We are fortunate enough to be subscribers of the small theater company that hosted a run of “Woody Sez,” a four-person biographical sketch musical portraying the life and music of Woody Guthrie. The lead and co-creator is an actor, folk musician, musicologist and pretty good physical match for Woody, and the show - which has traveled between small venues in the last year or so - is Absolutely Not To Be Missed. Electrifying is not the word - and it’s worth attending just as a retro folk concert.
It’s so good that the New York Times, which doesn’t think much of regional theater, gave it a glowing, 2/3-page writeup this past Sunday. I smell an off-Broadway run coming… if not a full-out B’way run. It is the 100th anniversary of Woody’s birth, anyway.
Which led me back to the 1976 film Bound for Glory, pretty much the only biopic made on Guthrie. I had never seen it but was familiar with it for its famous first use of a walking steadicam, and the shot, following Woody (David Carradine) through long crowd scene is still gorgeous. (It’s also one of many long, long takes in the film.)
And wow, is it boring. Two and a half hours of faultless portrayal of dust-bowl Texas, Okies on the road and Depression-era Southern California. In the overall visuals, it’s as compelling any any other movie of the era. However, the dust blowing around is often the most interesting thing. David Carradine slowly mumbles and smiles his way through the role, playing an accurate but cartoonish, 2D version of Woody. The story barely covers a year or two in his life as he goes from sign painter and laborer and casual musician to the first stage of what we know him for. Carradine is continually picking at a guitar and singing snatches of lyrics, and the awful, 1000-strings score is based loosely on Guthrie’s songs, but I don’t think there are two complete songs in the whole movie, and maybe two or three more complete verses. Worst of all, he is picking at and trying out lyrics for “This Land is Your Land” all the way through… and never actually sings it. I think the lush, overblown closing scene and credits use the tune.
And, of course, his far-left, 30’s-communist leanings are airbrushed out, leaving a rather directionless labor rabble rouser instead of the fireball author of “I’m Sticking to the Union” (which is performed, but in a weak setting), the discarded opening lyrics of “This Land” and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya.”
To be fair, the movie was in preproduction when the original actor, an authentic folk singer, died unexpectedly. Kris Kristofferson passed because Muhammad Ali looked more like Guthrie. Someone else famous passed on it. It looks like Carradine got the role on looks alone and the ability to deliver that slow Jimmy-Carter smile… and as a result all the singing and music had to be cut out.
The one thing that makes the movie watchable is cameo-spotting, a whole raft of actors very early in their careers. The best is the Blade Runner Trifecta: one right after the other, you get M. Emmet Walsh, Brion James and then James Hong - the first two impossibly young and thin and Hong doing exactly the same “wild cursing Chinaman” role he’s done in a hundred movies. He’s a diner owner, and when he sets a bowl of chili in front of Woody, I had to call out, “Eyes, I only do eyes, Mr. Burton!”
Anyway, a very long critique and comment leading up to… damn, we could use a good, modern-sensibility, unflinching bio of this authentic American hero.