Stone Reader (2002)

Another Documentary Director Who Forgot The Movie Wasn't About Himself!!
I was eager to view STONE READER as soon as I heard about is since the story of promising writer (Dow Mossmon) who seemingly vanished off the face of the earth after publishing one well received novel (The Stones of Summer) is intriguing. Director Moskowitz takes this fascinating idea however and pads his movie to a two hour plus length with information and lingering shots seemed designed to convince the viewer of the brilliance and specialness of HIMSELF! If this movie had been maybe an hour and a half in length and Moscowitz had stayed on his side of the camera the film could have been great but instead this effort is mediocre and annoying and I'm being generous. Some of the scenes are obviously staged and I am more than a bit incredulous that Moscowitz would have had much difficulty in finding Mossmon in the era of people finding internet search engines. I was also disappointed by how little attention Moscowitz and the other literary people he interviews give to women writers. Even with all that I would have been willing to give the film three stars since parts of it are well made but then I come on the Amazon site and find our friend Moscowitz has been involved in a scheme to get people to write positive reviews of his film even if they have never seen it! No wonder media hog Moscowitz was so fascinated by reclusive Mossmon since they are true polar opposites.

Too much Moskowitz, too little Mossman
Although hailed as a great film for people who love reading, this film's first love is clearly filmmaker Mark Moskowitz. His work on political campaigns is painfully evident throughout the troublesomely concocted "storyline" of his "quest" to find one-novel wonder Dow Mossman. He's sometimes visibly distintered in what the subjects of his "interviews" (which he typically dominates) have to say, preferring to use almost everyone as a prop in a story which is more about his own life than Mossman's.

He carefully massages what ought to have been an afternoon's worth of phone calls into a journey which crosses many miles to talk to vaguely related people who often have no knowledge about anything he wants to talk about (he TRAVELS to interview the illustator of the novel's original cover-- who, it turns out, has almost no recollection of the event). It quickly becomes clear that he is staging almost everything for the camera, and, since most of the people he talks to don't know or don't care about the subject of the film, the majority of it focuses on his rudely cutting off experts to get his own opinion on film or just generally dominating the discussion to harp on and on about his supposed love of reading (not to mention a good deal of name-dropping to demonstrate how well-read he is).

This is all hugely annoying, and made even more so, because the acutal subject of the film --dealing with author Mossman and the world of writing and publishing in general-- is actually very interesting. Mossman's book is a very good (though sometimes frustratingly obtuse) read, and his story begs deeper exploration. Instead, even when Moskowitz finally reveals Mossman to the camera (after about twenty minutes of obvious milking the "Mystery" when Mossman's wherabouts should have been about one phone call away) the focus of the film gets right back to Moskowitz's agenda to get the book re-published, shamefully ignoring Mossman's real life after spending the whole film ostensibly tring to discover it. This is after two hours of focusing on Moskowitz telling us about his OWN life.

Still, if you can survive the contrived setup, overlong runtime, and rude and self-interested director, there are easily 30 minutes of extremely interesting interviews with literary figures and with Mossman himself. This alone justified sitting through the film for me, providing real insight into some fascinating and oft-unexplored areas of life.

A Satisfying Gem of a Film!
Filmmaker Mark Moskowitz's inspired documentary, Stone Reader, begins with the singular notion of uncovering more of writer Dow Mossman's literary works. Upon discovering that Mossman's body of work began and ended with The Stones of Summer, a highly acclaimed but mostly forgotten first novel, Moskowitz sets out to learn how a writer, and a work of such promise, could have vanished with nary a trace. In the process, Moskowitz treats us to some delightful detective work that introduces us to an engaging cast of characters - critics, writing instructors and literary agents among them - who provide the clues to the puzzle that is Dow Mossman, but ultimately reveals the painful story of Mossman's creative odyssey. The search for Dow Mossman is at the heart of Moskowitz's story, but so is his love of great literature and the sad truth that talent is almost never enough to achieve literary success. It is a story told with sometimes ordinary, even mundane snippets from daily life - mostly Moskowitz's, his family and friends - that is at the same time deceptively complex. Stone Reader reminds us of our own lives and the daily struggle to make sense of the world in which we live. There are no happy endings, just the discovery of good ideas, great literature and the desire to create a thing that has truth at its center. Watching Stone Reader is not unlike receiving a present that, when opened, reveals other, smaller presents within which surprise and delight as we unwrap them, none more delightful than the present that is Dow Mossman himself. See this film.