Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me to Be?
With its summer-long run of weekly screenings delving into often shadowy corners of music and pop-culture history, annual LA music film-apalooza Don’t Knock the Rock has long seemed as much a scholarly series as a film festival – that is, if the cinema classes fest co-founder Allison Anders teaches at UC-Santa Barbara were transferred to packed-out shows at Hollywood’s Silent Movie Theatre. Now into their 13th year running Don’t Knock the Rock, indie film and TV director Allison and her daughter/fest partner, respected music rights consultant Tiffany Anders, have never been afraid to veer into the vintage and eccentric, and they were spotlighting obscure and cult subjects long before Anvil! and Searching for Sugar Man made it fashionable.
Their biases are displayed in the best light in the just announced the program for DKTR 2015 (of which MusicFilmWeb is a co-presenter), which ranges across the cultural landscape from ’50s kitsch exotica to ’60s psychedelia to ’80 excess, with filmmakers and, often, subjects, on hand. Music and music doc historiography are in full effect from the get with an opening-night showing of A Poem Is a Naked Person, the late, great Les Blank’s documentary that captured Leon Russell on stage and in his Oklahoma studio compound his early ’70s prime but was unreleased until this year. Russell – who commissioned the film but disavowed it for decades – will be in conversation with T Bone Burnett following the screening on Wednesday, July 8 at the United Artists Theater at the ACE Hotel.
On July 16 DKTR takes up its traditional Thursday-night residency at the Silent Movie Theatre for seven weekly screenings, starting with Tell You Do You Miss Me, Matthew Buzzell’s elegiac 2006 chronicle of beloved indie outfit Luna’s farewell tour. Members of the recently reunited band will attend. The July 23 slot is unconfirmed at this time, but the 30th brings Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove, a study of “cowboy hippie rocker” Doug Sahm, leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornadoes and a key figure in the evolution of Lone Star State rock. (The Sir Doug filmmakers just started a month-long Kickstarter campaign to raise money for music clearance and full-scale distribution.)
Perhaps this year’s most historically intriguing entry screens August 6: Korla tells the strange story of keyboardist Korla Pandit, whose Hammond B3 playing, silent gaze, and air of Indian mystery made him a star of Los Angeles local TV in the early ’50s and a darling of lounge music hipsters decades later. On August 13 DKTR turns the tables on Michael Des Barres, who often hosts fests screenings and is now the subject of one. Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me to Be, directed by J. Elvis Weinstein (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Freaks and Geeks fame), reveals the many faces of the rocker, actor, and showbiz survivor whom Duran Duran’s John Taylor likened to a Hollywood Zelig.
Two music documentaries we’ve championed close out the program. Her Aim Is True, Karen Whitehead’s profile of pioneering rock photographer Jini Dellaccio and her influence on the Northwest protopunk scene of the mid-’60s, screens August 20. Following a week later is Danny Says, Brendan Toller’s entertaining run through the remarkable resume and storytelling trove of Danny Fields, the cultural polymath and music industry vet largely responsible for the fact that we now listen to the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Ramones. (For more on the films read MFW interviews with Whitehead and Toller.) According to the Anderses there’s still a few announcements left to come, so watch this space or check the DKTR program page (where you can also buy tickets) for updates.
