WHERE'S MY ROY COHN?
****
Director: Matt Tyrnauer
Principal cast:
Roy M. Cohn (archival footage)
Ken Auletta
Joseph McCarthy (archival footage)
Roger Stone
Anne Roiphe
Sam Roberts
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 97 mins.
Australian release date: 5 December 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 21 November 2019.
“You knew you were in the presence of evil.” – Interviewee in Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Director Matt Tyrnauer’s interest in Roy Cohn was piqued when he was researching his 2018 documentary on the famed New York disco Studio 54. Cohn was widely known in the USA and NYC as a ferocious pit bull attorney who would work for anyone (if they paid enough) and hated to lose a case, and he was the lawyer for the nightclub’s owners and a frequent visitor. He was usually accompanied at Studio 54 by young gay men but never came out of the closet, refusing to acknowledge his homosexuality right up ‘til the day he died… of an HIV-AIDS related disease. Who sir? Me sir? Tyrnauer couldn’t understand why a figure like Cohn, who’d been influential in US politics and life for over three decades, hadn’t been the subject of a documentary, although a version of him had appeared in Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America. He’d worked for politicians, mobsters, cardinals and media moguls and he partied with people like Andy Warhol, Steve Rubell and the New York glitterati. There’d even been a tele-movie made about him starring James Woods, Citizen Cohn, but no major documentary.
Sometime later, when Donald Trump won the US Presidential election, the director knew the time was right for an in-depth examination of the man and Where’s My Roy Cohn? is the result. Trump had been Cohn’s protégé years earlier and many people think the attorney taught the real estate developer all the unscrupulous rules of his playbook, such as “always attack; never admit blame or apologise; use favours and fear to ensure support for your objectives; expertly manipulate the media to gain advantage and destroy your opponents; lie shamelessly, invalidating the idea of truth; weaponise lawsuits; evade taxes and bills; and, most importantly, inflame the prejudices of the crowd by scapegoating defenceless people,” to quote the film’s press-book. Tyrnauer makes no bones about his intention, explaining “In the modern era of corrupt politics, Roy Cohn connects the dots. His brand of politics, his amoral personal codes of conduct are what Where’s My Roy Cohn? is all about. My hope is to help light the fires of cultural recognition; the film is intended to elucidate and motivate people to act now and to reject the darkest impulses and currents of the American psyche before they overwhelm us.”
The film covers Cohn’s story from his birth in 1927 to his death in 1986, looking at most of the crucial events of his life. He first came to notoriety in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (the doc claims he acted corruptly in the case) and he then went on to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy during his crusade against Communism in the early ‘50s. From then on he was rarely out of the public eye, representing the main Mafia families of New York, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, and advising Presidents Nixon and Reagan.
Admittedly, Where’s My Roy Cohn? is a one-sided probe into Cohn’s life but one suspects that subjects prepared to say nice things about the man were few and far between, so perhaps it can be forgiven for being somewhat one-eyed. Roy Cohn was a physically ugly man and it’s easy to surmise that his combativeness was affected by his appearance to some degree. In fact, he became uglier as he aged, almost as though his body was corrupting from the inside out, yet one doesn’t achieve the heights that this closeted gay man and self-hating Jew did without having something special in your kit box. Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary will have you asking what that special something might have been because it’s not easily discernible in this dissection of the man.
Principal cast:
Roy M. Cohn (archival footage)
Ken Auletta
Joseph McCarthy (archival footage)
Roger Stone
Anne Roiphe
Sam Roberts
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 97 mins.
Australian release date: 5 December 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 21 November 2019.
“You knew you were in the presence of evil.” – Interviewee in Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Director Matt Tyrnauer’s interest in Roy Cohn was piqued when he was researching his 2018 documentary on the famed New York disco Studio 54. Cohn was widely known in the USA and NYC as a ferocious pit bull attorney who would work for anyone (if they paid enough) and hated to lose a case, and he was the lawyer for the nightclub’s owners and a frequent visitor. He was usually accompanied at Studio 54 by young gay men but never came out of the closet, refusing to acknowledge his homosexuality right up ‘til the day he died… of an HIV-AIDS related disease. Who sir? Me sir? Tyrnauer couldn’t understand why a figure like Cohn, who’d been influential in US politics and life for over three decades, hadn’t been the subject of a documentary, although a version of him had appeared in Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America. He’d worked for politicians, mobsters, cardinals and media moguls and he partied with people like Andy Warhol, Steve Rubell and the New York glitterati. There’d even been a tele-movie made about him starring James Woods, Citizen Cohn, but no major documentary.
Sometime later, when Donald Trump won the US Presidential election, the director knew the time was right for an in-depth examination of the man and Where’s My Roy Cohn? is the result. Trump had been Cohn’s protégé years earlier and many people think the attorney taught the real estate developer all the unscrupulous rules of his playbook, such as “always attack; never admit blame or apologise; use favours and fear to ensure support for your objectives; expertly manipulate the media to gain advantage and destroy your opponents; lie shamelessly, invalidating the idea of truth; weaponise lawsuits; evade taxes and bills; and, most importantly, inflame the prejudices of the crowd by scapegoating defenceless people,” to quote the film’s press-book. Tyrnauer makes no bones about his intention, explaining “In the modern era of corrupt politics, Roy Cohn connects the dots. His brand of politics, his amoral personal codes of conduct are what Where’s My Roy Cohn? is all about. My hope is to help light the fires of cultural recognition; the film is intended to elucidate and motivate people to act now and to reject the darkest impulses and currents of the American psyche before they overwhelm us.”
The film covers Cohn’s story from his birth in 1927 to his death in 1986, looking at most of the crucial events of his life. He first came to notoriety in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (the doc claims he acted corruptly in the case) and he then went on to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy during his crusade against Communism in the early ‘50s. From then on he was rarely out of the public eye, representing the main Mafia families of New York, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, and advising Presidents Nixon and Reagan.
Admittedly, Where’s My Roy Cohn? is a one-sided probe into Cohn’s life but one suspects that subjects prepared to say nice things about the man were few and far between, so perhaps it can be forgiven for being somewhat one-eyed. Roy Cohn was a physically ugly man and it’s easy to surmise that his combativeness was affected by his appearance to some degree. In fact, he became uglier as he aged, almost as though his body was corrupting from the inside out, yet one doesn’t achieve the heights that this closeted gay man and self-hating Jew did without having something special in your kit box. Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary will have you asking what that special something might have been because it’s not easily discernible in this dissection of the man.
