Doc Corner: 'Listening to Kenny G' and 'Jagged' at DOC NYC
By Glenn Dunks
DOC NYC starts today. The festival runs for in-person screenings from November 10–18 and then continues online until November 28. I have a Twitter thread covering what I am watching, but here we are looking at two music docs about artists from very different ends of the spectrum: Kenny G and Alanis Morissette.
Trust director Penny Lane to make a biographic documentary about a musician and have it not be the same old same old. The American filmmaker has been on a tear lately with Nuts! (about goat testicle charlatans), The Pain of Others (about Morgellons disease), and Hail Satan! (about the Satanic Temple). This run continues with the wittily assembled Listening to Kenny G, which plays today as the opening night film of DOC NYC.
Lane’s film isn’t the standard musician bio-doc, although it does chart his career from the early days discovering music in school and does make a spotlight out of his career highs and lows. What makes Listening to Kenny G so invigorating of a watch is because of the greater story within which this narrative is placed. One that interrogates the controversial anti-populous appeal of the multi-instrumentalist’s smooth jazz stylings from all angles.