A Shaw family photo as seen in GENIUS ON HOLD (Freestyle Releasing)

Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett once said, “There’s nothing I like less then bad arguments for a view I hold dear.” The same sort of logic can be applied to filmmakers, and documentarians, for sure. It’s not simply about what you’re telling, but how. You might not like/agree with all of what a director, like Michael Moore, says in some of his work, but give the man credit for at least presenting his information, interviews, and basic data with some level of technical clarity and imagination.

The misfortune of Genius on Hold is that the director, Gregory Marquette, shoves a big fat burger of information down our throats about the evils of corporations and deregulation at the film’s beginning and end, but the middle jumps around in time without a level head.

Walter L. Shaw was a telephone pole repairman who had a very active and inventive mind. His inventions, the likes of which would revolutionize how telephones were used, included (eventually) conference calling. Unfortunately for Shaw, AT&T (the only phone company in the U.S. in the late 1940’s and early ’50’s) wanted to take his ideas and make them its own, and offered him a position of some stature but with little money. Shaw turned it down on principle. He then had to scrounge for work to provide for his wife and kids.

While working as a TV repairman, he somehow connected with a young man in Florida linked with the mob, including members of the Five Families (Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese, et al.). What did Shaw do for them? He helped out their bookmaking schemes by making the first device to implement call forwarding so they could evade the cops.

From there the documentary goes—in fits and starts—about the rest of Shaw’s life after he testified and admitted (as opposed to pleading the Fifth) that he worked for the mob. He went to prison for a year, and then continued trying to peddle his inventions across the country, sometimes going back to jail due to problems with the Big Bad that was AT&T.

What is so lacking here is a narrative drive and a visual/editing style that grabs the audience. I find, on paper, Shaw’s story to be fascinating. Even the bio of Shaw’s son, Walter T. Shaw (who also produced this film), becomes compelling. In the depths of poverty, the son turned to crime and tried to rise up the ranks of the mob to get revenge against other mobsters. (I don’t know why, this is one of those things in the film that gets muddled after a while.) He became a crackerjack jewel thief in the ’70’s and ’80’s, but eventually served jail time. At the heart of it all is AT&T and what the corporation did over the years to control its monopoly on phone service in the country. God help you if you got in its way and tried to compete.

Little bits and pieces are passable to watch, such as the interview segments with Walter T. and his sister, Linda Honey (who describes the horrors she had to face upon the downfall of her family and her brother). But too often I found the information, even as narrated by someone as good as Frank Langella, too all over the place. The film tries to make the point: AT&T phone company = BAD, Shaw and his inventions = GOOD. But after the first 10-15 minutes, the film seems to be about something else, and much bigger—the evils of corporations in America.

There is a time and place for that, but it just didn’t feel organic to the rest of the story. By the end, I was left befuddled as to what the point was—if regulation was good or bad, and why a slew of administrations allowed for or got rid of regulations for companies. (Obama, in a montage, represents the Times They Are a-changin’.) Frankly, this is the kind of documentary one finds from on YouTube, not at New York’s Landmark Sunshine Cinema. Maybe find a book on the subject instead, if there is one.