KURT VONNEGUT UNSTUCK
"We are what we pretend to be."
In 1982, filmmaker Robert B. Weide sent a letter to his literary idol, Kurt Vonnegut. He wanted to make a documentary about the famed American author’s life. Filming did not begin on the project until 1988, 6 years after Weide and Vonnegut first corresponded. Production continued on and off for the next several years, with the pair traveling to different locations important to Vonnegut. As the two grew closer, Vonnegut became comfortable opening up to Weide about topics and intimate details about the writer’s life.
This friendship morphed the documentary from one of just subject and documentarian to something else. According to Weide, “When I first approached Vonnegut to authorize this film in 1982, I envisioned a fairly conventional author documentary. But, as the decades rolled by, fate stepped in, and what I wound up with was far from conventional. As my friendship with my literary idol grew, full disclosure was called for, and Don Argott came on to document the meta element of this story, as I continued to focus on Vonnegut’s biography. What we wound up with was a hybrid that combined our respective strengths as filmmakers and will hopefully be seen as a worthy tribute by Vonnegut’s fans and a compelling introduction for the uninitiated. I’m grateful to IFC for stepping up and bringing this lifelong passion project to the public.”
Weide continued filming with Vonnegut from 1988 until shortly before the author’s death in 2007. Once the picture was completed, Weide faced a new issue: how to raise the money for its distribution. So, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to help get Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time finished and out the door. All of Weide’s efforts finally paid off when, in 2020, IFC officially bought the rights to distribute the documentary.
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time will be released by IFC on November 19, 2021.
