Les Blank's rare documentary, A Poem Is A Naked Person, has finally been released in all its Southern Fried glory. The 1974 documentary, which revolves around Leon Russell and his home state of Oklahoma, was shelved by Russell until 2014 when Blank's son, Harrod, restored the film in collaboration with Janus Films. The film is a beautiful, comedic, and rollicking look at Russell on stage and in the recording studio with George Jones and Willie Nelson. Also, the film is a portrait of Faulknerian proportions as Blank interviews local Oklahomians, glass-eating parachute enthusiasts, and Russell's fans.
Les Blank, who passed away in 2013, was one of the great documentary filmmakers of the 1970s and was in the vanguard of cinema verite film-making along with his contemporaries like the Maysles Brothers and D.A. Pennebaker. For Blank, he not only focuses on Russell's music, but the people and culture that make up the bulk of his songs. The film almost comes across as Robert Altman's Nashville without Joan Tewkesbury's script as you feel the humidity of the southern heat or the glow of the full moon over the Grand Lake of the Cherokee while Russell's voice sings some classic Hank Williams ballad.
Within this heady mix of music and southern culture, there is Leon Russell as one of rock and roll's jack-of-all trades. Whether he is performing at a local wedding or playing to a riotous crowd in Anaheim, California, this film solidifies him as one of the great musicians of his generation whose career was revived in recent years thanks in part to Elton John recruiting him for the 2010 album, "The Union," and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. A Poem Is A Naked Person is one of the great lost gems that can finally shine for all to see.
Within this heady mix of music and southern culture, there is Leon Russell as one of rock and roll's jack-of-all trades. Whether he is performing at a local wedding or playing to a riotous crowd in Anaheim, California, this film solidifies him as one of the great musicians of his generation whose career was revived in recent years thanks in part to Elton John recruiting him for the 2010 album, "The Union," and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. A Poem Is A Naked Person is one of the great lost gems that can finally shine for all to see.
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