Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)

In this documentary by his friend Sydney Pollack we meet Frank Gehry (b. 1929), winner of the Pritzker Prize (1989) and controversial rebel rule-breaker in the world of architecture. We also meet colleagues in his firm who contribute to his deconstructionist designs, clients, business executives Mike Eisner and Barry Diller, artists, musicians, a dissenting critic from Princeton, and even Gehry's therapist of thirty years, all of whom comment on Gehry's life and work. I especially enjoyed the considerable time spent in Gehry's studio watching the artistic process unfold with paper models, computer simulations, pen sketches, and so forth. A beautiful sound track accompanies a cinematic tour of his notorious creations around the world, including his signature piece, the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Critics complain that his work is perverse, tortured, ugly, and dissonant, but most people acknowledge the remarkable genius of a man from a poor Jewish family who early in his life drove a truck for two years.