In Ben Berman’s ‘The Amazing Johnathan Documentary,’ nothing is as it seems

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Ben Berman set out to make ‘The Amazing Johnathan Documentary,’ he figured it would be a poignant film about an ailing comedian and magician. But very quickly, Berman found himself wondering: was he making a movie about Jonathan, or was Johnathan roping him into a project of his own. Berman shares the crazy story of making ‘The Amazing Johnathan Documentary,’ which is now available on Hulu.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business.
0:04.4	Magic and docs are at odds, you know?
0:07.1	Fundamentally.
0:07.9	Fundamentally.
0:08.6	Illusion reality.
0:09.6	Yeah.
0:10.0	So why would I be surprised with the fact that I had such a hard adversarial kind
0:16.8	of experience with it?
0:18.2	When Ben Berman set out to make his first documentary, the plan was to tell a poignant story
0:22.8	about the amazing Jonathan.
0:24.7	The comedian and magician was a former year-round headliner in Las Vegas, who had stepped
0:29.4	back from his career in 2014, saying that a doctor told him he had only a year to live.
0:35.6	Turns out Jonathan didn't die in a year, and he decided to return to the stage without
0:39.6	regard to any health issues.
0:41.6	Seemed like a great story, but Berman soon found himself dealing with all sorts of complications
0:46.2	and unwelcome surprises.
0:48.5	Soon it wasn't so clear whether Berman was making a film about Jonathan or about his own
0:52.7	struggles in dealing with Jonathan.
0:55.1	Berman sat down with us to pull back the curtain on his new film, The Amazing Jonathan Documentary,
1:00.2	as much as he could without spoiling everything. I wouldn't normally say this, but if you want to
1:04.7	be completely surprised, you might want to check out the film on Hulu before you listen to the show.
1:09.5	But meanwhile on the news banter, I perform a disappearing act of my own.
	...

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