“Cardboard Cutouts Don’t Grow Old, They Don’t Die”: Jan Oxenberg on Criterion’s Rerelease of Her “Docu-fantasy” Thank You and Good Night

Jan Oxenberg was a thorn in the nonfiction establishment’s side long before hybrid doc-making was a thing (or even a term). Case in point: Her feature-length (Sundance ’91) debut Thank You and Good Night, a restoration of which will hit the Criterion Channel this week (along with two of the queer pioneer’s earlier shorts, 1973’s Home Movie and 1975’s A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts, accompanied by a new director’s intro). Though Thank You and Good Night has been described as a “docu-fantasy” it’s also a very real time capsule of sorts. The film takes as its starting point the looming death of Oxenberg’s grandmother, which prompts the radical filmmaker (who has since, counterintuitively, become an established writer/producer for mainstream TV) to pick up her camera and record as much as she can in a race to the inevitable end. That includes no nonsense interviews and daily interactions with her mother and siblings, a cousin, even some of her grandmother’s friends – who together form a beautifully sad and unexpectedly funny, Borscht Belt-infused mosaic of NY secular Jewish life. Which brings us to the “fantasy” portion of the “documentary” – embodied (?) by the film’s narrator and spiritual guide. Who happens to be a cardboard cutout named Scowling Jan, the director’s five-year-old self.

And to read my interview with the groundbreaking director visit Filmmaker magazine.