Plimpton!: movie review

That exclamation point is earned: Over his 76-year tenure on this earth, George Plimpton cofounded The Paris Review, invented the notion of “participatory journalism,” wrote books, helped to foster an American literary culture and was a pitchman for everything from video-game consoles to garage-door openers. Tom Bean and Luke Poling’s lively stem-to-stern doc lets us see the professional amateur try his hand at various occupations (circus acrobat, stand-up comedian, Boston Bruins goalie) in the name of first-person reportage. But it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that we also see how insecurity and proximity to fame both drove him and drove him crazy, resulting in a layered look at a man who was a jack of all trades, but a master of one: being George.

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