The other night I watched a documentary that had been in my Netflix queue since 2013: Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Alternately subtitled “Esquire in the ’60s” and “How Howard Hayes rocked journalism,” the film highlights Esquire magazine during the 1960s and how its editor, Howard Hayes, well, rocked journalism during that decade.
The film is written and directed by Tom Hayes, son of the famous editor who had little time for family and fatherhood while running a major magazine. Young Hayes resists making the predictable documentary of the famous man’s dark side and instead glorifies the old man, and if the film has any flaws it’s that the pendulum tilts a bit too much in this direction. The movie’s a self-congratulatory puff piece, but cool in a Mad Men meets Jack Kerouac meets The Rolling Stones sort of way. To say the film has a pro-Esquire (really pro-Hayes) bias is like saying the pope has a bit of a Catholic bias, but as one who likes the product, I digress.
Smiling Through the Apocalypse was the name given to Esquire’s compendium of the 1960s, a nod to the cheerful disposition those at the top may have taken during tumultuous times. No fiddling while Rome burned, but genuine cheeriness of those who celebrate life and man at his best. Truth is, the magazine did show the darker side of Camelot and that which followed, and gave its readers through Mailer, Talese, and Wolfe the real America which was neither Apocalyptic nor grinning unnecessarily.
I recommend Smiling Through the Apocalypse. It’s a period piece, and one with great journalistic star power (like the magazine itself). It’s also a story about family, work, personal relationships, and the bonds that bring them together. While smiling, no doubt.
