Let’s play “two truths and a lie” about John R. Brinkley, the subject of NUTS!, a boldly irreverent documentary by experimental filmmaker Penny Lane (Our Nixon).
1. Brinkley cured male impotence using goat testicle transplants.
2. Write-in voters elected him governor of Kansas until 50,000 ballots were invalidated.
3. He eluded U.S. broadcast regulators by operating a 50,000-watt radio station across the Mexican border, on which many country music fans heard the Carter Family for the first time.
Brinkley’s supporters believed all three statements were true, even the scientifically impossible first one. Their trust helped him build a quasi-medical media empire worth millions during the Great Depression.
Lane’s documentary, which earned a well-deserved editing award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, alternates between fact and fabrication — from both Brinkley and Lane. Animated sequences illustrate passages from Brinkley’s authorized biography, The Life of a Man, published by his own company in 1934. Interviews with historians verify some bizarre details from his life and career.
Hubris led Brinkley to file a libel suit against Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1938. Lane uses Brinkley’s own testimony at the trial to pick apart the foundations of his biography. Instead of finding satisfaction with Brinkley’s subsequent comeuppance after the trial, Lane conveys the sadness intrinsic to shattering an illusion, even a harmful one.
Lane understands that her choices have an impact on what audiences will believe to be true. If you want to go down the NUTS! rabbit hole, the director has posted 300 footnotes to track Brinkley’s distortions and her own inventions and “tricky edits” at notes.nutsthefilm.com.
WUD Film will screen NUTS! at its Marquee Film Festival at Union South on Nov. 4 at 5:30 p.m. The Driftless Film Festival at the Mineral Point Opera House also screens the film on Nov. 6 at 5 p.m.
