Joe Gould's Secret

This is one of those marvelous movies where almost nothing happens. Noone dies, noone gets blasted by aliens, noone get mushed by Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford. Just a quiet movie about an interesting guy (damn, Ian Holm is good) who doesn't do much. The scenography is awesome, and the details of the surroundings are pretty good. Anyone with an understanding of the pre-beat scene in NYC (or curiosity, ferchristssake) will love this quiet, interesting movie. Some of the characters could have been painted with a little more color. One becomes curious about the photographer-wife, the beat-artist (Saranden), and the sleazy publisher (Steve Martin, ferchristssake), but our questions remain questions.

If you like quiet movies, thoughtful movies, you'll thoroughly enjoy this one. Rent it.

What a beautifully crafted cinematic experience this is. Joe Gould, as played by the inimitable Ian Holm; is at once sweet, crass, full of rage, and teetering on the edge of madness. While Gould stands front and center,his "secret" is much, much more than we are led to believe. While wandering the city in quest of an "oral history" from thousands of New Yorkers, Joe Gould meets Joe Mitchell, a writer with the New Yorker magazine. Mitchell is drawn to this strange man who strides through Greenwich Village demanding donations to his "Joe Gould Fund". While we have to wait until the very end of the movie to find out Joe Gould's Secret, it's worth the wait. Director and Star, Stanley Tucci(Joe Mitchell),has evoked pre-WW2 New York as we would want it to be. His actors are first rate and fill out their characters to perfection. As the movie progresses, we become aware of the sadness and anguish that leads to the final understanding, and the clues we didn't see along the way.

With all the garbage that's been coming out in the theaters recently, I've taken to staying home and renting movies that never made a big splash at the box office. With Joe Gould's Secret, I lucked out and enjoyed a movie that was better than I could have imagined.

All the performances, most notably Ian Holm's, are stellar. The scenes of 1940's New York will fill you with nostalgia, even if (like me) you were born well after that time. Occasional appearances by the always wonderful Susan Sarandon and Steve Martin only heighten the pleasure of a perfectly-acted, -filmed, and -directed gem of a movie.

But, in the end, it is the character of Joe Gould -- brilliant, mad, heartbreaking -- that makes Joe Gould's Secret so perfect. He is the farthest thing imaginable from the "cute homeless guy" stock character of your typical insulting Hollywood script.

Do yourself a big favor and see this movie.

What a line that was.

Likely the best movie I've seen in ten years. Joe Mitchell's clear, lucid writing comes through so well one wonders why this hasn't been done before. Being familiar with the stories on which this film is based helped.

Ian Holm brings Gould to life, and Tucci plays the bemused, then overwhelmed journalist wonderfully well. (I could quibble about his "generic southern" rather than North Carolina accent, but that really is just a quibble.)

It made me think (always a sign of any good work of art) about the brief celebrity brought onto persons by well-meaning journalists. We see a slice of their lives, their 15 minutes of fame, but their lives continue on, following their daily routines, which may now be altered by their brush with fame.

It also brings out the dance between madness and genius. How many mumbling street people have we seen and passed, never realizing that there is a life, perhaps wisdom, lurking beneath the tattered clothes, sheltered in their cardboard boxes?

I like movies that are well-written, and this one certainly is. And the New York of the 40's and 50's is a character in the film to. To see the Village Vandguard's sign, knowing that beneath this sign passed Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Coltrane...

Highly recommended.

Starring one of the best actors in the world, Ian Holm; and Stanley Tucci, who also does a great job in this period drama based on a true story about one of the most unusual New York writers in modern history (Joe Mitchell), and his attempt to write a feature story on one of New York's most notable philosopher characters- a street person who is well-known in writer circles. Joe Gould claims to have written a massive volume that is the complete history of the world based on countless conversations he has heard from people- overheard in the street, and in conversations with friends and strangers. It is never revealed whether Gould really ever had such a manuscript, or if he was a total hoax- possibly somewhere in between. But the effect he has on Joe Mitchell (an actual top feature writer for the New Yorker during the 1940s), is profound. This is an outstanding drama- one of the best of a couple years ago (2000). <p>As reported on NPR after this film release, Joe Mitchell later unexpectedly stopped writing anything, and became a recluse himself. He would never reveal Joe Gould's secret to anyone. Now this film is inexplicably out of print on DVD, which adds a touch of irony to this important piece of American literary history.