Rock Steady: Linda Ronstadt Film Keeps Hold of Top Spot at Documentary Box Office

Where's My Roy Cohn? comes in second amid impeachment push for Cohn's protege, Donald Trump

Linda Ronstadt with Glenn Frey of The Eagles. Photo courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

The new documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice cruised past the $2 million mark at the box office this weekend, taking the top spot among nonfiction films for the fourth week running.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's film about one of the most popular and respected singers of all time earned $385,484 for the week, pushing its cume to $2,265,888, according to audience measurement firm comScore. It's currently playing on 247 screens - wide for a documentary.

James Keach (Walk the Line) produced the film, which follows Ronstadt's childhood in Tucson, Arizona where she sang with her brother and sister, to her move to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, where she founded the Stone Poneys and recorded her first hit, "Different Drum." Her success as a solo artist has yielded an incredible array of beloved songs including "Blue Bayou," "Desperado," "Willin'," "Don't Know Much," "Just One Look," "Tracks of My Tears," "It's So Easy," "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" and many others.

Matt Tyrnauer's documentary Where's My Roy Cohn? took second place among nonfiction films in theaters, earning $54,011 on just 12 screens. In two weeks of release the film has tallied $114,735.

The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, shows how the unscrupulous Cohn exerted a corrosive force on American politics beginning with his service to Sen. Joe McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Cohn also represented Donald Trump for more than a decade, until shortly before AIDS claimed Cohn's life in 1986. The film suggests Trump learned his "scruples" at Cohn's knee, like the strategy of meeting any criticism or investigation with vicious counterattack.

Ironically, the film's second week of release came as Trump faced perhaps the biggest challenges to his presidency, after the House of Representatives launched an impeachment  inquiry into his conduct involving attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden.

Matt Tyrnauer, director of "Where's My Roy Cohn?" at the world premiere of the film at Sundance. Park City, Utah, January 25, 2019. Photo by Matt Carey

These are the top 10 documentary films at the box office, as reported by comScore:

1. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice [Greenwich Entertainment]
2. Where's My Roy Cohn? [Sony Pictures Classics]
3. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool [Abramorama]
4. Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins [Magnolia Pictures]
5. Aquarela [Sony Pictures Classics]
6. Honeyland [NEON]
7. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch [Kino Lorber]
8. Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles [Roadside Attractions]
9. Maiden [Sony Pictures Classics]
10. David Crosby: Remember My Name [Sony Pictures Classics]

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Related: 
>Linda Ronstadt filmmakers on singer who broke musical boundaries: 'She was just determined she was going to do it'
​>Sony Pictures Classics scoops up Where's My Roy Cohn? at Sundance
>Wit and wisdom of Molly Ivins celebrated in Raise Hell

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