Screening #3: "Titicut Follies," Museum of Fine Arts, May 3

LOOKING FOR AN UNUSUAL way to start your weekend? How about a Saturday at noon screening of Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman's controversial 1967 documentary shot at Bridgewater State Hospital? That's what the MFA will be offering on May 3 in their contribution to the celebration of the release of Big Screen Boston (as with all the screenings, I'll be there to introduce the movie and sign some books). It won't exactly have you leaving the theater with a skip in your step, but the disturbing film (banned for 25 years by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!) will give you the opportunity to see one of the best documentaries to come out of the vibrant Boston-Cambridge documentary scene and the movie that started Wiseman's formidable body of work. Documentaries presented me with some interesting choices when constructing the book. Often, local documentarians' films aren't necessarily "Boston movies" by the usual standards (setting, local color, etc.). But their work is so important to local film culture that they certainly deserve a place in the book. So I've included a cross-section of significant documentaries. In the case of veteran filmmakers such as Wiseman, Errol Morris and Ross McElwee, I've emphasized one movie, and mentioned some of their other films in the coverage of that movie. With Wiseman, the "one movie" had to be Titicut Follies. Oddly enough, it does have a lot of local color, whether it's the accents, the 1960s chain-smoking [like in the photo above, courtesy of Zipporah Films] and Masshole-style bureaucratic indifference. It's not conventional "fun," but it sure is rewarding.

Comments

[Cynthia Close]

I recently had a conversation with a very prominent filmmaker who informed me that Titicut Follies was really a John Marshall film. It was shot almost entirely by John Marshall, edited for the most part by John Marshall, and should be considered a John Marshall Film. At the time it was made Fred Weisman was a lawyer, rather than a filmmaker and a myth has grown up around the idea that Titicut Follies is a Weisman Film. In name only.

[S.E.E.]

Mr. Sherman omitted Parole, a made for TV movie (shot in 1980, aired in 1982) shot in and around Boston and at (then) MCI Walpole. It starred James Naughton, Mark Soper, and Ellen Barkin. One other point: In listing the Boston locations used in The Last Detail, he omitted a great long-shot of the old Suffolk County House of Correcton on Deer Island, shot from Shirley Street in Winthrop, MA, my home town.

[Paul Sherman]

I didn't really deal with TV movies; only a few homegrown movies that weren't specifically made for TV, but ended up getting more exposure that way, made it into the book. Thanks for the tip on the shot in The Last Detail. Great bit of info! I'm wondering if it was used during the Boston section or if the moviemakers liked the looks of the jail, shot it and then stuck it in the movie somewhere else. If I recall, the prisons shown in the movie were in only Norfolk, Virginia and Portsmouth, NH, right?