In short: A Poem Is a Naked Person (1974)

For the longest time, this Les Blank documentary about musician and producer Leon Russell and the places and people surrounding his world was blocked by the artist himself, with Blank only able to show it at screenings where the director himself was physically present. This is clearly not the touring documentary Russell must have wished for (though why work with Blank of all people if you want that, even at this early point in the man’s career?), but Russell doesn’t really come over as a bad example of the 70s rock star. Like everyone, he sometimes goes off into stoned philosophising, and has more than one peculiar idea, but he never comes over as mean-spirited, stupid or nasty. In fact, the copious studio footage concerning his work as a producer and the stage footage shows the man as someone diligently working on his and other people’s art, finding ecstasy on stage through the abilities granted by focus on craft as much as inspiration. And ecstasy it truly is, with Russell’s mix of all kinds of American roots music coming together in ways that are physically and spiritually moving – and make his audience dance joyfully and without self-consciousness.

Much space and time is - of course given Blank’s preferred approach -  taken up by digressions into the life and times of people populating the parts of Oklahoma Russell’s studio is situated in, interviews with various back porch philosophers, and so on, and so forth. This is at once an expression of Blank’s seeming interest in everyone and everything – a great as well as an occasionally infuriating trait in a documentary filmmaker – and an attempt to explain what Russell does – musically as well as philosophically – by creating a portrait of the place he comes from.