PODCAST: Terry Zwigoff

Just because filmmaker Terry Zwigoff has collaborated with graphic novelist Daniel Clowes twice (Ghost World, Art School Confidential) and is best known for his eccentric and tragicomic doc portrait of an underground artist (Crumb), he doesn't want you to think his entire career is ink and panels. This week, the Criterion Collection has released a special edition DVD and Blu-ray of Crumb, and even more excitingly, they've given their canonizing treatment to Zwigoff's amazing 1985 feature debut, Louie Bluie:

Crumb director Terry Zwigoff’s first film is a true treat: a documentary about the obscure country-blues musician and idiosyncratic visual artist Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in America. As beguiling a raconteur as he is a performer, Louie makes for a wildly entertaining movie subject, and Zwigoff honors him with an unsentimental but endlessly affectionate tribute. Full of infectious music and comedy, Louie Bluie is a humane evocation of the kind of pop-cultural marginalia that Zwigoff would continue to excavate in the coming years.

In honor of Criterion's must-see new discs, I called Zwigoff in San Francisco to discuss his accidental stumble into filmmaking, awkward running times, strange coincidences, why a man who doesn't like commentary tracks recorded two of them for one project, and—as mentioned above—why he shouldn't be pigeonholed... or should he?

To listen to the podcast, click here. (21:17)

Podcast Music
INTRO: Louie Bluie: "State Street Rag"
OUTRO: David Boeddinghaus: "Ragtime Nightingale"

Posted by ahillis at August 11, 2010 9:38 PM