The fascinating life story of its subject, a brilliant man whose early life reads like a road map to the ideologies of the beat era... Cool, revelatory anecdotes from the likes of George Plimpton and Norman Mailer make it an invaluable record of one magnetic man’s historical footprint. – New York Magazine
A fascinating portrait. Lovingly assembled...jam-packed with interviews with notable 20th-century cultural figures. – Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times
An exquisite example of a real life story given newfound dimension through a playful, scattershot montage... glued together by the film’s delectable soundtrack choices. The stylistic success here is so great that it’s easy to lose sight of the film’s central figure, a brilliant and inventive figure with a mind as divergent and curious as the construction of the film itself... By so expertly meshing subject and approach, DOC achieves that rare case of a person truly given new life on the silver screen. – Rob Humanick, Slant

Film Reviews


DOC channels whole decades of American cultural history through its subject...

– Karen Kramer, The Reeler




An engaging time capsule of ‘60s downtown subversive culture.

– Lisa Rosman, Flavorpill




A lively and loving documentary!

– V.A. Musetto,
New York Post




* * * * Absorbing! Could have been subtitled Portrait of the Artist as a Madman... Doc emerges as a quintessential countercultural figure, embodying both the exuberance and the excesses of the times. More poignantly, Immy Humes finds redemption for the father who was often too preoccupied or too sick to tend to his family. – Tom Beer, Time Out NY


An extraordinary true story! The work achieves a fine balance between intimacy and a broad, culturally and historically nuanced perspective. Rediscovering Doc Humes is like opening a series of fat files filled with essential, yet unknown secrets about the 20th century literary world.

– Elizabeth Bachner, Film-Forward


Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer and madman Harold L. 'Doc' Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating and terrifyingly brilliant man. His Oscar-nominated documentarian daughter Immy Humes has gathered testimonials from luminaries including Norman Mailer, William Styron and Timothy Leary, who experienced his erratic genius firsthand, and has skillfully inter- woven them with archival footage into 'Doc.'

Fascinating, wryly distanced docu...
Casual footage from the era captures the excitement of liberation and the headiness of artistic ferment.... Immy imaginatively segues from unexpected angles, mapping out the complex historical, cultural and personal synapses that link the man to his times... Tech credits are first-rate, including inventive editing and Zev Katz's jazz-laced score.

– Ronnie Scheib, Variety


The latest in a series of documentary films...  by one of the subject’s offspring.

It is also one of the very best. Directed with tight, but understated control by Immy Humes... Expert blending of period documentary footage... some of the most well-spoken talking heads ever assembled... tempered by the affecting tenderness of first-person emotional subjectivity...

nothing short of inspiring... deliciously ironic... a fine film.

– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun