Leon Russell (pictured) was unhappy with a documentary he commissioned in the early '70s from filmmaker Les Blank. The film is finally getting released; the Getty Conservation Institute is preserving original animation cels from classic Disney movies; the music industry has agreed to move the official release dates for new music from Tuesdays to Fridays.
Leon Russell documentary, 'A Poem is a Naked Person,' is released after 40 years
In the early 1970s, documentary filmmaker Les Blank was commissioned to make a documentary about pianist and songwriter Leon Russell. Blank, a filmmaker known for his portraits of musicians, was commissioned by Russell and his then-business partner, Denny Cordell.
Russell was riding high at the time. He had risen to fame as music director for Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, and two of Russell's first three solo albums had gone gold — featuring such tunes as his classic, “A Song For You.”
Shot mostly in Russell's home state of Oklahoma, Blank filmed the documentary between 1972-74. The film, titled "A Poem is a Naked Person," was never released due to disagreements between Russell and Blank. The filmmaker passed away in 2013, but his son, Harrod Blank, convinced Russell to release the film.
Blank met with the Frame's John Horn to discuss the process of resurrecting the film.
Les Blank (center) filming Leon Russell (right) on the set of "A Poem is a Naked Person." (Image courtesy of Janus Films)
Interview Highlights
Why didn't the film come out 40 years ago?
Leon was pretty hot back then. He was a rising star. He commissioned his film, he gets the film back, and he sees — intercut with his performances — a snake eating a baby chick, a building being blown up, a guy eating a [beer] glass, and just weird, weird periphery stuff. It could have been kind of jarring for him. Especially since he was paying for it. Les' perspective was different. Les felt that this was his best work, possibly. It was certainly his first feature and it was painful for him not to have it released.
What was motivating your father when he wanted to take on a film? What drove him? What fueled his creative energy?
Well, if it was his idea it would be his passion for the subject or his curiosity for the subject. If he was commissioned for the work — as he was in this case for the Leon Russell film — once he's hired on the film you're getting Les Blank. He would apply his curiosity to Leon Russell and Leon Russell's world. That is what they got when they got Les Blank to do this movie. As Leon said appropriately, "This is more a film about Les Blank than it is about Leon Russell."
Maybe that's why he didn't want it released.
That could be a very big part of it. You just have to remember that back in 1974, Leon was a major star. So having this film come out right then and being in that case a film more about Les Blank — well there you go. Maybe that was part of this issue there.
Your father spent a couple of years on location filming in Oklahoma. Was he frustrated that it didn't come out? Was it ever a topic of conversation over the decades when it was sitting on the shelf?
It was cause for major depression, sulking and lamenting consistently throughout his career. This was the big thing that he wishes would have come to pass. Les was sort of in heaven on location for two years. I think that the time that he could just be there to observe and to catch the perfect moments ... He must have prepared for it and really nailed it.
But he was also not really willing to compromise about it because he felt it was his best work. When I proposed to him somewhere around 1986 — along with Miramax, which was interested— to intercut the film with a contemporary look on Leon Russell at that time, Les got upset and said, "No way."
So was this movie in someways your father's "Burden of Dreams"? You're talking about something that is very parallel to what your father did in looking at Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" — about the artist struggling to reconcile his job with the realities of the world.
I think you pretty much nailed it there. Yes, this is Les' "Burden of Dreams." It could be that all of this is a "Burden of Dreams" for both Les and Leon. It's a "Burden of Dreams" just to be creative and be successful at the same time in order to live another day and make another project. It's not as easy as it seems. The more that goes into a film — as maybe Werner Herzog would say— the more risks that you have to take, the better the film. The more you put into it emotionally, the better the outcome is going to be.
At what point did you decide to try to resurrect your father's film?
As Les was sick with bladder cancer and was facing death, that is when I reached out to Leon just to let him know and appeal to him — to see if maybe he would be willing to talk about the movie. I was shocked to get an email from him the next day. I read this email to Les and the response from Leon saying that he was willing to talk and that he was sorry to hear that Les was sick. Les was flabbergasted. He could not believe it.
Executive producer Harrod Blank (left) and musician Leon Russell at "A Poem Is A Naked Person" premiere at SxSW. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Your father knew before he died that this movie was going to come out?
He didn't know that it was going to come out, but he knew that contact had been made with Leon, which was more than what he'd had in 40 years. Leon and Les did not talk for 40 years. Les claims that he had reached out to Leon periodically but never got a response. I questioned Les and I said, "Did it ever occur to you that maybe Leon didn't get your letters?" He said "No." Even in my correspondence with Leon he didn't write me back every time. He is a busy man. He wrote me back when he could.
There are glimpses of your dad throughout the film. When he was shooting it, you were probably 8, 9, 10 years old? What was it like to see your father again in the film itself, and what did that conjure up in your own mind?
Well, what I see in the film is a Les Blank [who] is overweight, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. I can see where he would have been a lot to handle because he did drink a lot back then. But the other thing that I can see is that he's very passionate and he's at the top of his game. I think that is another strength of this film — not only was Les at the top of his game, but Leon was at the top of his game. All of the other musicians in the film were at the top of their games. The film is like a pinnacle of creativity across the board.
What did you have to do to the film itself to restore it or finish it for release? Were there material changes that you made?
There were some changes that were made editorially because it made more sense. Les had [edited] the film over the course of his life and cut out 10 minutes. The last cut that he did was in 2011 and he had taken out the dialogue between him and Leon about death, and he had taken out that song, "Satisfied Mind." Because Les had just died, it seemed very poignant that [the dialogue] be put back in the film.
When I realized that I had to [include] the music credits, which did not exist in the film previously, I needed some screen time. So that is when I put [the song] "Satisfied Mind" at the very end. Les had just died having realized all [his films], so you know he had a satisfied mind. Leon is still banging out performances, so he has got to be satisfied with what he has accomplished. I just felt that was a really great way to end this project was with a satisfied mind.
"A Poem is a Naked Person" will screen July 8 at the Ace Hotel, followed by a Q&A with Leon Russell. The film is also screening from July 8-16 at CineFamily in L.A.’s Fairfax District.
The Getty Conservation Institute moves from antiquities to animation
In 2009, Kristin McCormick noticed a problem. As the art collections and exhibition manager at the Disney Animation Research Library, she noticed the animation cels from their classic films were slowly degrading. Animation cels, short for celluloid, are transparent sheets that serve as the background for traditional, hand-drawn animation.
Earlier this year, McCormick and the library teamed up with scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute to restore animation cels from Disney’s most iconic films, ranging from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) to "The Little Mermaid" (1989).
McCormick oversees more than 65 million pieces of animation art — millions of which are painted on cels. After 80 years of Disney films, even the most cared for items are showing their age.
“We started to see the cels were buckling, sort of a rippling effect occurring, some were yellowing,” says McCormick, “and some of the paints were starting to delaminate — kind of flaking off the plastic substrate.”
A detail of an animation cel from the Disney film, "Pinocchio" (1940). The cel displays buckling, another problem affecting some cels in the studio's collection. Photo: © Disney Enterprises, Inc.
That’s when McCormick enlisted the help of Getty Conservation scientist Michael Schilling. He’s worked on ancient grottoes in China and Egyptian tombs. Now he’s working on "Snow White." While he’s enjoyed working on such monumental projects, he cherishes this partnership not only because they’re beautiful, but they’re an art form unique to our era and our backyard.
Currently, Schilling and his team are figuring out how to reattach flaking paints of the animation art back to the plastic cels. But even dealing with these cels is hard considering how they were made in the first place.
“There’s a drawing on one side and paint on the opposite side," Schilling says. "So you can’t lay the cell onto anything safely, because whatever you lay it onto is going to stick to either the paint or the drawing.”
Animation cel of Disney's "The Jungle Book" (courtesy of the Disney Animation Research Library).
This creates challenges when trying to store the cels. The cels can easily stick together, so Schilling and his staff have to use tiny spatulas to flip from one sheet to the next. And they wear white gloves -- though not quite as big as Mickey’s -- to avoid getting fingerprint oils onto the cels.
Once they figure out how to treat the paints, they’ll study how the art ages and how the plastic chemically and physically changes over time, researching how to perfectly store the cels at any temperature. It’s a lot of work considering it takes 24 cels to produce just one second of film, so there’s a lot of raw material. However, what’s surprised Schilling most is how well preserved the cels truly are.
“The Disney artists did a lot of research into paint formulations," Schilling says. "And so we’re looking at paints made in the '30s, '40s, '50s, with very unique formulations that would be different from what would have been used from artists from the same time period.”
Animation cel from Disney's "Lady and the Tramp" (courtesy of the Disney Animation Research Library).
It was Walt Disney who had this foresight. Not only did he and his animators create the perfect paint combinations, but he made sure the films were stored meticulously in what was called the "morgue" — a dark, climate-controlled storage facility under the ink-and-painting room at the original Disney studios. In 1989, the archives moved to Disney’s current studios in Glendale. Artists at the animation studios continually look at these older cels for inspiration and study how those older techniques were employed.
The contract between the Getty Institute and Disney extends through 2019. That’s enough time for Schilling and his team to conduct all of the research and repairs to the cels. But if Schilling had it his way, we wouldn’t even know he and his team were part of the project.
“The highest compliment you can pay to a conservator of works of art is that you can’t tell they’ve done anything," Schilling says. "So that’s what we’re hoping — that for all of the effort that goes into it, that no one will be able to tell we acted on them.”
Just like magic.
Shift in album release day goes into effect this week
There was a time when music fans would go into a record store and actually buy an album or CD. Now that streaming is the main go-to source for listening to music, the record industry is making a shift to compete with this change.
Starting this week, new albums will not be released on Tuesdays, but rather on Fridays.
Zel McCarthy is the Editor-in-Chief at Thump, the electronic music and culture channel on Vice. He spoke with The Frame's John Horn about why the industry chose Fridays for record releases and whether it will have an impact on people buying music the old-fashioned way.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
Why are albums now being released on Fridays instead of Tuesdays?
Well, it's a shift prompted by an organization called The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. This is the organization that internationally protects the interests of the record industry and for years they've been trying to combat piracy. They've determined that because of all the different dates around the world for albums, the best way to stop people from pirating them is to consolidate everyone's release date in every market to a single day. They've chosen Friday because they think that is the best day.
Carly Rae Jepsen's new album was already released in Japan weeks ago, but it's not coming out in the U.S. until August. Is the space between these two release dates for the same album a part of the issue?
Yes, that's a big part of it and especially when you have countries like Japan and Australia that are on different days. If an album comes out there on a Monday and it doesn't come out in the U.S. until Tuesday, you actually have two solid days in the U.S. where you can theoretically pirate the album.
Why was Tuesday the day for album releases in the first place?
Back in the day, there used to be a lot of excitement on a Monday night. You would wait outside Tower Records or Amoeba, and you'd be there at 11:30 p.m. and you'd get in line and at midnight, they would put on sale the albums that were coming out on Tuesday. And if it was a big deal then it would be a big event. That doesn't happen anymore. This move is getting a lot of attention for the record industry right now and hopefully it shines a light on some really worthy albums, like ["Communion" by] Years & Years.
Tuesday has been honored by all the major labels and independents because it's been a really effective marketing tool. It's been a great way to regulate your publicity and build anticipation for an album release. This has changed plans for everyone's summer albums, and people I've talked to at labels and in the industry are pretty skeptical as to what the impact's gonna be.