BEYOND THE DUPLEX PLANET
(The 2026 SXSW Film Festival runs March 12-18 in beautiful Austin, TX. Check out Chris Reed’s Beyond the Duplex Planet movie review, fresh from the fest. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
In 1979, when he was just recently out of graduate art school, young David Greenberger found a job working for the Duplex Nursing Home in the Boston, Massachusetts, neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. It was an all-male residence set squarely within the community; a type of senior facility that no longer exists. Greenberger was in charge of activities, and very quickly put his artistic skills to use.
In her new documentary Beyond the Duplex Planet, director Beth Harrington (The Winding Stream) chronicles Greenberger’s time at Duplex, showing how his interviews with the men in his care became the source for a zine he entitled The Duplex Planet. He published their stories and artwork, adding his own touches, bringing the lives of these men to an audience that would otherwise have ignored them. Everyone should feel as though they have meaning and purpose; Greenberger gave that gift to the Duplex residents.
The movie cuts back and forth from the past to the present, showing the totality of Greenberger’s creative output and curiosity, including the many notebooks, audio tapes, and films he has collected and curated over the years. There’s also the band he was in for a while, Men & Volts. Friends, family, and fellow artists—including Penn Jillette and Ed Ruscha—provide commentary on the impact of The Duplex Planet and how it resonated far beyond the borders of the Bay State. Even R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe got in on the act, bringing the poems from its pages to the stage.
Greenberger’s success with the material transcends the simple zine, as he took the act on tour, regaling audiences all over the United States with the words of the elderly men who offered him their creative genius. Though parts of Greenberger’s career can appear parasitic to a degree—reappropriating the work of others and performing it as a one-man act (with backup band)—it’s far more than that. His goal has always been to elevate that which others may find ordinary. There is beauty everywhere.
And the old are the most prone to be dismissed. The Duplex Planet refused to let people like John Fay, Andy Legrice, Frances McElroy, and Ed Rogers—all contributors to the magazine—go gently into that good night. They were seen, they were heard, and they were cherished. And they live on today in the vast treasure trove of an archive that is Greenberger’s overflowing home. There’s no “beyond”; merely the here and now and all that remains.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
