Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession (2004) – X. Cassavetes

You probably have to be from Los Angeles to best appreciate this doco about a forerunner of movie cable TV channels that started out there.  Apparently, it ran an eclectic mix of arthouse and cult movies, often organized into mini “film festivals” from the mid-1970s until the mid to late 1980s and fended off HBO and Showtime for that long.  This film by Cassavetes’ daughter Xan focuses on Z Channel programmer Jerry Harvey whose efforts led to wide acclaim but who was a tortured soul who eventually killed his wife and himself.  So, half the movie focuses on Z Channel and its appeal (with talking heads such as Robert Altman, James Woods, and Theresa Russell singing its praises) and the other half focuses on Harvey and his problems (with an ex-wife, former girlfriend and many Z Channel colleagues chiming in).  There are a heap of movie clips (a surprising number of which feature nudity, making films like Andrei Rublev seem a lot more sexy than they really are) and this keeps things interesting for the first half.  But as the movie gets darker and longer, the heavier concentration of interview footage becomes a bit tiresome.  Still, it’s a fascinating slice of our cultural history.