That Summer

To call this documentary a prequel to the seminal Maysles brothers masterpiece Grey Gardens is a bit of a stretch, though it does offer another voyeuristic look into the crumbling world of American aristocracy made infamous by Little Edie Beale and her mother, Big Edie, blue blood relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill, from that summer in 1972. The opening sets the stage with larger-than-life characters from that epic era: Andy Warhol, photographer/artist Peter Beard, Aristotle Onassis, Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, et al., icons from the Studio 54 nightlife and avant-garde of the New York "scene." Big Edie had created her own such stage a generation earlier and was now living in squalor in the decaying Long Island estate known to the world as Grey Gardens. Beard and Radziwill lend faceless contemporary narration to the reels of historic 16mm film. The Maysleses wisely stayed in the background both here and in their own 1975 production.