SXSW Film Reviews

YOU SEE ME LAUGHIN'

Documentary Feature, Special Screening MONEY still talks, only you have to turn up the volume TO HEAR IT. So states the baseball cap framing R.L. Burnside's weathered, Cheshire Cat face, and so is the story of Fat Possum Records and "the last of the hill country bluesmen" the struggling label has made its mission to record. But there's another story here -- an unfortunate one, depending on your perspective. It's staring you right in the face during You See Me Laughin', but you wouldn't know it unless you've seen Hill Stomp Hollar, a film that was runner-up for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW 99 and received great acclaim across the country. That was Bradley Beesley's first film; perhaps you recognize the name from the outstanding Okie Noodling, his second. Or perhaps you'll recognize his name when it's credited -- albeit misspelled -- for "additional photography" at the end of You See Me Laughin'.

The fact is, Beesley's photography is only nominally additional. It's actually quite foundational. But in 1999, on the eve of Hill Stomp Hollar's release, associate producer Fat Possum, along with its distributor, Epitaph, expressed dissatisfaction with Beesley's cut and threatened litigation in the event of its showing on the festival circuit. It still showed, of course, and the matter subsided. Until now.

You See Me Laughin' is a devastatingly valuable documentary. Valuable because it's excellent, and valuable because it needs to be seen. Its ruggedly handsome, enigmatic footage (shot mostly by Beesley on 16mm, with credible supplemental video work by Mandy Stein), archival photos, pen-and-ink storyboard drawings, and stirring soundtrack make it Hill Stomp Hollar's fraternal twin. The differences? Mostly the more positive portrayal of Fat Possum Records as businessmen, a lack of narration, and inferior editing. But even Laughin's flaws are intriguing: Tour tales from Iggy Pop (with Junior Kimbrough) and Jon Spencer (with Burnside) counterbalance an unfortunate testimonial by Bono. Of course, none of them matter. None of the litigation and bitterness matters, either. The men who do matter -- a polio-ravaged Cedell Davis using a butter knife for fretwork, T-Model Ford explaining that he "can't read, can't write, can't spell nothin', but I can play this guitar when I have to," and Matthew Johnson founding Fat Possum in Oxford, Miss., with college aid money -- are front and center here. "I don't want my guys to die unknown," Johnson says quietly near the end of the film. It's clear that he has done his best. It's clear that Beesley and Stein, an unlikely team, have, too. (3/15, Alamo, 7:15pm; 3/16, Alamo, 7:45pm)