| February 10th, 2006 03:51 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
The man behind the songs
Friday, February 10, 2006
SHAWN LEVY
The Oregonian
In life, Townes Van Zandt made a friend of everyone except himself.
A brilliant writer singer-songwriter born to relative comfort in Houston, he never achieved true fame or fortune. But his work inspired other musicians to such bursts of passion that Steve Earle once declared, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
There's plenty of evidence in Margaret Brown's lovely documentary tribute "Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt" to give weight to Earle's view. In home movies, concert footage, TV clips and interviews (including tapes of rambling phone conversations), Van Zandt comes across as humble, witty, empathetic, sympathetic and very, very gifted. A handful of his songs have become known through other people's versions -- "Be Here to Love Me," "Pancho and Lefty," "If I Needed You" -- but Van Zandt wrote scores, perhaps hundreds, of similar quality. The film is a wonderful introduction to his art.
What's less wonderful, and what the film won't let us forget, is how Van Zandt seemed hell-bent on ruining himself with booze, irresponsible behavior and scruffy living in the name of roots authenticity. Van Zandt abused himself in the fashion of the iconic Hank Williams, and few of the people whom Brown speaks with act as if they didn't see an early death as inevitable. When it came -- in 1997, at age 52 -- Van Zandt was, predictably, trying to cut an album of new songs even as he had to be moved in and out of the recording studio on a wheelchair.
Brown's film could have used a little more in the way of historical context for Van Zandt's career ups and downs, but it's beautifully photographed and edited. It does a splendid job not only of introducing newcomers to a vital artist they might have missed, but of reminding rabid fans of Earle's stripe why they were infected to begin with.
Unrated, probably PG-13 for language and grown-up references; 97 minutes; Clinton Street Theater. Grade: B
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Tender tribute to a sad genius of song
Joel Selvin,
Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Friday, February 3, 2006
Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt: Directed by Margaret Brown. Starring Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, others. (At the Lumiere, Opera Plaza and Act 1 & 2 in Berkeley. Not rated. 99 minutes.)
Telling the story of Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt with the kind of compassion and grace filmmaker Margaret Brown uses in "Be Here to Love Me" requires delicate balance: tender but unsparing, heartfelt and unapologetic.
Van Zandt was an enormously talented but troubled musician, best known for writing the Willie Nelson-Merle Haggard hit "Pancho and Lefty." He never reached any kind of large audience during his lifetime, but was highly admired by other songwriters and performers. Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmylou Harris and others all contribute to Brown's almost-handmade film, a documentary that in its spirit and feel catches some of the vulnerability and naive optimism of its subject, Van Zandt.
Abstract images from moving cars, highways and treetops whizzing past help Brown paint a powerful mood in her tale of this beautiful loser, this pioneer Texas family scion who struggled with demons his whole life until he succumbed to heart failure at age 52 in 1997.
In between interviews with his peers, friends and family, Brown expertly weaves various television performances by Van Zandt singing his somber, doleful songs. The film is leavened by scratchy, jerky glimpses of old home movies that show Van Zandt's privileged childhood or his hippie friends skinny-dipping, giving the documentary a family album feel.
Van Zandt himself speaks candidly on tape recorded interviews as a haunting, self-deprecating voiceover. He is seen in his military school yearbook passed out from glue sniffing, one of the self-destructive behaviors he was given to, like jumping off a four-story house at a party. His description of that particular episode is a chilling firsthand account of insanity.
His first wife talks about young Van Zandt spending hours in a closet writing songs and emerging with a depressive masterpiece, "Waiting Around to Die." A European interviewer asks Van Zandt why his songs are always sad.
"I have a few that aren't sad," he says. "They're hopeless. The rest are just ... the way it goes. You don't think life is sad?"
But at the center of his pathetic being was an exacting artist who didn't want to let a song go until everything was perfect, until there wasn't so much as an awkward pause. But he knew his work was better than his life. "My work will live longer than I will," he says. "That's by design."
His work and his life are beautifully laid out in "Be Here to Love Me."
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Good Van Zandt link....
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/002530.html
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| February 10th, 2006 04:31 PM |
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| Larry Dallas |
Is this finally being released on DVD or is it getting a run in theaters? I can't wait to see this. Townes was a true original. Stones fans may like his version of "Dead Flowers" at the end of the Big Lebowski. |
| February 10th, 2006 07:09 PM |
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| IzzyStradlin |
TVZ is the best lyricist that ever lived. LIVE At The Old Quarter is my favorite live album of all time.
The guy was a poet. The real deal.
Honest musicians know this to be true. |
| February 11th, 2006 02:22 AM |
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| Bloozehound |
can't wait
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