Director Joshua Rofé ("Sasquatch") thankfully gives Bob Ross the human treatment he has long needed—it does no good for us, or for someone like a Bob Ross or a Mr. Rogers, for them to be talked about as if they were somehow beyond anyone else in the crowd. Instead, "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed" is a relatively enlightening documentary that humanizes a figure lazily written off as a novelty, sometimes by using salacious chapters in Ross’ legacy not well known. It’s certainly not common knowledge that an affair with a business partner might have been in the mix at one point, or that Ross fought all the way to his deathbed to keep the rights in the family. No, life is far more imperfect than what's seen in his paintings, and even the pursuit of painting landscapes for a public access show in Indiana can be poisoned by capitalist greed. Some people out there will see sunlight cresting through clouds over a wintry lake, and only see the color green.
Before it gets into that drama, Rofé’s fleet documentary (which has as many notable insights as a miniseries, all packed into 95 minutes) observes the story of Ross, illuminating the intricate conscience behind his persona. He was a showman, who learned how to make his passion for teaching painting into an accessible part for public television. One of the doc's many amusing details relates to where his soothing voice came from—a known flirt, Ross reckoned that his predominantly female audience would take to a softer tone that sounded like it came from the other half of the bed. Ross was a touchy guy too, and is described by his director Sally Schenk as “ornery” (though I wish she had shared what ornery jokes he’s made in the past).
In depicting this rise, Rofé touches on one person who was moved by Ross’ paintings and teaching methods—Annette Kowalski, who learned of Ross after suffering a traumatic loss. Kowalski also had a business sense for the Ross-based healing she experienced, and helped Ross gets his name out in TV, and then with painting supply products under Bob Ross, Incorporated. Rofé includes damning info about the Kowalski family's control while showing Ross became, as one headline called it, “a minor celebrity with a huge following,” and how his show “The Joy of Painting” inspired that joy worldwide. Power and control are far more evident in this saga than one might imagine, and the documentary efficiently depicts just how ugly it all got after he died in 1995.
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