“For movie-goers to get the idea of real combat, you’d have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen.” So says D-day veteran turned legendary film-maker Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor, The Big Red One), adding wryly that “casualties in the theatre would be bad for business”. Built around readings of Fuller’s writing by the likes of Mark Hamill, Bill Duke, William Friedkin, and Joe Dante, this documentary from Samantha Fuller tells the story of her father’s life in his own words.
A newspaperman who enlisted in the army to “cover the biggest crime story of the century”, Fuller was an enthusiastic proponent of Jeffersonian equality who annoyed J Edgar Hoover – he compared Hoover’s prejudices to those of biased film critics – and ruffled studio feathers with such misunderstood works as White Dog. He made “ballsy yarns” on controllable budgets and never stopped telling stories, as this warmly affectionate tribute attests.
