The debut film from Crumb director Terry Zwigoff is an absorbing, idiosyncratic documentary about legendary 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 was 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, loving evocation of the pop cultural marginalia that Zwigoff would continue to excavate in the coming years. —The Criterion Collection
Singular filmmaker Terry Zwigoff showed his talent for giving both real life and fictional outsiders their cinematic due in his as yet small but distinguished oeuvre.
A San Francisco resident, Zwigoff held numerous jobs, including musician, shipping clerk, printer, and welfare office worker, before he made his first foray into film in the 1980s with his documentary short Louie Bluie (1985). A portrait of an obscure blues artist, Louie Bluie revealed Zwigoff to be an able documentarian and presaged his personal passion for blues and jazz music that would give his feature Ghost World (2001) its extraordinary soundtrack. Zwigoff subsequently co-wrote two screenplays with his long time friend, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, in the late ’80s but neither got made.
Instead, Zwigoff made Crumb himself the subject of his first feature-length documentary. A Sundance Film Festival sensation and art house hit, Crumb (1994) proved to be a devastating examination of a family utterly… read more
Terry Zwigoff nos presenta, con un estilo directo y tosco, a una personalidad poco conocida: Howard Armstrong, mejor conocido como Louie Bluie; un artista polifacético (músico de blues, pintor, escritor) y una gran echador de cuentos. El resultado desborda encanto y espontaneidad por doquier (las reacciones de "Yank" Rachell son impagables). A diferencia de Crumb, la película deja un poso de optimismo enorme.
Besides depth in the culture of the blues, this film offers pure joy thanks to the fact that Armstrong is so full of character. I cracked up during the part where he walks by a church and speaks of Jesus and the other where they play 'Divin' Duck Blues' and asks the guitarist if it was 29 A.B. or B.C.
Fascinating. I wonder what the Maysles would have done with guys like that. Certainly more entertaining than the Beales. The Criterion edition has an additional half-hour of unused footage, most of it more musical performances from Armstrong and the other musicians in the film. As funny as it was and though I liked the music, I can't see myself watching it more than a second time.
"A habitual crank with a pronounced antisocial streak and an aversion to mainstream culture, the director Terry Zwigoff has one of the most
