternate title for Blue Sunshine would have been Bad Acid, Dead Hippie,… well, make that Dead Ex-Hippie. Sort of a social satire within the parameters of a horror movie (which is pretty much Jeff Lieberman’s career in a nutshell, come to think of it), Blue Sunshine benefits from a clever premise: what if all those drug-scare films were right? It was just the right film at just the right time to skewer the Sixties generation, who were turning from lives of idealism and awareness towards materialism and narcissistic self-examination.

Even though there’s enough knowing laughs to keep the audience entertained, there’s also enough to keep them unsettled and on edge, mainly with the intense performance of Zalman King, whose protagonist might indeed turn out to be as unhinged as the Blue Sunshine victims. The violence, while relatively tame by today’s standards, also is unsettling. People get incinerated and children are threatened with knives. And there’s the minor game of guessing who might be affected and who isn’t. One clue: watch the hair.

Blue Sunshine first hit DVD as a Special Edition release from Synapse Films, which was transferred from a surviving print as the negative thought to be lost to time. In 2016 it got an upgrade to Blu-Ray from FilmCentrix, after the negative was discovered and restored.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

The Ringer – Lieberman’s first film, a pseudo-PSA that’s actually effective, but probably not in the way its sponsors realized.  A clear, scathing look at ‘Youth Culture’.

Trailer for Blue Sunshine.

FilmCentrix promo for the Blu-Ray HD release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Much of Blue Sunshine plays like a freakout version of The Crazies (1973)… All this is helped by the (deliberately?) stilted dialogue and wide-eyed performances, amping up the paranoia by making everything – and everyone – seem just that little bit off.”–Anton Bitel, Filmland Empire (2015 Screening)