Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me documentary review: A searing examination of the tabloid sensation’s life

A scene from ‘Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me’ | photo credit: netflix

while watching the full 116 minutes Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, I was thinking about the reasons for watching it; Of course, I was looking to review it, but would there be any other reason to look at this illustration from the Wikipedia page? Why do people watch car accidents? Is it schadenfreude, the relief of a narrow escape, “there but for the grace of God I go,” or plain disgust? That’s what comes out of this documentary, which Netflix describes as a “humanistic examination of the life, death and secrets of Vicky Lynn Hogan — a model and actress better known as Anna Nicole Smith.”

Certainly nothing human unless it’s showing Smith without makeup or going into graphic detail about her breast augmentation surgery – like a miscarriage from a vaginal POV. White, a similarly exploitative look at another American icon, Marilyn Monroe. The documentary attempts to draw a line between Smith and Monroe, showing her reading a book on Monroe and ending with a shot of Smith singing with a portrait of Monroe in the background.

Smith’s resemblance to Monroe more than to life is due to it’s resemblance to the documentary. White He is sick and sad. Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me Begins at the very beginning and ends at the end, with stops in Mexia, Texas en route to Smith’s transformation to Stripper in Houston, where she meets 86-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall met. There’s the wedding, Marshall’s death, the court case, Smith’s battle with weight and drugs, pregnancy, multiple potential baby daddies, the death of her son, Danielle at age 20, and her death in 2007.

Career-wise, the documentary follows her trajectory from waitress at Jim’s Crispy Fried Chicken in Mexia, where she met her first husband and Daniel’s father, cook Billy Wayne Smith, becoming Playboy Playmate of the Month in May 1992 and Schiffer for the Guess Jeans ad campaign to replace Claudia.

The only funny thing in the documentary is that his film career began in 1994 as Za Za. The Hudsker Proxy Directed by Joel Coen, and written by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen and Sam Raimi! The documentary also explores Smith’s reasons for choosing the role of Tanya Peters. Naked Gun 33+1/3: The Final Humiliation (1994), instead of Mask, It was the money that made her refuse the role – she was offered $50,000. his reality TV show, the anna nicole showMentioned as her disastrous 2004 appearance at the American Music Awards.

There are interviews with everyone willing to speak, including Smith’s lover, confidant and Daniel’s sometime nanny, Missy, who worked with him during his Houston stripper days when all the oil money turned into short grass skirts for dancers. were Playboy photo editor Marilyn Grabowski, brother Donald Hart, uncle George, half-brother Donnie Hogan, tabloid journalist Kevin Smith, personal assistant Nathan Collins, bodyguard Big Mo, and Dr. Sandeep Kapur, who prescribed methadone for Smith in her eighth month of pregnancy. Was.

In contrast, we do not learn anything about Smith from documentary or zeitgeist Pam and Tommy, although there is a tangential mention of sex tapes. No reason is given as to why he adopted Missy’s child abuse story or any of his other experiments with the truth. There’s certainly a story to be told about the explosion of celebrity culture when a clip of Smith fetching $7500 would make videographers’ hands shake at the thought. However, it is not this documentary, as can be seen from the $5 million lawsuit launched by Smith. New York magazine for using a photo of her eating chips in a short skirt and cowboy boots for the White Trash Nation cover.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me currently streams on Netflix