James Y. Lee
Perhaps just as well-known as the reputation of Tony Kaye’s American History X (1998) is the fraught post-production fiasco that occurred behind the scenes close to the film’s release. Kaye and distributor New Line Cinema were in persistent conflict as the edit for the film was taking place, with the final released cut of the film ultimately amounting to several minutes longer than the 95-minute version that Kaye had in mind. Kaye’s overzealous insistence that his vision be respected—despite the fact that American History X was his first-ever feature—led to him repeatedly going to newspapers and disowning the film in public view. At points, he even went so far as to reach the Director’s Guild of America, wanting to change his name to “Humpty Dumpty” in the credits of the film to make as much of a spectacle as possible.
Needless to say, the move significantly squandered a career that Kaye could have made for himself. While Kaye continues to make films to this day—with Detachment (2011) and Lake of Fire (2006) being the most prominent examples—none of them have ever quite had the reach that American History X has. The film developed a cult following in the years after its release—even despite its heavy-handed and clumsy approach to contemporary Nazism and alt-right politics, American race relations, and the process of de-radicalization, perhaps a byproduct of Kaye’s outsider English upbringing and perspective. Kaye has since spent much of his time apologizing for the brashness of his actions during the release of American History X. His latest feature, Humpty Dumpty X, is a record filmed by him of what exactly happened during that time.
Some of Kaye’s stylistic eccentricities make their way through into this documentary, a relatively straightforwardly constructed account of that era using footage that Kaye himself taped. Textual intertitles narrated (and sometimes even sung-through) by Kaye himself put us in the state of mind he was in at the time, as well as the size of the ego he possessed. We learn very quickly that his express intent was to create a potent artistic statement with his debut feature. We hear that he wanted to work with Marlon Brando eventually. We realize over time that he wanted to receive the same directorial autonomy and respect as his cinematic idols. Coming from an artistic background, the Kaye who made American History X would accept no less.
Even Kaye’s footage from the late ’90s is full of formal eccentricities of their own—as if he couldn’t stop himself at any point from doing something self-referential. When he approaches a filmmaker like Mike Figgis, he has them hold a camera pointing at him, while Kay himself points a camera directly at the artist he’s talking to. Sometimes, there are tripods for these cameras; at other points, they’re directly holding cameras in their hands. It’s also interesting to watch a film like this in the wake of the vlog era, as Kaye frequently points the camera either at aimless places or at himself while he records in diaristic fashion his own thoughts and sentiments. And every so often, Kaye includes interludes such as a piece of writing he collaborated on with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, a collaboration that ensued as a result of Kaye’s quest to re-narrate American History X.
There’s also a real point of fascination to be had in the undercover filming techniques that Kaye often deploys, especially when he approaches various figures in the industry most directly responsible for the exhibition and distribution of American History X‘s current form. He waltzes into the offices of the Toronto International Film Festival with a camera in hand. He hides a camera in plain view when speaking with Michael De Luca, the chief of New Line. And he’s also directly filming the phones and answering machines he uses in order to exchange various messages with other cinematic figures.
But with a retrospective like this into a personal era so specific, you’re often forced to wonder how much reflection is actually taking place within the text of the film. Even with Kaye’s acknowledgement that his hard-headedness troubled his career deeply, with some self-referential wit to boot, certain parts of the film are presented too unquestioningly for its own good. In places where some real perspective does actually emerge—including the film’s most fascinating subplot about a series of conversations with Marlon Brando, who was the only person able to talk sense into Kaye regarding the film industry—it takes too little real estate relative to how much fun Kaye seems to be having in revisiting this less mature stretch of his life.
Perhaps a part of Kaye still believes that he did the right thing during this time of his career, or perhaps not—this review is certainly not a place to judge that. But the documentary struggles to escape the boundaries of the way it quirkily presents what wound up being a rather sizable blow to the trajectory of Kaye’s career. As a time capsule of this fragment of Kaye’s post-American History X snafu, it feels like it enjoys itself too much to demonstrate the ways in which Kaye might have potentially grown from it. And as a look into where Kaye might have evolved since then, it doesn’t afford enough space or time there for us to truly understand the impact of American History X on his artistic ethos.
The irony of a film like this is that for a film that seems to purport some kind of look into the past, its view of the present or the future feels too limited for much meaning to come out of it. We may have gotten a better glimpse of Kaye’s artistic philosophy, but it comes at the expense of understanding how that intersects with himself as a person. The result is an autobiographical documentary that persistently keeps us at a remove, and at least helped this reviewer understand the attitudes that manifested in American History X‘s deep heavy-handedness a little more closely than before.
