Legendary fly-on-the-wall documentarian Albert Maysles, who with his brother David cranked out classics such as Salesman (’68), Gimme Shelter (’70) and Grey Gardens (’76), has passed at age 88. For years I mispronounced his last name as MayZELLES when the proper pronunication was MAYzuls. My three favorite Maysles brothers docs, to be perfectly honest, weren’t the above three but their ’64 doc about the Beatles’ first visit to the States, Meet Marlon Brando (’65) and With Love From Truman (’66). These guys wrote the manual on grainy, neutral-minded, you-are-there docs in the ’60s and ’70s, but eventually grabby docs that were more cinematic and opinionated (“this is how I see a situation so fuck ‘fair and balanced'”) took over. Maysles-styled docs are still being made, of course, but they don’t seem to be punchy enough.