American Experience, 2005
Alfred Kinsey was a little-known biologist at Indiana University when, in the 1940s, he began compiling exhaustive data from tens of thousands of interviews about the sexual practices of men and women. The results of that research were the explosive, best-selling Kinsey Reports. Implicit in the revolutionary studies was a plea for greater tolerance. "Such terms as abnormal, unnatural, oversexed, and undersexed," wrote Harper's Magazine, "have little validity in the light of Professor Kinsey's revelations."
The man behind the inflammatory reports seemed at first glance an unlikely "revolutionary." Publicly, he was an erudite, tweedy academic, but in private Kinsey was far more complex. As his interest in sex research deepened so did his wide-ranging sexual experimentation. Though his work was groundbreaking and up-ended established ideas about sexual practices in America, his own sexual orientation and personal beliefs almost certainly shaped and biased his findings. Through interviews with his research assistants, his children, people who took his sex questionnaire, his biographers, and intellectual historians, this probing documentary assesses Kinsey's remarkable achievements, while examining how his personal life shaped his career.
Produced and Directed by: Barak Goodman and John Maggio
Written by: Barak Goodman
New York Times 2/14/05
What's compelling here is seeing Americans in their 70's and 80's discuss their sexual liberation in the bland, frank way that Kinsey promoted. This unsmiling candor now seems as dated, somehow, as outright repression.
Chicago Tribune 2/11/05
Cagily scheduled to air on Valentine's Day, this 90-minute probe actually makes a nice companion to Bill Condon's equally excellent feature film, "Kinsey." Both unavoidably cover a lot of the same material.
But while the theatrical movie learns on some of the sudsier aspects of Kinsey's personal life, PBS' "Kinsey," produced and directed by Barak Goodman, boasts extensive access to Kinsey's research materials and features interviews with surviving associates, including assistant researchers Paul Gebhard and Clive Martin.
The Wall Street Journal 2/11/05
This tightly focused work is much enriched by the frank recollections about the researcher and, now and again, about Mrs. Kinsey. When Kinsey undertook his now famous research experiment, which involved photographing himself and his assistants engaging in all imaginable forms of sexual activity with one another, Clara Kinsey insisted on joining in. not that she ever forgot her place. "When Clara wasn't having sex on camera," a Kinsey associate recalls, "she was the consummate hostess." She was always prepared to serve vanilla pudding and ice cream, we're informed--but she wasn't about to be left out.
Newsday 2/14/05
No matter what his detractors say, Kinsey didn't set out on a mission to destroy morality. He was appalled by sexual ignorance--his own and, once he began to ask around, that of pretty much everybody. The documentary includes on-camera interviews with men and women who were in Kinsey's pioneering sex-education classes at Indiana in the mid-1930s. Hearing these grandfatherly and grandmotherly folks talk about how dumb they were and how Kinsey's candid lectures improved their lives makes this taboo-breaking seem heroic.
NY Post 2/13/05
But who was Kinsey? And how did this professor of entomology, who had devoted a significant portion of his life to the obscure study of gall wasps, come to produce a landmark report on human sexuality and then become one of the most renowned scientists of the 20th century?
The answers can be found in "Kinsey," a 90-minute documentary produced for PBS' "American Experience" by filmmakers Barak Goodman and John Maggio, whose previous documentary, "The Fight," about heavyweight boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, premiered last year.
The Boston Globe 2/14/05
With Kinsey's previous fame and the big Hollywood biopic about him last year, it's hard to believe there still may be people out there who don't know who the man was. if there's a reason to watch this show at this point, frankly, it's to learn about the dark side of his crusade to liberate Americans sexually. There is fascination in the train wreck that occurred involving his professional and personal lives.
"Kinsey," written and coproduced by Barak Goodman, benefits from extraordinary access to letters and files from the Kinsey Institute and boasts a strong roster of talking heads, including biographers James Jones and Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, and former assistant Paul Gebhard.
The Oregonian 2/14/05
"Kinsey," tonight's "American Experience" documentary, offers the perfect Valentine's day capper, a detailed, analytical and lively exploration of the life, labors, triumphs, foibles and defeats of America's first truly scientific sex researcher.
San Jose Mercury News 2/14/07
Working from an extensive collection of research material at Indiana University, filmmaker Barak Goodman ("The Fight") has pulled together a fascinating portrait of a very contradictory man whose work is still controversial decades after it was done. You may not agree with Kinsey's viewpoints on sexual behavior--and you certainly may not agree with his research methods--but that shouldn't stop you from watching this excellent documentary.
The Seattle Times 2/14/05
Millions of men and women will buy chocolates, light candles or fall sleep.
And perhaps they will remember Alfred Kinsey, who contributed to Valentine's Day for better and worse and is the subject of a great profile at 9 tonight on PBS (KCTS-TV).
"Kinsey" isn't just a factual supplement to the recent film of the same name. Presented as part of the "American Experience" series, it is a more objective, less heroic and ultimately clear-eyed biography of the man who brought sex to America. From the outset, "Kinsey: is at ease with complexities and contradictions that glamorous biopics tend to eschew. It makes connections that the big-screen movie omitted in the interest of dramatic contrast.
Los Angeles City Beat 2/10/05
The strength of Kinsey is in the way it parades the loathsome trolls of bigotry, misinformation, and repression that stigmatize and criminalize any deviations from marital and missionary norms, making recognition of their once more being on the march unequivocally easy.
The Dallas Morning News 2/14/05
So if you left the recent dramatic film Kinsey wanting to know more about the real man, American Experience has just the ticket. The stellar PBS series checks in tonight with its own Kinsey, a doc that peels back the Hollywood layers of a sex researcher who still trails controversy almost 50 years after his death.
The Hartford Courant 2/14/05
The story of Kinsey so recently told in the film bio starring Liam Neeson is even more fascinating when told by the now elderly interview subjects and graying fellow researchers, chuckling now at their bold inquiries.
The Associated Press 2/14/05
Meet Alfred Kinsey in a fascinating portrait of this intrepid "sexplorer" who shook up the repressed 1950s and paved the way for the sexual revolution.
The Cincinnati Post 2/14/05
Just in time for Valentine's Day comes "Kinsey," an excellent profile of the Indiana sex researcher airing at 9 tonight on the PBS "American Experience" series (WCET, KET2)
"Kinsey's pioneering research of the sexual habits of American men and women in the '40s and '50s initiated a conversation about sexual behavior that continues to this day," said Mark Samels, executive producer.
Moviegoers perhaps caught the well-reviewed biopic last year starring Liam Neeson, but the real-life story is plenty compelling, especially in the hands of the excellent PBS biography team.
The Hollywood Reporter 2/14/05
This isn't the feature of the same title. Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the celebrated and notorious sexual chronicler, doesn't look like Liam Neeson, nor does wife Clara remotely resemble Laura Linney. But the straight-on televersion of their sex life, and all of ours, is closely akin to the movie without the excursions [exclusions?] demanded by Hollywood. Both pursuits achieve the level of fascination.
CultureVulture.net 1/29/05
The American Experience program--narrated, refreshingly, by Campbell Scott--differs from the novelization and the Hollywood version in tone, though the content of the stories hardly changes. Ostensibly factual in its biography, the television program avoids all cautionary tale pitfalls that slightly hamper both the film and the novel, and the American Experience program does its best to free its subject from the typically stuffy confines of public broadcasting.
