DOC NYC ’16: Pulitzer at 100

In 1965, the Pulitzer Prize music committee voted to award not a full Pulitzer, but a special “Miss Congeniality”-style citation to Duke Ellington for his exceptional body of work, but the full Pulitzer board vetoed their decision. It was an ugly, possibly racist episode that goes entirely unmentioned in Kirk Simon’s ridiculously sanitized puff piece, The Pulitzer at 100, which screens during DOC NYC 2016.

It is doubly ironic that Simon whitewashes the Ellington snub because nearly every other journalistic story, play, and novel discussed in the doc addresses one subject: American racism. Yes, the legacy of slavery is evil and still very much part of our national psyche. However, if you thought the American traditions of religious liberty and freedom of the press also partly define our national character than Simon and his talking heads beg to differ with your racist preconceptions, you knuckle-dragging cretin.

P@100 has about fifteen minute’s worth of interesting material regarding Joseph Pulitzer and his more democratic, blue collar approach to journalism. It is also nice to hear from music winners Wynton Marsalis and John Adams. Unfortunately, the history of the awards is conspicuously selective. In addition to ignoring the Ellington insult, Simon sweeps under the rug the notorious Janet Cooke affair, in which the Washington Post staffer was awarded a Pulitzer for a wholly fabricated story about a child drug addict.

Arguably, the deliberate omission of Walter Duranty controversy is even more pernicious. Despite cravenly denying the very real horrors and famine of the Stalinist era USSR, Duranty won a Pulitzer for his dispatches from Soviet Russia. Today, the New York Times no longer stands behind his reports, but they have taken the perverse position they will only return his Pulitzer if the awards committee revokes it. To date, that has not happened.

It is impossible take Pulitzer at 100 seriously when it ducks such well-documented incidents of terrible judgment (to put it charitably). As a result, Simon’s appallingly myopic film does not deserve your time or attention and it certainly does not merit a screening (11/12) at this year’s DOC NYC.

Prized Pulitzers

It was cool to be the first to tell some Ornette Coleman fans yesterday that the alto legend had won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Despite their pleasure to see Coleman recognized for his work, they had mixed feelings that he would now be considered part of the establishment.

Frankly, Coleman will always be his own man, but it does help the Pulitzer’s reputation. The Pulitzer board’s snubbing of Duke Ellington in 1965 is a well known blot on their record. It was not until 1997 that a jazz piece was finally awarded a Pulitzer: Wynton Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields. Some press accounts of Coleman’s prize for the album Sound Grammar are calling it the first prize for jazz, categorizing Fields, as classical, which would likely draw an argument from those who performed and recorded it, including Jon Hendricks, Cassandra Wilson, Russell Gunn, and James Carter.

Regardless of what it means to the establishment, jazz fans should be happy to see the ranks of jazz Pulitzer winners double. Nekessa Mumbi Moody at the AP should get credit for writing: “Classical’s Grip Loosening on Pulitzers?” on Friday, looking fairly prescient a few days later. The Pulitzers should get credit too, for making their rules friendlier to jazz and theater composers.

The Pulitzers have also given special citations the jazz greats the last two years, as sort of make-ups for having missed the boat while they were still alive. Last year it was Monk, this year Coltrane. Ellington was belatedly acknowledged in 1999 (a year after finally recognizing George Gershwin’s music might have some staying power after all). Next year, someone should tell the Pulitzer board there was also this man named Mingus.