Before Project Runway, before America’s Next Top Model – heck, before most reality TV, period – there was Unzipped, taking viewers behind the scenes of New York fashion with charismatic designer Isaac Mizrahi. Thirty years later, in a new restoration, aside from a few landline phones and obviously younger famous faces, it doesn’t feel dated in the least.
The Unzipped restoration opens Oct. 9th at Laemmle’s Royal and Town Center 5.
It’s no exaggeration to call Mizrahi a quintessential theater kid – he scored a small role in Alan Parker’s Fame when he was a high school senior, and has continued to act even as he made a bigger name for himself on the runways. Unzipped feels like perfect symbiosis: a camera on a man who craves your attention, and is entertaining enough to hold it.
Unzipped was directed by Mizrahi’s then-boyfriend, Douglas Keeve, which undoubtedly contributes to the subject’s spontaneity and openness. They broke up over the final film, and Keeve continued to direct, but Mizrahi helped fund the restoration of the movie, so he has clearly made his peace with it, as he should. He may come off catty at times, but never bitchy or cruel. With no reality show contestants to have to cut, he’s free to just talk about himself and show off what he does. His influences can be as random as watching Nanook of the North on TV and deciding Inuit furs are the new coolest thing ever (only late in the movie does he learn he shouldn’t use the E-word for them any more)…then he has to figure out how to use that without getting into the thoroughly un-PC territory of real fur.
For most of the movie, the fact that Mizrahi’s field is fashion doesn’t even matter that much – it’s a universal narrative of a guy who’s been hit hard by critics and wants to bounce back the following season. Only for the film’s climax at the actual presentation does the movie become highly fashion-specific, and by that time, viewers are invested in Isaac as a character, regardless of whether or not they’ve ever cared about the New York style scene.
Numerous famous faces breeze in and out of the designer’s orbit, from models like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford to industry adjacent celebrities like Sandra Bernhard and Eartha Kitt. In a pre-reality TV era, they’re refreshingly unguarded – aside from Kitt, whose interview was set up by Keeve (and is notably in color, while much of the movie is black and white), most of them probably just imagined this was Isaac’s boyfriend making a home movie, and let down their guarded personae accordingly. In a pre-digital era, with a subject who talks constantly, black and white film for most of the movie was probably the only economical option. Still, it’s super-clean – very little of Unzipped is grainy, and then only as an aesthetic choice; at least in this restoration, Mizrahi could be in the next room for how sharp the footage is.
To the extent that Unzipped is a time capsule, it’s in the way that this kind of celebrity portrait documentary has largely been supplanted by inferior social media and reality TV. The subject’s desire to control their image hasn’t changed – clearly it took Mizrahi a while to come to terms with what is largely a flattering,entertaining, loving portrait guided by a director who cares about him. Editing always forces some curation, but when it’s in the service of showing what the director sees rather than forcing a competition or promotional narrative, we end up with something that at least feels genuine.
“An insider’s view of the fashion world that’s hip, light, authentic, revelatory, and always amusing.” – Emanuel Levy, Variety.
“Mizrahi lives so publicly, always surrounded by friends and associates, always talking, that Unzipped gives us a good sense of who he is, even without personal details.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.