This short doc is a portrait of beardy, dishevelled Craig Schwartz – otherwise known as Radioman (he ritually wears an old radio round his neck) – an ex-homeless New Yorker in his sixties whose habit of loafing about film sets in New York has seen him make hundreds of fleeting on-screen appearances in movies from ‘Godzilla’ to ‘Remember Me’. Schwartz has also won the admiration of actors and filmmakers from George Clooney to Johnny Depp – all of whom, and more, line up to sing his praises as filmmaker Mary Kerr follows him over several months.
Kerr’s film is chiefly an onside, amusing snapshot of an eccentric, but she does try, with some success, to dig into Schwartz’s troubled past (he was once a homeless drunk) and includes a dispiriting trip with him to LA over the Oscars weekend which throws some much-needed shade on his endless buddy-buddy banter with the likes of Tom Hanks and Robert Pattinson. There’s something a little creepy about these celebrities fawning over Schwartz – like an odd reversal of the showbiz hack and star relationship – but ‘Radioman’ is fun to hang out with.