As I’ve written before: “I’ve never met Jim. We’ve only corresponded by email about the strange case of Orwell’s typewriter. But I know that Jim Haynes is a man for all reasons — pleasure, food, sex, mind, books, theater, life — and that to meet him in person all you have to do is show up at his door in Paris for dinner.”
And here’s a review of the film in the Hollywood Reporter from the 2018 screening:
Haynes is a figure of ample but approachable charisma who proves wonderfully stimulating company over the briskly edited picture’s 70-odd minutes — a fictional biopic would likely have to cast the likes of Jeff Bridges, Sam Elliott or Donald Sutherland. His life story contains material for an entire mini-series or two . . .
. . . an impeccably international co-production, [the documentary] was shot in the summer of 2016 and thus before the election of Donald Trump and the rise of xenophobia-tinged European nationalism, and the director generally steers clear of direct political commentary. The commercialization of countercultural phenomena is another unexplored avenue: we glimpse a banner for Edinburgh’s alternative-oriented Fringe, now obtrusively and incongruously sponsored by a major financial services company. . . .
The picture is also a little evasive on Haynes’ private life, and his participation (or otherwise) in the more hedonistic excesses of the countercultural scene. But while Meeting Jim‘s form has none of the cheeky experimentation that marked many of the gregarious Haynes’ own exploits and cultural contributions — such as the adults-only 1970s Amsterdam film festival Wet Dreams, fleetingly and tantalizingly mentioned — it functions just fine as a record of emotion happily recollected in golden-years tranquility.
