Louie Bluie

1985 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Painter and country-blues musician Howard Armstrong takes us on a tour through his life and career and introduces us to some of his friends.

When I lived in Knoxville, I was exploring the "Old City" neighborhood with my wife (my girlfriend at the time) and some other friends. We ran into a street musician named Boots and talked to him for much longer than my girlfriend (later wife) wanted to. Boots was filled with all kinds of stories, the kind that just gushed from him like you'd accidentally knocked into a spigot and couldn't figure out how to plug it back up even if you wanted to. He was really disturbed that Chubby Checker was performing nearby because Chubby Checker only had one damn song and Boots could play circles around the fool anyway. I could have sat there talking to this old blues guy for hours.

Louie Bluie reminds me a little of that guy, and if you would have had the same experience with Boots that I did, you'd know that this is a high recommendation. Terry Zwigoff, nine years before his second film Crumb and sixteen years before his first narrative film Ghost World, wisely lets this obscure musician and artist lead the way. There's no commentary at all here. There's no exposition, and there's no narrative. This is just a slice of this guy's life. We get to see Armstrong shopping for junk, playing music with various friends and family members, and convincing his friend to give him an ugly shirt for five bucks. It's just like we're getting to hang out with this guy for a little over and hour, and I wouldn't have minded spending a few more hours with the guy. It's the same way I felt about my time with Boots.

Since Louie Bluie is a musician, there are plenty of musical moments in this. And man, oh, man. That cat can fucking play! He plays both the mandolin and fiddle, even rockin' on the former while holding behind his head when he's feeling extra frisky, and the music is as lively as any music you'll ever hear. I was going to pick a favorite musical moment from this, but they're all just so good. He plays with a good buddy, he plays with a side-burned guitarist and a Golden Girl on piano, and he plays with this guy who looks like a gangster. It doesn't matter who he's playing with because he's going to have a good time doing it, and that energy just bleeds through the screen and energizes the viewer. I don't know a lot about music, but it seemed to me like Louie Bluie is the kind of performer who is capable of making everybody around him play better.

He's also a visual artist. You get to see some of his artwork, including a pornographic ABC book that he wrote and painted by hand. That, my friends, looked like it could be one of the most important literary texts of the 20th Century, a real work of beauty and creativity and randiness.

Seriously, I don't want to sound greedy or anything, but I'd love to see a ten-hour director's cut of this.