NUTS! is a feature length documentary about Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire in Depression-era America with a goat testicle impotence cure and a million watt radio station. Using animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage, and a hilariously unreliable narrator, NUTS! traces Brinkley’s rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth and influence in Depression-era America. Along the way, he transplants tens of thousands of goat testicles; amasses an enormous fortune; is (sort of) elected Governor of Kansas; builds the world’s most powerful radio station; invents junk mail, the infomercial, the sound-truck and Border Radio; hosts some epic parties; and annoys the heck out of the establishment, until finally his audacious actions force the federal government to create regulations to stop him. How he does it, and what happens when it all comes crashing down, is the story of NUTS!
Maysles Documentary Center spotlights the first four feature documentaries of filmmaker Penny Lane, who over the last decade has distinguished herself as a vital voice in contemporary nonfiction film & video. Defined by an eclectic use of formal techniques and a burning intellectual curiosity, Lane’s body of work reveals a consistent preoccupation with the nature of truth, communicated with a wry sense of humor — an epistemological cheek. In 2016, she launched “Notes on NUTS!”, an exhaustive online compendium of annotations to her third feature. By ranking the film’s various claims and implications on a “truth scale”, Lane acknowledged and deconstructed the obfuscations of fact made by documentarians in pursuit of a good story. Her latest film, HAIL SATAN?, incorporates her first use of direct footage to profile The Satanic Temple, an organization as adept at using funny in defense of facts as the filmmaker herself.
OUR NIXON is available free of charge May 28-June 4 alongside 3 other films by Penny Lane, including the new release HAIL SATAN?
Join us for a Zoom conversation on Saturday, May 30 at 1PM EDT with Penny Lane to dive deeper!
