Outlaws Revisited review of re-released DVD Heartworn Highways
from http://lists.drizzle.com/pipermail/postcard2/20030810/015351.html
Cult-classic doc 'Heartworn Highways' captures renegade country's roots

by Derk Richardson, special to SF Gate Thursday, August 7, 2003

When James Szalapski went south in late 1975 to film "Heartworn Highways," 
his documentary about outlaw country music, most of his subjects were 
unknown beyond the inner circles of roots-music songwriting in Nashville 
and Austin. Guy Clark had just released his first album, baby-faced Rodney 
Crowell and Steve Earle had yet to cut theirs and Townes Van Zandt, 
although making records since 1968, was an icon to his peers -- a 
"songwriter's songwriter" -- rather than a pop-music celebrity.

Today, much of that has changed. Crowell penned a spate of hit songs in the 
1980s and broke through in his own right with five No. 1 singles from his 
1988 album Diamonds and Dirt. Earle successfully took his renegade country 
to rock audiences and has achieved even greater notoriety with progressive 
political stances and provocative songs like last year's "John Walker's 
Blues."

And while Clark, 61, and Van Zandt, who died on New Year's Day 1997, still 
aren't exactly household names, Clark has seen his songs covered by such 
mainstream country stars as Vince Gill, George Strait and Ricky Skaggs (who 
made Clark's "Heartbroke" a No. 1 hit), and Van Zandt hit No. 1 (with 
Willie Nelson's 1983 version of his best-known song, "Pancho and Lefty") 
and has been an indelible influence on country-tinged alternative pop bands 
from the Cowboy Junkies and the Tindersticks to the Be Good Tanyas.

Factor in the rise of No Depression alt-country in '90s (Uncle Tupelo, the 
Jayhawks, Whiskeytown, et al.), and the time certainly seems right for a 
reconsideration of Szalapski's underground classic. A longtime cult 
favorite, "Heartworn Highways" has been reedited, color corrected and 
mastered for 5.1 surround sound, with more than an hour of previously 
unavailable footage added to the DVD (Catfish Entertainment) that arrives 
in stores Aug. 12.

"It's just been waiting for this moment, this renaissance," says the film's 
producer, Graham Leader (who achieved a higher profile producing the 
Oscar-nominated "In the Bedroom"). "It has a cult status," Leader says of 
"Heartworn Highways," which wasn't released commercially until 1981, "and 
there've been tapes that have been passed around, but I hadn't seen the 
film in years and had forgotten how good it is."

Leader was in Nashville recently for a special screening of "Heartworn 
Highways" at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum July 24. The next 
day, he was still high from experience. "In terms of my career as a film 
producer, last night was probably one of the great moments in my life," he 
said by phone. "It was standing room only, the film got a standing ovation, 
Guy Clark and Steve Young were there to answer questions afterward and, 
when it was over, nobody wanted to leave. These moments are so rare in the 
life of an independent film producer; it makes it feel all worthwhile, at 
least for a few days."

Szalapski didn't live to see the rebirth of his film, however. He died two 
and a half years ago. But the film's return from obscurity and the rise to 
respectability of many of its "stars" vindicates his then-unfashionable 
commitment to the music. The new DVD booklet includes the transcript of a 
1996 interview in which the late director explains how he connected with 
this ragtag community of songwriters through his pal Dennis Sanchez, the 
bass-playing "Skinny Dennis" immortalized in Clark's "L.A. Freeway."

When Szalapski went looking for financing and a possible PBS slot, the 
money people urged him to use someone famous like Willie Nelson or Kris 
Kristofferson as a narrator, but he wanted to keep his portrayal "organic," 
closer to the ground zero of the scene. So "Heartworn Highways" has no 
voice-overs and no clarifying subtitles, just a series of scenes in various 
"native habitats," including the Wigwam Tavern, Townes Van Zandt's 
backyard, Guy Clark's workshop and kitchen, recording studios, David Alan 
Coe's tour bus and the Tennessee State Prison, where a gaudily bejeweled 
and bedecked Coe, proudly identifying himself as a former convict, delivers 
a concert almost as outlandish as his rhinestone-cowboy costume.

Previously unreleased footage includes Clark performing "Desperados Waiting 
for a Train," Van Zandt singing "Pancho and Lefty" and discussing a royalty 
check he just received by registered mail, John Hiatt singing "One for the 
One for Me," Earle debuting "Mercenary Song" (which he didn't record for 
another 20 years), Steve Young covering Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I 
Could Cry," a drunken Christmas Eve gathering at Guy and Susanna Clark's 
house and much more.

Interspersed with Szalapski's impressionistic shots of the countryside, 
highway travel, the Jack Daniels factory and such seemingly tangential 
scenes as Clark repairing a guitar in his workshop and 79-year-old African 
American blacksmith Seymour Washington explaining how to shoe horses, it 
all adds up to a deeply evocative portrayal of a unique time and place 
populated by characters who seemed to understand their art far better than 
they understand themselves.

Some moments -- Washington weeping as Van Zandt sings "Waitin' Around to 
Die" -- are incredibly powerful. Some are fascinating because we still 
don't know much about such characters as "Big Mac," Larry Jon Wilson, Peggy 
Brooks and Gamble Rogers. Others, including Charlie Daniels in concert and 
backstage and Barefoot Jerry in the studio, could have been left on the 
cutting-room floor.

Film critic Pauline Kael had a hard time with Szalapski's strategy of 
letting the scenes speak for themselves. "Watching it is like being carted 
off to a good party by people who told you where they were taking you so 
casually that the names of the people who were going to be there didn't 
sink in," she wrote in her 1981 New Yorker review. "You don't know how you 
got there or who the hosts are, and you never quite catch the last names of 
the assorted celebrities telling tall tales and singing lovely sad songs. 
(You're not even sure what the occasion is.)"

But with a few more decades of dirt roads and weary asphalt in the 
rear-view mirror, it seems clear that the motley party Szalapski was intent 
on dragging us into was, if not a full-fledged revolution, at least a 
heartfelt rehearsal for rebellion against an increasingly stilted musical 
status quo. "He was most interested in the music and the underground 
subculture of -- I don't know if you could call it country music, but just 
the music that was goin' on," Guy Clark recalled during another phone call 
the day after the "Heartworn Highways" screening in Nashville. "There was a 
great sense of community among us. Everybody was in it together and helpful 
to one another. It wasn't a competitive sport at that point, and never has 
been for me. You just couldn't wait to get together and play songs for 
somebody."

Asked what he thinks comes through strongest in the film after all these 
years, the laconic Clark says, after a husky laugh, "Oh, just how silly we 
were. How lucky we are to still be alive, some of us. We were pretty nuts."

Speaking from his Nashville home workshop, where he has resumed guitar 
building in recent years, Clark grows slightly more serious when pressed 
about the music. "My background is in real traditional music -- Lightning 
Hopkins, Leadbelly, Mance Lipscomb -- that kind of stuff," he explains. "I 
was never a country-music fan, per se, and we were definitely conscious of 
being outside the Nashville establishment. We were doing something 
different that wasn't getting played on the radio every day. We were 
attempting to write serious work and have some serious fun."

And if another film were to be made about the same circle of songwriters 
today, what would it focus on? "Hopefully, the songs," Clark says. "That's 
the point. This whole endeavor is to write good songs, do good work."