Chiemi Karasawa’s documentary “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, is a quintessential New York film – a portrait of the bold, brassy actress, singer, Broadway and cabaret star who began acting career in 1944 and has been a legend in Manhattan theater and café circles for decades.
A decade removed from “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” the one-woman show that won her an Emmy, Stritch is now 88. Karasawa’s cameras follow the star – who is argumentative, hilarious, difficult, vulnerable and inimitable – as she performs shows devoted to the music of Stephen Sondheim, appears on “30 Rock” as Alec Baldwin‘s mother and winds up in the hospital disoriented and desperate from complications of her diabetes.