Zweig has honed a conversational interview style and easy repartee with his subjects that result in some of the most inspiring vulnerability and honesty you will ever experience while watching film.
Zweig spends a large portion of the film exploring his own life in regard to record collecting, feeling it has prevented him from fulfilling his dreams of a family.
In 2009, Zweig moved from autobiographical subject matter to explore the struggle of ex-convicts to lead normal lives in A Hard Name, which received the Genie Award for best documentary.
Zweig spends a large portion of the film in stylized self-filmed "confessions", where he expounds on his life in regard to record collecting, feeling it has prevented him from fulfilling his dreams of a family.
[7] In addition to celebrities like Canadian director/actor Don McKellar and American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar, Zweig speaks to a variety of record collectors.
'[22] In this final instalment of the autobiographical trilogy that includes Vinyl and I, Curmudgeon, Alan Zweig reflects with disarming candour on why, if he longs for a partner and children, he is still single at mid-life.
[25] The film features interviews with and/or performance clips of a wide variety of Jewish comedy performers and writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Howie Mandel, Gilbert Gottfried, Rodney Dangerfield, Eugene Mirman, Marc Maron, Bob Einstein, Andy Kindler, Shelley Berman, Alan King, Judy Gold, Elon Gold, David Steinberg, Jackie Mason, Jack Carter, Norm Crosby, Henny Youngman, David Brenner, Shecky Greene, Mark Breslin, Cory Kahaney, Harrison Greenbaum, Simon Rakoff, Lisa Lambert, Larry Josephson and Michael Wex.
[26] Inspired by the non-fiction book "Why Not: Fifteen Reasons to Live" by Ray Robertson, this film is an examination on the nature of human happiness by looking at the personal stories of 15 individuals.
[27] Through their stories, Zweig compiles his reasons to live: love, solitude, critical mind, art, individuality, home, work, humour, friendship, intoxication, praise, meaning, body, duty and death.
[29] Hurt follows Steve Fonyo, the celebrated Canadian runner with an artificial leg who raised millions of dollars for cancer research, only to decline into addiction and homelessness.
[30] The film includes sequences where Zweig arranged (and captured) meetings between Fonyo and the esteemed Dr. Gabor Maté, an expert in addictions and childhood trauma.
In the 30 years since he was a nation’s hero for his cross-country run on a prosthetic leg to raise funds for cancer research, Steve’s life has been a sequence of tragic events.
Bringing director-subject dynamics to the forefront, Zweig has created a rare and exceptional documentary sequel that attempts to look at the road forward and leave a troubled past behind.
Despite a long and frank email relationship with Inuk heavy-metal rocker Lucie Idlout, Alan finds himself unable to truly understand why Canada’s aboriginal people cannot “get over” the injuries of colonialism.
With Lucie as his guide, Alan Zweig goes to Nunavut, a place that admittedly frightens him, in the hope of having his skepticism defeated and gaining some answers to bring back to his “equally ignorant countrymen”.
[36] Zweig’s insightful questioning and sympathetic tone allows a space where some pretty astonishing things are revealed, both about the nature of police work and, inadvertently, about some of the personal flaws of those that choose the profession in the first place.
A disarming interviewer, Zweig lets his subjects talk about what troubled them most: high stress, horrific crimes, racism, sexism, and guilt (one cop is still haunted by the day he nearly killed a young girl who wandered into a confrontation scene).