Mule Skinner Blues

I am a movie addict and recently hit a wall with my massive DVD collection. It seemed that I had purchased every film worth owning. I realized this fact as I shopped Tower Records "going out of business" sale. Then I happened upon the Documentary section and realized that was a category I was lacking in. I bought every documentary that sounded interesting and "Mule Skinner Blues" was the best of the bunch. It's greatness lies in its ability to mix humor with genuine feeling. The movie shows compassion for it's low rent, trailer park dwelling characters instead of contempt. There is plenty of comedy in their drunken and eccentric behavior, but I'm sure the cast of real people are laughing along with the audience.

The film is highly stylized in the Errol Morris tradition of documentaries. It blends scenes of the film's subjects dancing on a surreal set, as well as scenes from other movies (Evil Dead 2, etc.)with actual interviews. The main "plot" is a man named Beanie and a guy named Larry Parrot writing and directing a movie about a vengeful ape-man creature and a guitar showdown between the devil and a man. It's all basically just a showcase to display some truly interesting people who live outside society's fringe. The lead guy could be Mark Borchardt from "American Movie" in 25 years. If you liked that movie, you'll most likely enjoy this one as well. The DUI video during the end credits is worth the rental price alone.

"Mule Skinner Blues" is a beautiful, messy, extravagant little documentary made about struggling dreamers by struggling dreamers for the struggling dreamer in all of us.

Go to any film festival that features genuine, undiscovered filmmakers, and you will find a few glamorous filmmakers who use $100 bills for facial tissue, along with hundreds of diehards who have spent all their money. and all the money anyone would give them or lend them, trying to put a little of the love and terror in their hearts on screen.

"Mule Skinner Blues," the song, is about a woman who is pleading for a chance to sing -- to a team of mules. To get away from the boredom and sadness in her life.

"Mule Skinner Blues" is about regular people in rural Florida -- not the richest, but not really the poorest -- who want to sing, write scripts, design costumes, make a horror film, etc. -- to find some way to rise above the pain in their lives, and turn both the pain AND the joy in their hearts into art.

The people in the film talk wistfully about becoming famous, but they're a lot more interesting than the typical twentysomething would-be artiste in the big city, or the typical established artist. First, because they live in a spectacularly beautiful part of northern Jacksonville (even if you DON'T feel the terror, you WILL feel the urge to move into a trailer park); they're older and have better war stories; they have a sense of humor; and, because they're so far from the big money, they're just more real.

When they screw up, they can't fall back on trust funds or Mommy or Daddy. They don't have trust funds, and, for the most part, they don't have living parents. If they have living parents, chances are they're the ones feeding the parents.

If you see the film and come away saying, "Those people are not all that different from the people who made 'Mule Skinner Blues,' or the people back in my neighborhood who have a garage band. Or the old ladies who get together for a quilting club," well, yes. What exactly is wrong with that?????

Some documentaries exist simply to tell a story...maybe to bring an obscure injustice into the light or to highlight the story of an unsung hero. Mule Skinner Blues wants you to "feel" the story. It's often-grainy visuals suck you into those murky backwater towns of rural Florida and leaves you feeling as grimy as the film footage itself. But this is its charm and allure. It's not just telling you the story of Beanie Andrew and his cast of lovable or sketchy characters; it's making you feel the stifling heat and sweat that came together to build their dream, the hardships of their falls, and the re-building of it all. It's that rare film that captures a slice of Americana made to feel genuine by the down and dirty work it takes to make a collective dream come true.

I think everyone is used to watching Hollywood cannibalize itself. It's so predictable, it's amazing that no one out there seems to catch on. Isn't one definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and always expecting different results? From 27 different Law And Orders to remaking the basic plot of "Halloween" 1000 times over, Hollywood will always find a way to ruin a good thing. Always. It's surprising, however, to see a documentary be such a blatant rip off of another (much better) movie. You'd think with the essentially limitless ideas one can come up with for a documentary, a filmmaker wouldn't have to (or want to) make a blueprint copy of another movie. Yet this movie is pretty much the exact same movie as American Movie. That is, except for the fact that you only catch lightning in the bottle once, and that came in the form of Mark Bourchardt. How those folks found this guy in Wisconsin that wanted to make a horror movie and actually decided to document it is amazing. Muleskinner Blues is pretty much a lame attempt to copy it, right down to the "movie premiere" with the local townsfolk looking on. Rent American Movie instead, for one of the funniest, and most ORIGINAL, documentaries you'll ever see.

For a while, the locally-based documentary Mule Skinner Blues has its charms. But this ostensibly charming story of trailer-park residents who make their own horror movie starts to creak at about the halfway point, and eventually it just becomes annoying.

The movie's shaggy-dog tale is that Mayport resident Beanie Andrew appeared as an extra in a music video and then charmed the video crew so much that they decided to film his story. And for a while, one can almost believe that. Andrew claims it's been his life's dream to make a movie, and when he gets hold of a video camera, he finagles any neighbor with a smidgeon of talent to bring his project to fruition.

Said locals include guitarists Steve Walker and Ricky Lix, a yodeling singer named Miss Jeanie, and an erstwhile horror-story writer, Larry Parrot. They all have local followings of sorts, so even when the on-screen evidence of their talent is minimal, Andrew's assurance that they call pull off this gig is enough to satisfy you--at least for a while.

But when the movie starts using montage tricks and extensive clips from old horror films to goose its story along, it gives its own game away. Then the movie inexplicably leaps ahead three years, and it turns very bitter. Steve and Ricky have had a falling-out, Steve and Jeanie have lost their mates, and Andrew is recovering from alcoholism.

Finally--and again, inexplicably--Andrew and Parrot's 15-minute horror epic gets its debut in Jacksonville Beach, without a word as to how it ever got assembled or screened. And the fact that the movie got even a small premiere is supposed to be enough to satisfy its makers (and the audience of Mule Skinner Blues).

So we're left with deeply conflicting messages. Andrew is meant to be seen as a paragon of simple wisdom, even though his optimism doesn't last. Andrew and Parrot have dreams of making it big and yet are content with a one-night, rinky-dink screening of their movie. And the other performers go right back to the obscurity from which they came, without a word of complaint.

Like the down-home documentary Gates of Heaven (to which this movie has been much compared), Mule Skinner Blues labors mightily to uncover the astounding depth of simple folk. But I just don't buy into this cracker-barrel-wisdom concept. Even the movie's tagline--"Talent is half the battle, getting discovered is the other"--is a lie. Not content with their local followings, the "entertainers" in Blues seem far more concerned with making it big than with honi