Andrew reviews and chronicles all the movies that feature redneck, mountain dance master, Jesco White.
Cult
hero/bona-fide redneck Jesco White of Boone
County, West Virginia, is among the few Appalachian Mountain dance performers
still left in the world. Both an
entertainer and gifted performance artist with a unique approach to dancing,
Jesco White is a poster child of the so-called ‘white trash’ culture stuck in a
perpetual purgatory between intoxicated violence and moments of clarity. The son the late and famed master of
Appalachian Mountain dancing, Donald Ray White, Jesco would inherit his
father’s shoes literally and figuratively, picking up his moves and adding his
own unique spin on the technique. Initially
filming a documentary of his own named Talking
Feet on his perfected Mountain Dancing, Donald Ray White’s career as an
entertainer was tragically cut short when he was shot to death on his own
property over a dispute with a neighbor.
While many of Jesco’s brothers would inherit their father’s genes,
almost all of them perished under similarly violent circumstances, leaving
Jesco as the only surviving member of the family still practicing the dancing
germane to the region.
Much
like his family, Jesco White is as much blessed as he is cursed, adorned with a
unique talent but unable to shake his crippling and at times, life threatening
demons. Considered a split personality,
Jesco has been described by some as having a soft side, a violent side, and an
Elvis Presley side, sometimes all three at once. Given the checkered track record of Jesco and
the White family as a whole, Jesco’s story could well have disappeared into the
mire completely. That is, until a PBS
documentary called Dancing Outlaw presented
both a unique focus on Jesco White and gave the troubled man a second chance at
life as a whole new legion of fans discovered him and eventually the White
family itself with the MTV produced documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. Soon Jesco would feature in mainstream media
including providing voice work for both the videogame Grand Theft Auto V, the Cartoon Network show Squidbillies and even appearing in the Beck music video Loser.
In addition to being referenced in several songs by Ministry, Mastadon
and The Atomic Bitchwax. It didn’t take
long for a fictionalized biopic of the man’s life, known as White Lightnin’, to come into the
discussion.
With
the life of a unique talent and deeply troubled individual, The Movie Sleuth
takes a concentrated look at three seminal documentaries and one still
controversial cinematic highlight of the life of one of West Virginia’s most
infamous, oddly endearing and eccentric American hillbillies.
Part
of an ongoing series named Different
Drummer and the one that started it all and put a spotlight on the White
family for the very first time, the PBS documentary Dancing Outlaw introduced the world to the troubled life of Jesco
White in his hometown of Boone County, West Virginia. Opening with the scruffy, bearded Jesco
dancing with a boombox in hand across a rickety wooded suspension bridge
dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans and tapdancing shoes, intercut with shots of
the decaying trailer park cityscape, Dancing
Outlaw announces itself as an eye opener on an almost alien world of
poverty, hicks and a personality at its epicenter that is as charming as he is
terrifying. Originally designed as an
ode to Donald Ray White, who lost his life to a domestic dispute midway into
making the documentary Talking Feet (excerpts
of which are shown here), the filmmakers caught wind of Jesco’s magnetic and
madcap personality. This was the first
time Jesco was allowed to speak publicly about his split personality disorder,
where he either shifts between Jekyll and Hyde or becomes Elvis Presley,
replete with a private Elvis Presley room adorned with endless memorabilia of
The King. Among the funniest and most
memorable scenes involves Jesco recounting an episode in his relationship with
his frumpy older wife when he held a knife to her neck and threatened to kill
her if she fried and served anymore “sloppy, slimy eggs”. Jesco’s recitation of the event is told so
honestly and matter of fact with calm collection, you could read his delivery
as a deadpan joke except that it’s not, making the story simultaneously
hilarious and horrific.
While
some of the other Whites show up here including his mother Bertie Mae White,
the focus is primarily on Jesco and his Mountain Dancing. Among the film’s more poignant moments
involves Jesco recalling the night of his father’s death, which he describes in
such acute detail you feel as though you’re being led through a crime scene
investigation. Just once for a moment,
Jesco breaks down in tears as he talks about Donald Ray White. Clearly the traumatic event and sense of loss
in Jesco’s life is a period of time he and all the Whites are reliving on a day
to day basis. But like anything else in
Jesco White’s existence, it doesn’t take long for him to return to indulging in
substance abuse and getting into domestic disputes with his wife, including a
riotous exchange between the two sharing harsh words with one another as well
as Bertie Mae passing judgment on their marriage.
Though
only thirty minutes in length and lensed on low grade VHS tape, every minute of
Dancing Outlaw is documentary
gold! Few documentaries have tapped this
deeply into the heart of madness afflicting the county and encapsulate the
attitude of the region through the eyes of one man. Eventually a more evenly rounded picture of
the White family as a whole would emerge in The
Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, which also included excerpts
from Dancing Outlaw in its
preamble. For the moment though, Dancing Outlaw is a bona fide classic
overview of hillbilly Hell (or Heaven to some) with a most enigmatic and
fascinating personality representing the apex of a troubling yet colorful
brood.
Catching
wind of Dancing Outlaw, comic actor
Tom Arnold invited Jesco White to come to Hollywood to guest star in an
ultimately unused episode of Roseanne
alongside Roseanne Barr and John Goodman.
Enter Dancing Outlaw II: Jesco
Goes to Hollywood, a somewhat weaker but still entertaining companion piece
to its predecessor which follows Jesco White’s brief trip to Tinseltown! The sight of the formerly unkempt dirtball,
now well-groomed and dressed as he dances his way down Hollywood Boulevard with
a boombox in hand, is a startlingly rare image of the man. Even more exciting are scenes of Jesco
mingling with Hollywood stars on film sets, providing a unique travelogue of an
outsider experiencing the mainstream movie business firsthand. Not everyone takes to his enigmatic
personality however, as Roseanne openly voices objections to a swastika tattoo
on Jesco’s hand, likely leading to the episode never being aired. To be fair though, Jesco later learns with
disgust what the tattoo actually represents and has it removed. Though there’s not much to take from this
loose supplementary extra to the classic documentary, Jesco Goes to Hollywood is a nifty footnote for the completest
wanting to see a fish out of water. For
Jesco, the exciting experience is as disorienting and displacing for him as it
is for us on our first foray into the heart of Boone County.
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West
Virginia (2009)
Years
after the focus on Jesco White, Dancing
Outlaw, was released on the unsuspecting public, MTV and Jackass’ Jeff Tremaine sought out the
Appalachian Mountain dancer once again.
To their surprise and delight, it turned out the entire White family had
their own set of crazy and outrageous stories to tell and also managed to catch
up with the Dancing Outlaw himself too! Directed
by Dancing Outlaw’s producer, Julien
Nitzberg, The Wild and Wonderful Whites
of West Virginia is a wildly entertaining, hilarious, outrageous and at
times, poignant look at the dysfunctional, violent and oddly loveable band of
hillbillies known as the Whites.
Beginning by going down the family tree, the film starts with Donald Ray
White and Bertie Mae White before wading through the entire lineage including
distant relatives who have worked hard to escape the criminal influences of the
Whites’ more dangerous members. Early on
we learn before coal miner and Appalachian Mountain dancing legend Donald Ray
White’s death, he found a loophole in the Social Security system and was able
to garner lifelong disability checks for all of his descendants. Unfortunately, the abruptness and violent
nature of his death deprived the family of a father figure, leaving them Carte
Blanche to run wild with an endless surplus of money despite never having to
work and getting either inebriated or into trouble on a regular basis.
Among
the funniest and most jaw dropping moments are how the Whites’ lifestyle affect
minors in their clan. For instance, Kirk
White casually recounts stories of violent domestic disputes with her
ex-husband as her young son Tylor eggs her ill words about her ex with
profanity and flipping the bird to the camera.
The sight of such a young minor uttering these obscenities and threats
of violence have no problem rivaling the fictionalized and staged sights of
Linda Blair committing crudities in The
Exorcist. While ultimately
inconclusive about what it thinks of the Whites and where they’re going, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West
Virginia is a definitive overview of the strange and outrageous family
which has the peculiarly charming effect on outsiders, almost inviting you to
actually wanting to spend time with these wild ones, if only in small doses. It did a better job of creating a vague sense
of camaraderie with these people by letting them be themselves than what the
dramatized film version of Jesco White’s life ever did.
White Lightnin’ (2009)
The
British produced feature film debut of writer-director Dominic Murphy presents
a biography on Jesco White so loose with the facts that it still has viewers
evenly split down the middle regarding its validity. Shot largely in Croatia though fairly
faithfully recreating the Boone County region of West Virginia, White Lightnin’ stars British actor
Edward Hogg as the titular protagonist and omniscient voiceover narrator,
chronicling his childhood of huffing gasoline and reform school before picking
up his father’s Mountain Dancing technique.
In and out of prison before spending a majority of his life in an insane
asylum, Jesco soon has a second chance at making it when he begins touring with
his Mountain Dancing at local clubs and bars.
But like Jesco says throughout the picture, his weakness and impulsivity
almost forecast the eventual inevitable foray into drugs and violence.
Things
seem pretty faithful to the facts for this international production, but then
the film takes a swan dive off the rails by the time it reaches the fictitious
third act and imagines Jesco running wildly down a yellow brick road which will
encompass everything from triple homicide, demonic possession, self-mutilation
and self-consumption. Even the events of
father Donald Ray White’s death are fabricated here, depicting him being
dragged by a noose from the back of a truck when in fact he was shot on his own
property with Jesco present on the scene.
While playing fast and loose with the truth can make for good drama,
just what in the Hell were they trying to do here? For those who were upset about the licentious
embellishments of history often seen in Oliver Stone’s work (notably The Doors), his actions pale in
comparison those taken by writer-director Dominic Murphy. Sure you can read the unrelentingly gruesome
and disturbing finale of White Lightnin’
as some sort of social critique of hillbilly culture’s self-destructive
tendencies, but this was ridiculous! A shame everything the filmmakers worked
so hard to convey in the first two acts of the film were squandered on this
offensive fantasy denouement. I honestly
wonder what Jesco White would think if he saw himself chopping off his fingers
before eating them in between smoking a cigarette in his still intact
hand.
-Andrew Kotwicki