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Naked Ambition, the latest documentary from Miami filmmakers Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch, opens quizzically. In the first minute, Larry King muses about Miami over an archival montage of the city before he utters the name of the film’s subject. As soon as the name “Bunny Yeager” passes his lips, he is overtaken by an irrepressible grin. Considering that King spent decades as a radio and television presenter interviewing the world’s most intriguing and powerful people, his reaction carries weight. Over its runtime, Naked Ambition unveils what’s behind that smile, and why Yeager elicits such a reaction and demands attention.
Yeager, remembered as a pioneering photographer and sex symbol, moved to Miami with her family at the age of 17. The rest, as outlined in the documentary, is history. As the opening suggests, her legacy is inextricably linked to the city.
Known as “the world’s prettiest photographer,” Yeager’s presence is an easy hook. But it’s the considered examination of her work and story that makes for an engaging viewing.
It’s not the first time Scholl and Tabsch have turned their sights on a famous Miami photographer. In 2018, the duo teamed up for The Last Resort, a documentary exploring the work of photographers Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe, who focused on retirees in South Florida.
This time around, they substitute pensioners for pin-ups to trace Yeager’s transition from model to photographer, her iconic work with Bettie Page and Playboy, and her battles with censorship and obscenity charges. The film also traverses more than 50 years of Yeager’s life and cultural upheaval, weaving a parallel between her work and the sexual revolution in the United States. It features interviews with commentators such as King, burlesque artist Dita Von Teese, and the delightful Guinevere Turner, who co-wrote the screenplay to the Notorious Bettie Page, in which actress Sarah Paulson played Bunny Yeager.
Work on Naked Ambition predates The Last Resort, but Scholl and Tabsch produced and released the latter after a disastrous development. In what surely must be every documentary filmmaker’s nightmare, the film was set to start production with Yeager’s full participation, but the legendary photographer died right before she could be filmed. Scholl says it was “devastating,” not only because the world lost such a vivacious artist, but also for the “two years of constructing a film where Bunny would be the dominant voice.”
After years away, the pair returned to the project, determined to spotlight Yeager’s work and life. As Tabsch explains, “It completely changed the type of film we made. We had to rely heavily on those closest to her to bring her story alive.” Undeterred, the filmmakers viewed the obstacles as a way to “dig deeper,” relying on an “abundance of archival footage.”
While one might imagine Yeager’s voice guiding the film, her physical absence lends a mysterious, almost mythic, quality. One of its best sequences involves Yeager’s models remembering their work together; the significance of these might have been dwarfed by the photographer’s presence.
Still, it’s interesting to hear what the filmmakers most wish they could have asked Yeager on camera.
Scholl wonders what she “would have done differently with her work, her career, and especially her family.” Tabsch, on the other hand, ponders Yeager’s impact on contemporary culture and how she would “feel about the type of things she inevitably contributed to: the proliferation of the selfie, Instagram culture, OnlyFans.”
That diversity of thought reveals what makes Scholl and Tabsch such a compelling storytelling team. In the age of overly extended runtimes and multipart documentary series, Naked Ambition‘s brevity is refreshing and impressive, considering it concisely tackles complicated topics such as feminism and pornography, and how their definitions fluctuated throughout the course of Yeager’s life.
“What we try to do is honor the artist, feature the art of the artist, and let the art tell the story,” says Scholl, explaining the duo’s approach. “Bunny was an amazing artist and deserves to be considered as one. As time passes, her work moves more and more to a prominent place in the art world.” Without a doubt, Naked Ambition will play a vital role in that reevaluation.
Naked Ambition. Friday, September 26, through Wednesday, October 1, at O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. Tickets cost $14 via o-cinema.org.
