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Film

i make documentaries. so far, most of them have been about musicians.


i just finished one about the remarkable yet relatively obscure pianist, walter norris (below, walter rides the train between barcelona and girona, spain).


last year i finished a 50min documentary about bobby rush. it premiered oct 2009 (below i'm with bobby in homer, louisiana, near his birthplace).


below, i welcome actress tess harper (no country for old men, tender mercies, etc) into the arkansas entertainer's hall of fame (fall 2008).


i narrated the feature documentary born in the honey: the pinetop perkins story, which was nominated for the national blues award. below, i'm with pinetop in my dining room.


Interview: August 20, 2009

how long have you been making movies?

i started in 2003, so about six years.

how did you get started?

i had a girlfriend who'd just produced a feature. i'd always been interested in movies and she was just developing an interest in documentaries and so we decided to start making them.

how did you learn?

just by doing it. we got a camera and some lights, a computer and software, and just went for it. we made a lot of stupid mistakes, some of which still haunt me, but we also got a lot of things right.

what was the first movie you made?

i made some shorts, but the first feature was the documentary about walter norris. and i've been fortunate to have been hired by a couple of directors to shoot and edit.

how did you get into these blues projects?

i met peter carlson at the hot springs documentary film festival. he was making the pinetop perkins movie and he asked me to narrate it. i ended up doing the audio and also mastered the companion cd, which was a live concert recording. the movie was nominated for a national blues award and the cd was nominated for a grammy for best traditional blues album (2008). now i'm making the bobby rush movie for pete.

what's your next movie?

next i'll make some changes to the walter norris movie and get it out on dvd and take it to festivals. then i've got a documentary about john hilliard, the composer who completed the rare mozart fragment. john's one of these musicians who's done so much yet is virtually ignored by his culture. besides the mozart commission, he was asked by bill clinton to write a song for his first inauguration, he's had his music played all over the world by symphonies, ensembles and solo artists, but he has to rely on teaching to make a living. so he's a lot like walter norris, who, as great as he is, has a hard time getting recognized for his work.

sounds like you have an interest in the under dog.

i have an interest in greatness and i'm interested in understanding why a culture chooses to ignore greatness and reward mediocrity. one of the things i want to do with my movies is make people more conscious of the decisions they make.

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