BOOKMARK: SEX, LIES, AND JERZY KOSINSKI (TV)
Summary
This BBC documentary concentrates a revisionist eye on the life and art of enigmatic novelist Jerzy Kosinski. Through interviews with his second wife Kiki von Fraunhofer-Kosinski, friends and fellow authors, and Polish villagers who knew Kosinski when he was a child hiding from the scourge of Nazism, this program attempts to assess the verity of Kosinski's "autobiographical" fiction, the need for him to maintain a nebulous mystique about his early life, and to understand his obsession with S&M sex clubs in Manhattan during the 1970s and 1980s. This documentary also makes use of several interviews with Kosinski, readings from his novels, and scenes from the film he scripted from his own novel, "Being There." Highlights include: footage from the May 3rd WPIX-TV New York news program reporting Kosinski's suicide; his wife Kiki recalls that the late author loved sports, especially skiing; photos of Kosinski's various disguises; writer William Styron refers to Kosinski as a "role player actor"; journalist John Corry states that Kosinski "stuck out like a sore thumb" in the New York literary world because of his celebrity; television producer and paramour Dora Militaru comments that she thought "Being There" was Kosinski's own story; Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski speaks of the author's vagueness on his personal origins; film producer Ted Field asserts that "truth was relative" to Kosinski; new research is presented which debunks the idea that Kosinski was separated from his family during the Holocaust; Zofia Staron, a villager in the remote Polish countryside where Kosinski and his family spent much of the Holocaust, recalls Kosinski as a diffident and different child; a villager remembers what inspired brutal scenes in "The Painted Bird"; other villagers deny that Kosinski's tales of brutality in their village are genuine; filmmaker Roman Polanski defends Kosinski's childhood stories, saying that Kosinski wrote fiction and not autobiographies; comedienne Joan Rivers describes Kosinski as "a war casualty"; a villager whose family housed the Kosinski's during the Holocaust explains why "The Painted Bird" is such an insult to their community; David Weir, the stepchild from Kosinski's first marriage to an alcoholic millionairess, recalls Kosinski taking him "whoring" when he was seventeen; Kiki recalls how she and Kosinski met and married; footage from "Late Night With David Letterman" from 1982 when the host tried to get Kosinski to discuss his habit of frequenting S&M sex clubs in Manhattan in the early morning hours; an S&M mistress named Sharon demonstrates various techniques of domination on a pilloried woman; employees of S&M clubs recall Kosinski as mostly a voyeur; a Kosinski friend named Cynthia remembers their nightly jaunts; Dora Militaru recalls when her relationship with Kosinski turned physically abusive; a "Village Voice" piece questions whether Kosinski employed ghost writers; the fact that Kosinski ceased writing after "The Hermit of 69th Street" was not well-received by the public and critics; footage of Kosinski in Israel attacking the idea of a Holocaust Museum; the overwhelming, positive response to Kosinski when he visited Polish cities in 1988; a woman who lived in the remote Polish village of the author's youth comments that she would "personally slaughter him with a knife" for his negative depiction of the community; and Kiki reads the suicide note left by her late husband.
Details
- NETWORK: BBC (United Kingdom)
- DATE: November 30, 1994
- RUNNING TIME: 0:59:30
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:41456
- GENRE: Arts documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Authors; Biography; International Collection - United Kingdom; Writers
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Agnieszka Piotrowska … Producer, Director
- Roland Keating … Production (Misc.), Series Editor
- Dario Marianelli … Music (Misc. Credits), Specially composed music by
- Carl Proctor … Reader
- Denica Fairman … Reader
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
- John Corry
- Jerzy Kosinski
- Dora Militaru
- Joan Rivers
- Zofia Staron
- William Styron
- von Fraunhofer-Kosinski, Kiki