Last week, Grammy-winning music producer Tamara Saviano has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for a new documentary that focuses on the life of famous folk singer, musician, songwriter, recording artist, and performer, Guy Clark.
Per its synopsis, Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark traces the life of music pioneer Guy Clark, who, with his wife Susanna, shaped the contemporary folk and American roots music scene much like F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald fashioned the jazz age in Paris.
The documentary is noted chronicle how Clark’s early years in Monahans, Texas affected him as a storyteller. You’ll meet his colorful and beloved grandmother, Rossie Clark, a divorced, amputee, former bootlegger who ran a hotel for oil drillers and bomber pilots. Rossie’s boyfriend Jack Prigg—a fascinating wildcatter who lived at the hotel—showed young Guy a world of pool halls and taverns and oil wells that gushed black gold.
Sharing details about her Guy Clark research, Saviano stated:
“I have spent the last seven years working with Guy on his definitive biography, a book that has taken both Guy and me on a journey we could not have imagined. I used to be Guy’s publicist. I was working with him on his Workbench Songs record when he was diagnosed with Lymphoma. From my view, that’s when things started changing with Guy, when he realized that it just might be important to leave his story behind. You know if you’ve seen Guy in concert a few times that he tends to tell the same stories from the stage.
“There’s the one about the crazy landlord in Los Angeles who made his own bullets and cut down the grapefruit tree. Then there’s the one about Richard Leigh going to boat building school in Maine, a present from his wife, who then divorced him. As Guy likes to say,’Richard has one hell of a boat, and Verlon and I got a good song out of it. And, of course, ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’ is a love song. These are all stories we’ve heard time again and I always thought that was about as deep as Guy Clark was willing to go on telling intimate stories.
“I never intended to do a film on Guy, for all the reasons you might imagine. It’s a hell of a lot of work. It’s expensive! I mean, just the music licensing alone is a huge ticket item. Guy’s health hasn’t been good and I didn’t think he’d be up to it. I’ve already put him through the wringer on the book and now I’m going to go back and make him do it again on camera? No way. Well, that’s what I thought until last year about this time.
“In April 2014, Guy’s manager Keith Case and I talked and came to the conclusion that there needs to be a documentary about Guy. Guy said if anyone was going to produce a film about him, it should be me because we had spent all these years together on the book and that I know more than anyone else. And Guy trusts me. He knows I’ll do right by him even when telling parts of the story that are painful because I love and respect Guy (and I think everyone who knows him does, too). Because Guy’s health is precarious, we had to start filming right away. “
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