40 years on, Les Blank’s Leon Russell film finally released
“I was aware that my father had this gig, and it was a weird gig with catfish and scorpions and swimming pools,” he adds.
“A Poem Is a Naked Person” provides an expressionistic, verite glimpse at Russell’s life, performing in concert and recording in both his own studio in Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees and Nashville.
Blank spent two years on the project, coming away with 60 hours of 16mm footage that he edited into a film that the director of “The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins” and “Burden of Dreams” came to regard as one of his finest films.
“One of the things that’s great about Les’ style of filmmaking was really realizing how much the environment of people can really be part of expressing their character,” says Blank’s longtime collaborator Maureen Gosling, who was “A Poem Is a Naked Person’s” sound recordist and assistant editor.
People are alive in a certain place and time and their influences on them, and it also provides wonderful rich imagery for music, editing music.
Harrod Blank, a filmmaker in his own right who has overseen the film’s restoration, adds: There is something to that, that nothing is permanent, that fame is fleeting.
Blank had never even heard of Leon Russell when Russell and Cordell first approached him just after he and Gosling had finished shooting what would become the 1973 films “Dry Wood” and “Hot Pepper” in Louisiana.
The longtime session pianist was just starting to get famous after his memorable performance as Joe Cocker’s bandleader on the singer’s “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour.
[...] we went to Oklahoma, and they were building the recording studio out at Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees, 80 miles northeast of Tulsa.
Left to his own devices for lengths of time while Russell was otherwise occupied, Blank shot all around Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees and in Tulsa, filling the film not just with music but with local color.
Taking part in a Q&A at the recent South by Southwest Film Festival, where “A Poem Is a Naked Person” screened, Leon Russell said that after 40-plus years, he can no longer remember what his reasons were for refusing his permission to release the film.
Blank was allowed to screen the film from time to time, and it was a Pixar screening arranged shortly before he died that led Harrod Blank to reach out to Russell on Facebook.
[...] even before he had the musician’s permission, Harrod Blank was at work on the film’s digital remastering, fulfilling his father’s wish that he restore the film before its aging elements were beyond repair.
Once Russell did sign off on the release, Harrod faced another headache in securing the music rights.
A Poem Is a Naked Person (not rated) opens Friday, July 10, at Bay Area theaters.
Leon Russell, Harrod Blank and Maureen Gosling will take part in a special screening of the film at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 10, at Opera Plaza Cinema.