A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON (1974/2015) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Les Blank
Leon Russell, who's like rock & roll's Mad Hatter, filmed on stage, in the studio, and hanging out back home in Oklahoma, in the days before his famously long hair and beard turned completely white. Blank doesn't take an on-screen directing credit on this - he's listed as the editor and cinematographer - and it almost looks like a movie that made itself. There's some good concert footage - Russell banging on a keyboard had charisma to burn - together with a lot of local color that Blank seems to have shot because it happened to cross his field of vision and he had a camera in his hand. One way to watch it would be to try to decide which people in the film seem the most wasted, and then try to guess which drugs they're on. Willie Nelson and George Jones turn up for a song each (without Russell), and at least one small animal was seriously harmed in a dramatic encounter between a baby chicken and a snake. Filmed between 1972 and 1974, but not officially released till 2015.
Leon Russell
(1942-2016)
