California Typewriter

This is a fully engrossing movie that uses a portrait of a small business in Berkeley, CA to examine the unique mind set of collectors, the history of the typewriter and its impact on the culture as well as being a meditation on the cost of technological progress. We meet a wide range of people who collect typewriters, including Tom Hanks. He is very charming and is very clearly passionate about these machines. It's fun to listen to him explain what he likes about his typewriters and he has a compelling philosophical outlook. The other collectors are equally interesting and diverse, though, as noted in the film, mostly men. California Typewriter focuses on a very particular segment of society, but manages to say a lot about American culture in general.

I think it's inexcusable for a documentary that features a lot of talking head interviews not to identify the speakers on camera. We all know who Tom Hanks is, and maybe John Mayer. But the other notable people interviewed are not household names or faces, even Sam Shepard, RIP. The names are listed "In order of appearance" in the end credits. Are we supposed to memorize who appeared in what order? If it weren't for this creative choice, I would have given 10 stars.

One of the big reasons that "California Typewriter" showed up on my radar was likely because I happened to be reading a book at the same time called "Revenge of Analog". That book describes a movement back towards things such as records, paper, board games, and other physical (not digital) forms of leisure and commerce. That is the main theme of "California Typewriter" too...only focusing on the device listed in the title.

This documentary basically focuses on a number of different human interest stories involving a piece of technology largely thought "obsolete": the typewriter. From Tom Hanks' typewriter collection to the actual California Typewriter story, to a sculpture artist and and a collector looking for his coup de grace (and even a little history thrown in), this doc attacks the typewriter's story from nearly every angle.

Even above the human stories, though, is the notion present throughout the entire doc of that "return to analog" of sorts. As technology marches on, sometimes we don't stop to evaluate whether the physical experience of creation needs to take a back seat to the ease of creation. Don't get me wrong...I'm not exchanging my iPhone for a flip phone, nor am I turning in my MacBook for a desktop PC. I'm no Luddite. But it is a fascinating idea for me (old enough to remember a time before the Internet and mobile everything)...this notion that sometimes, say, the act of typing something on a physical device might be more satisfying than the ease of a word processor.

So, even though I'm not really "into" typewriters (I can honestly say I've never used one in my life!), I can say that this doc fascinated me and connected with me on a nostalgic, but also intellectual level. A return to analog devices may not be for everyone, but docs like this prove that the newest technology may not be for everyone, either. There is room for both, and even a mixture of both.

I stumbled over this documentary and was soon captured. Perhaps because I recalled 10-year-old me beginning an unwritten novel on mother's new Smith Corona portable and 14-year-old me banging on clunky manuals in middle school typing classes. I suspect that for many of the collectors featured in this show, now-impractical devices trigger nostalgic yearnings for times when life seemed less complicated and more enjoyable.

Filmmaker Doug Nichol offers both recognizable celebrities and little-known folks, each with their own level of interest in, or obsession for, fading technology. Another juxtaposition involves people preserving outdated machines and a sculptor deconstructing them to give machine parts new life in unique art forms.

As the program evolves, it becomes less about machines and more about the people who treasure them.

I am a typewriter user and also a long time Sam Shepard fan. I found this to be a quite fascinating film. I was expecting it to be an examination of the machine, yet it was more like an examination of our current world and both the good and the bad that comes from the digital/computer revolution. That said it did more than satisfy my lust at seeing so many beautiful machines - some that I would love to own someday. The stories of the characters and especially the repairman were very rich and detailed. I have recommended this film to a number of freinds.

When this movie was released, it was reviewed as a sort of fun feature, almost an indulgence on Hanks' part. But it is so much more! It is potent and impotent! How the soul wends its way from our depths to the printed page, with a little boost from an amalgamation of moving metal parts. Magic! And indeed it is. There are so few things that we do any longer that allow us, in an expanse of time, to create and to have in hand our creation.

All of the characters are engaging and invite us to participate in their worlds as they become creators and preservers of machines or creators of art with those same machines. Design and the care and handling of that design. And love. Unfathomable, mysterious love for these odd little machines with so many moving parts and quirky sounds that let us sit down and write ourselves a letter, or to tell the world just exactly how we fell.