Recounting the extraordinary life of author Kurt Vonnegut, and the 25-year friendship with the filmmaker who set out to document it.
For over two decades, director Bob Weide (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) filmed and interviewed writer Kurt Vonnegut. This extended period of time spent together fostered a friendship between the two artists. “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” is the result of hours of recording which Weide was unable to finish until now.
Vonnegut’s stories are beautifully illustrated bringing his wild stories and characters within them to life. Weide follows Vonnegut to notable locations like his family home in Indianapolis. The Vonnegut family owned a chain of hardware stores and one ancestor invented the panic bar for public buildings. His sister Alice was his favorite sibling and she nurtured him. The Great Depression hit his family and taught Vonnegut to laugh more at life’s unexpected circumstances. Next, Weide accompanies Vonnegut’s high school reunion graduating class of 1940. They lost many fellow students in World War II.
During his infamous military service, Vonnegut was taken prisoner by the Germans, an event that would forever shape his life. While a prisoner in Dresden, he witnessed relentless bombings. This recounting is told through a mix of archival footage, animation, and Vonnegut’s voice. Civilians killed after the bombing led to a citywide inferno that left buildings hollowed out. Vonnegut and the other surviving prisoners of war had to clear the city’s bodies. This event inspired the brilliant ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ about the soldier Billy Pilgrim who unwittingly time travels while reeling from post-war traumas. Each passage detailing the horrors and contradictions he experienced would cynically end with “so it goes.”
Vonnegut’s wife Jane was a fellow writer and loved Dostoevsky novels. She helped him hone his writing skills while his work at General Electric led him to believe most labor could be automated, leaving the working class to pursue better endeavors. The bombing of Hiroshima also has a profound impact on his cynicism towards governments and those in power. After countless letters of rejection for his short stories, Jane continued addressing editors and implored them to read his novel. One day he arrived home with a check paid to him for one of his short stories. Upon selling more stories he quit his unhappy job at General Electric.
Kurt and Jane, along with their three children, moved to Barnstable Massachusetts on Cape Cod. In his study, Kurt wrote most of his novels. Then tragedy struck. While his sister Alice was dying of cancer in the hospital, her husband died in a horrible train accident that went over a drawbridge, plunging into the river in Newark. Alice died two days later leaving four sons orphaned. Kurt took them in and raised them, just an absolute mensch. The four sons are still alive and share insightful stories of their uncle. Unfortunately, Kurt left Jane for his photographer.
Vonnegut spoke truth to power and saw technology as more detrimental than helpful. In ‘Breakfast of Champions,’ he challenged typical points of patriotism. ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ was not only catharsis for the trauma he endured but also the war in Vietnam being shown on television. During one of his final public appearances, he hilariously quipped, “I don’t want to be alive in a world ruled by Bush, Dick, and Colon.” I can’t imagine Vonnegut would be happy with the current state of the world, but it is sad to think there’s a lack of critical intellectuals being produced in this country. So it goes.
InTheaters and on VOD Friday, November 19th
