(Matt Wolf, USA, 2008, HDCAM, 70 minutes)
The things
that I like
seem to be
so different.
They're not
the things
that every-
body likes.
--Arthur Russell
***** *****
It's tough to
be ahead of your time, even if, in retrospect, Charles "Arthur" Russell (1952-1992) wasn't doing anything all that unusual. On his recordings, he sang, composed, produced, and played the cello.
There's nothing overtly strange about his music, except that it's ethereal without entering the more recognizable realms of ambient or new age. And intimate, without qualifying as singer-songwriter fare. It's accessible, in other words, but not commercial. And there you have it: the kiss of death.
You also have the makings of a cult artist, and that's where Wild Combination begins, i.e. at the inauspicious beginning, when Russell was a regular Iowa kid, playing in the school orchestra. He could be a million other kids doing the thing they enjoy the most (Russell's mother also played the cello). He could've become a classical musician, but fate had other plans.
His parents, Chuck and Emily Russell, who come across as clear-eyed and pragmatic, describe Arthur as an inquisitive young man with a severe case of acne--you can see significant scarring in some photographs.
After his father discovered pot paraphernalia in his bedroom, they fought, and Arthur ran away from home. The year was 1967. From the look on Chuck's face, it's clear he regrets "bouncing" his son "on the floor."
In archival footage, poet and activist Allen Ginsberg recalls meeting Russell in San Francisco, shortly after he arrived in the city. At the time, the aspiring musician was a commune-dwelling Buddhist. "I had a sort of crush on Arthur," Ginsberg acknowledges, referring to him as "delicate," "youthful," and "oddly reticent." Russell often accompanied Ginsberg's poetry readings, an association that continued after he moved to the East Coast in 1974.
In NYC, Russell moved into the same East Village tenement as Ginsberg and Richard Hell, and set out to merge folk with avant-garde and proto-punk.
 |
| Russell's James Les Gros phase |
Just as he was experimenting with different musical forms, like the big band, he was "transitioning," as one observer puts it, from straight to gay. (Hence the inclusion of Wild Combination in the 13th annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.)
If Russell wasn't known to the world at large in the 1970s, he was making his mark in Manhattan: directing performances at the Kitchen, sitting in with the Talking Heads, and working with Robert Wilson. Composer Philip Glass describes him as "one of the more eccentric of our music community."
Other speakers include British critic David Toop, musicians Jens Lekman and Ernie Brooks of the Modern Lovers, label head Will Socolov--with whom Russell formed Sleeping Bag Records--and his partner, Tom Lee.
As proto-punk gave way to punk, new wave, and post-punk, Russell turned to...disco, garage, and house. Granted, his approach wasn't mainstream, but it wasn't completely non-commercial either, and to confuse listeners further, he recorded under several pseudonyms, but couldn't take direction well and didn't "play well with others." Stress and strain aside, it was all for the best, since Russell was meant to be a solo artist, and in that configuration he recorded the singular songs for which he's best remembered today.
All of this history and commentary would be interesting enough, except Brooklyn director Matt Wolf's feature debut is more than just a by-the-numbers biodoc about an obscure artist, since the 24-year-old has managed to unearth an impressive array of rare and unseen audio and video material.
Right: World of Echo
His recreations are also unobtrusive in that they rarely draw attention to themselves as fictional reenactments, and the entire thing is visually pleasing and saturated with the otherworldly results of Russell's obsessive musical labors--he worked on the title track, "Wild Combination," for five years.
If Wolf's portrait sounds more like a music documentary than a queer film, that's because it starts out that way and plays as such most of the way through. Then, during the last act, it changes, just as Russell changed, just as the stakes became higher, and just as the people around him changed through knowing him.
To say more would be to say too much, but I found the ending quite moving, since Wolf suggests that Arthur Russell's legacy lives on as vividly in the nooks and crannies of New York as it does in the corn fields of Oskaloosa.
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Coda: Russell's World of Echo was re-released by Audika in 2004. The next release in Audika's Russell reissue series, Love Is Overtaking Me, hits the streets on Oct 28 at the same time Wolf's film is making the rounds.
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell plays the Harvard Exit on Oct 22 at 9:45pm. For more information about the film, please click here; for more about the SLGFF, here. The Harvard Exit is located at 807 E Roy. Images from Deep Movements, Sleephouse Radio, and Pitchfork.
12/7 update: click here for my review of the Plexifilm DVD.
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