When Jeremy Newberger, Daniel Miller and Seth Kramer were adolescents, they were major fans of Morton Downey Jr., the loudmouth, in-your-face conservative talk show host who briefly in the late 1980s was the hottest thing on television.
Now, nearly a quarter century later, the three filmmakers have jointly produced and directed a fascinating and rollicking documentary called “Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie.”
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The film, which they describe as a “dissection” of the man and his show, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival Thursday and is screening twice more later this week.
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“It was the perfect show for a teenage boy because Downey Jr. was sticking it to The Man,” says Newberger, now 38, of “The Morton Downey Jr. Show,” which aired nationally for less than two years, in 1988 and ’89.
For those too young to remember the brief heyday of Downey Jr., the film is a revelation. Here is a man who smoked incessantly on TV, often drank, hurled invective at his guests and encouraged his participatory audience (the show taped in Secaucus, N.J.) to be as rude and abusive as he was.
As Meredith Vieira, then a correspondent at CBS News, says in an old clip shown in the film, “Downey is turning unleashed rage into unlimited ratings.”
Downey Jr. also helped pave the way for the unbridled haranguing and screeching that passes for commentary and opinion-trading on much of cable news TV today. “He took the advocacy, the confrontation to the nth degree, which made what you see nowadays possible,” says Miller.
Newberger, Miller and Kramer collectively run a documentary-making company called Ironbound Films out of Garrison, N.Y. Their previous credits include the Emmy-nominated docs “The New Recruits” (2010) and “The Linguists” (2008), both of which aired on PBS.
Newberger was the first to suggest Downey Jr. as a subject for a film. It took the trio four years to research and make the 90-minute movie. “None of us ever met the guy but we’re now the foremost Morton Downey Jr. historians on the planet,” jokes Newberger.
Their film includes fresh interviews with producers on Downey Jr.’s TV show, a daughter, old friends and colleagues, as well as talk show host contemporaries Sally Jesse Raphael and Richard Bey. “Everyone involved with him had unresolved, lingering issues,” says Kramer. “They loved him but he disappointed them. Most found it extremely cathartic to talk about him.”
“Évocateur” also features deftly selected archival film, including Downey Jr. family home movies. There’s also never before seen footage from when the cameras continued to roll during commercial breaks on his show (including the Rev. Al Sharpton denouncing an audience member as a “punk faggot”).
The filmmakers got the old tapes of the Downey Jr. show from Robert Pittman, the media executive who helped found MTV and then unleashed Downey Jr. on TV. In 1987, having left MTV, Pittman decided the time was right to create a syndicated TV talk show with a conservative host who’d stir things up.
He hired Downey Jr. for the job. At the time, Downey Jr. – his father, singer Morton Downey Sr., was a successful radio and recording star–was the host of a conservative talk show on a Chicago radio station.
“Pittman gave it to us for the price of a handshake,” says Newberger of the tapes, which, along with other archival material like scripts, had long been gathering dust in a warehouse in Moonachie, N.J.
The middle-aged Downey Jr.’s fall was as rapid as his rise. Success, fame and money went to his head. He began drinking heavily, partying hard and spending lavishly. He left his third wife for a much younger woman, who soon became his fourth wife (and eventual widow).
In 1989, in an incident reminiscent of the notorious Tawana Brawley case (which he himself had ridden to ratings gold a year earlier), Downey Jr. claimed that to have been attacked by skinheads in a men’s room at the San Francisco airport. He said they had hacked his hair and drawn swastikas on him. His claims were widely derided as a hoax aimed at boosting sagging ratings; his show was canceled soon after.
Downey Jr. attempted comebacks, without success, and died from lung cancer in 2001 at age 68.
“Évocateur” is seeking a distribution deal. Josh Braun, of Submarine Entertainment, is the agent representing the film and said he is encouraged by positive early reactions. “We should have a better sense of things in a day or two but generally distributors are reacting to how insanely entertaining and marketable the film is,” he said in an emailed response late Saturday.