TRIBECA '09 PODCAST: Julien Nitzberg, Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine

Eighteen years after producing Dancing Outlaw—the cult-beloved short film about hard-drinking, drug-devouring, tap-dancing Appalachian criminal Jesco White—filmmaker Julien Nitzberg returned to his Boone County home to document both Jesco and his extended deviant family. Making its world premiere in the Midnight section of this year's Tribeca Film Festival, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia will have you scooping your jaw off the floor, this meandering slice-of-life portrait as hilarious as it is intensely horrifying. Snorting and smoking and shooting (not necessarily with needles, but with guns!) anything they can get their hands on, the White clan are responsible for an alarming percentage of the area's 911 calls, and Nitzberg was given full access to their wicked antics for a full year.

Sitting down at the DIRECTV Tribeca Press Center, executive producers Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine (Jackass)—no strangers to bad behavior themselves—joined Nitzberg and I for a chat about how coal mining plays into the Whites' lives, the crucial moral difference between the film and Jackass, and the most dangerous moment Nitzberg experienced in all the 540 hours of footage he shot.

To listen to the podcast, click here.
[WARNING: Explicit language!]

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia screens at the festival again tonight, April 30 and May 2. For more information, visit the film's official Tribeca page.

Posted by ahillis at April 26, 2009 4:46 PM