''California Typewriter'' is a 2016 American documentary film directed by

Doug Nichol Doug Nichol is an American filmmaker and commercials/music video director. Biography A graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, he started his career as a cinematographer working with David Bowie, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and U2 and was ...

, that explores the mythology attached to the

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

, as various obsessives (including

Tom Hanks Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Ha ...

John Mayer John Clayton Mayer ( ; born October 16, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Born and raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Mayer attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but left and moved to Atlanta in 1997 with ...

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States ...

and

Sam Shepard Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any write ...

) celebrate the physicality of the typewriter both as object and means of summoning the creative spirit. It also documents the struggles of California Typewriter, one of the last standing repair shops in America dedicated to keeping the aging machines clicking.

Cast

The following people appeared in ''California Typewriter'': *Silvi Alcivar *Ken Alexander *

*Martin Howard * Jeremy Mayer *

*Herbert Permillion *

Richard Polt Richard F. H. Polt is a professor of philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has written about and translated works by Martin Heidegger. Polt is a typewriter enthusiast active on the Typosphere and a former editor of the quarterl ...

*Anthony Rocco *

Darren Wershler Darren Wershler, also known as Darren Wershler-Henry, (b. 1966) is a Canadian experimental poet, non-fiction writer and cultural critic. Wershler was the senior editor of Coach House Books between 1997 and 2002, where the works he edited included ...

Mason Williams Mason Douglas Williams (born August 24, 1938) is an American classical guitarist, composer, singer, writer, comedian, and poet, best known for his 1968 instrumental "Classical Gas" and for his work as a comedy writer on ''The Smothers Brothers ...

Reception

The film premiered at the 2016

Telluride Film Festival The Telluride Film Festival (TFF) is a film festival held annually in Telluride, Colorado during Labor Day weekend (the first Monday in September). The 49th edition took place on September 2 -6, 2022. History First held on 30 August 1974, th ...

and was released theatrically to critical acclaim. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 40 reviews, with an

average rating In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''California Typewriter'' is an affectionate, nostalgic love letter to the typed word from enthusiasts and experts alike." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' wrote, "The movie is a quaintly ingenious meditation on what the digital era is doing to us — how it has taken us a step away from reality, even as it's made everything easier."

References

External links

* * 2016 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about San Francisco Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area 2010s English-language films 2010s American films {{2010s-documentary-film-stub