HOLIDAY DVD OF THE WEEK: Ten Thousand Points of Light

No less an intrepid globetrotter than Werner Herzog once declared that the most exotic culture in his death-defying travels was to be found in North America. Though I'd trace it back to William Eggleston's under-the-radar 1973 documentary Stranded in Canton, the genre that critic Jim Hoberman would later coin as "Americanarama" seemingly arose to prove Herzog's assertion. Between the late '70s of the director’s own Stroszek and into the '80s of Vernon, Florida, Stranger Than Paradise, Blue Velvet and Something Wild, all the hipper auteurs were, to varying degrees, taking detours into Waffle House Nation. Whether the tone was deadpan ironic, sideshow creepy or joyously phenomenological, these films nearly always relied on the perspective of a character in limbo, variously terrorized or liberated by the oddball milieu, even if the character was the filmmaker himself.

Shot during the holiday seasons of 1989-'90 and exhibited a year later, Ten Thousand Points of Light arrived at the end of the wave, its title spinning off of George H.W. Bush's 1988 speech at the Republican National Convention and its reference to "a thousand points of light." The Reagan Era was in slow fadeout, with President Bubba—Bill Clinton—looming in the wings, not yet a contender but soon enough to turn the White House into its own Americanarama set.

Unless you happened to be living in Atlanta at the time, you've probably never heard of George King's documentary. It's a modest little thing, observant of a local phenomenon that might have slipped into the backdrop of a Jonathan Demme or David Lynch movie. Every year, the Townsend Family of Stone Mountain, Georgia—a town built around an actual mountain whose bas-relief carvings of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee make it the Mt. Rushmore of the Confederacy, complete with Pink Floyd laser shows—would decorate its home for the Yuletide. Paying a visit to the so-called "Elvis Christmas House" was a ritual, not only because the place was blazing with twinkling Christmas tree lights (about 45,000 of them), but because the family's profound affinity for the Baby Jesus left room to embrace the other King of kings—Elvis Presley.

"It seems that Elvis and Christmas goes together," the matriarch, Margaret Townsend says as the video begins. "You know nothing is going to take the place of Christ. Christ was born on Christmas Day. But Elvis was a good man, and he was always good to everybody." It's not every sweet old grandma who invites thousands of total strangers into her boudoir, which she has rechristened the "Fantasy Room" because it's decorated floor to ceiling with Elvis memorabilia, all the better, she tells these good country people, to… uh-huh, fantasize. The rest of the Townsend estate is no less grandiose in its all-American splendor. It's a kind of discount Graceland, with all its starry spangles sourced from QVC and various chain-smoking children and grandchildren serving as tour guides.

King, an expatriate English documentarian who specializes in civil rights and social history, jumped at the chance to commemorate the Townsends and their epic roadside attraction when he learned that the family was going to pull the plugs. Or, in papa Raymond Townsend's parlance: "C'est la vie, sayanora, hasta luego, kung fu and chop suey—baby, this is it!" Shooting with what was at hand (a VHS camera that would make Harmony Korine proud), King could not have expected that Light might one day be released on DVD. Which it has, in a 20th anniversary edition, by the Atlanta-based archival music label Dust-to-Digital, a Grammy-winning outfit that specializes in meticulously researched and extravagantly packaged collections of raw Southern gospel, blues and folk obscurities.

This documentary fits right in, but not solely as local color. Though he's technically an outsider, King doesn't play the naïve filmmaker card, the stock in trade, for instance, of self-consciously wacky broadcaster Louis Theroux, whose Weird Weekends series thrived on quirky Americana. Neither, really, does he obsess over the bric-a-brac, mining details like the household's Santa Claus-themed toilet seat covers, or the Christ child replicated in molded marshmallow, for easy irony. Instead, in a brief half-hour, King lets the Townsends speak for themselves. Single mom Gloria chews over the on-again, off-again details of her marriage to a boy she met while flirting on-duty at Captain D's. Raymond, the soul of generosity, allows as to how fulfilling it is to walk carloads of revelers through his house, until someone decides to "get smart" with him. Then he pulls up his shirt to reveal his secret to keeping rowdies in line: a handgun strapped to his waist.

To bring long-ago fans of the Elvis Christmas House up to date, the DVD offers current interviews with the now Charlotte, NC-based Raymond, Gloria and Diana (who was a toddler when the original footage was shot)—suddenly turning a Dixie-fried encomium to old-fashioned dream making into an episode from The Up Series. As the bittersweet lilt of a honky-tonk refrain ("Daddy won't be home for Christmas, again") plays over the closing credits, the video leaves a pretty gosh darn poignant impression after all these years. It may be a blue Christmas without her, but somewhere in heaven, Margaret Townsend is dancing with Elvis.

Posted by ahillis at December 17, 2010 11:16 AM