You can hardly blamed Leon Russell, one of the more popular rock performers of the ’70s, for blocking a theatrical release of Les Blank’s documentary about him, “A Poem Is a Naked Person’’ (1974).
True, by doing so he prevented the film Blank considers his finest from reaching audiences for more than 40 years. But as Russell explains in one of the documentary extras in the film’s Criterion release (Blu-ray $39.95; DVD $29.95), “Poem’’ wasn’t about him as much as it was about Blank himself, a victory of style over content. For example, what is up with the parachute instructor who drinks a beer and eats the glass, or the guy who feeds a cute baby chick to his snake?
Looking back, one can see the two weird scenes as metaphors for the undiscriminating consumer culture which Russell himself discusses, expressing fear that it will engulf him and his art.
But at the time, probably not even Blank was aware of that. These were images that maybe just tickled his fancy. As in his earlier short “The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins’’ (1970) and in later films such as “Always for Pleasure’’ (1978) and “Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers’’ (1980), Blank absorbed the sights and sounds and ambiance of his subject into his own sensibility and then projected it back onto the screen as a “documentary,’’ a poetic representation of the real. In that sense, Blank might have argued, every documentary is to some extent about the man with the camera. His were just a little more so.
Russell, though, may have been hoping for something along the lines of “Don’t Look Back’’ (1967), D.A. Pennebaker’s great rock doc about Bob Dylan, or the Maysles brothers’ Altamont concert film, “Gimme Shelter’’ (1970) — though perhaps with a less apocalyptic ending. So in 1972 he asked Blank to hang round his Oklahoma recording studio and in Nashville, while he worked on new material, and attend a concert or two.
In the course of this, Blank caught great, if truncated, performances of some of Russell’s best songs, including “Tight Rope’’ and “A Song for You.’’ He joined in on bibulous backstage badinage, and observed the assault of fans who wanted a piece of the big star. Famous country musicians, like a beardless Willie Nelson and George Jones, drop by to sing “Good Hearted Woman’’ and “Take Me,’’ respectively.
But Blank’s eye doesn’t so much wander as it consumes everything. It strays to a Baptist Church service whose call and response echoes Russell’s vocals, or to muralist Jim Franklin plucking the scorpions out of an empty swimming pool before painting on its surface a psychedelic, inverted version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The title of the film might have been the last straw for Russell, because there is never any doubt whose poems are on display.
Available on March 29. Go to www.criterion.com/films/28755-a- poem-is-a-naked-person.
Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.
