Buffy Sainte-Marie shines despite sabotage in new documentary ‘Carry It On’
Buffy Sainte-Marie is an Oscar-bait actor and a prolific filmmaker. His credits include the Academy-Award-winning “The Notebook,” and most recently “In America,” a documentary about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This week, however, his star was cast into shadow by an all-out campaign against him by the woman who claims to be his sister.
When “Carry It On: The Movie” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, it seemed like a love letter to Sainte-Marie. He got to play a man who had gone from being a lonely, depressed young writer to a charismatic, successful film director who was inspired by his older sister, who had written a screenplay about their father’s death. Sainte-Marie had his own version of his sister’s movie, based on her novel “In Memory of Myself.” And they were both being nominated for Oscars.
But “Carry It On” is more about the Sainte-Maries’ relationship than it is about the movie.
“What this film is about is, is my sister and I and our relationship,” he says. “I’ve never been particularly comfortable talking about my family, and what I’ve done with them, because they are so important in the fabric of my life, in my emotional life. But I don’t think my family deserves to be totally forgotten. In fact, I think they deserve to be remembered.
“I think they deserve to be told their story.”
It’s not just his sister who was affected by this film. Sainte-Marie, who turns 70 next week, also lost some of the friends who helped him along the way. He had worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen (directing “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) to George Clooney (“Ocean’s Eleven”). And it’s now his most outspoken critics who have accused him of putting out a movie about a fictional family.
After months of interviews with his critics, I found out what made them so angry about “Carry It On”: It’s based on the true family story of Sainte-Marie’s sister, a self-
