Be Part of the Film ‘Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark’!

9 years ago Liv Carter Comments Off on Be Part of the Film ‘Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark’!
guy clark documentary
Guy Clark Old Friends Reunion November 6, 2014 – Front row: Robert Earl Keen, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Guy Clark and Maude the dog. Back row: Steve Earle, Jerry Jeff Walker, Rodney Crowell, Joe Ely and Terry Allen.
(Photo courtesy of Tamara Saviano)

Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark, is an upcoming documentary about the folk and Americana pioneer. Tamara Saviano has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project, and you can make a difference with “Just $5”!

Read her press release below and check out the campaign video here.

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 film follows Guy’s journey as he moves from Texas to Los Angeles to Nashville to become one of the most revered songwriters in American music and an influential folk hero of the 20th century.

The documentary opens as Guy and Susanna pull into Nashville on a rainy November night in 1971. The white Volkswagen bus is loaded with everything they own, including a scrap from a burger sack with a partial lyric: “If I could just get off of this L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught.” There is a new Music City brewing underground. Outlaw songwriters are bubbling up into the mainstream and Guy is about to become a lion in this modern breed of Nashville Cat. The film reveals Clark’s role in the rise of songwriters in Nashville and how that influence stretches back to his home state of Texas.

The film chronicles how Guy’s early years in Monahans affected him as a storyteller. You’ll meet Guy’s 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. Without Getting Killed or Caught includes exclusive interview footage with Clark and his friends and family. The film integrates audio and video footage from personal interviews, one-of-a-kind photos and images from Clark’s private collection, and unique historical footage. We reveal how Guy spent his formative years in the beach town of Rockport as captain of the football team and student body president. He learned to play guitar from his father’s law partner, worked for the shrimp boat builders in the harbor, read poetry, and was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for summer study at M.D. Anderson Hospital.

Houston is a big part of Guy’s story. In the early 1960s, after selecting out of the Peace Corps, Guy settled in the Montrose neighborhood, a center for the burgeoning counter culture movement. We spend ample time in the film discussing how the city and artists who lived there inspired Guy. Within the framework of the documentary we also detail how Guy’s best friend from Houston, Townes Van Zandt, came to be the third person in Guy and Susanna’s marriage.

Guy released Old No. 1 in 1975, an album rooted in the culture of the West Texas desert. The documentary analyzes Guy’s struggle with the mainstream music business as Nashville tried to figure out how to fit him into commercial country music. The film explains how Guy finally took control of his own recordings with 1989’s Old Friends. It was a gutsy move at a time when the major label business was making money hand over fist.
The film explores how Guy made an even a stronger commitment to his art as the next seven albums unfolded. After several Grammy nominations for Best Folk Album, Guy’s 2014 record My Favorite Picture of You finally prevailed in 2014. The title track is a profound, final tribute to Susanna, who died in 2012 after spiraling downhill following Townes’s death in 1997.

The documentary closes with a scene from Guy’s 73rd birthday in 2014, an intimate in-the-round of stories and songs featuring Guy and his Texas compadres Terry Allen, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joe Ely, Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker. The troubadours lovingly recount their own stories of Guy and how he shaped each of them.

About our Kickstarter Campaign – Ends on May 20!
In order to make this film a reality, we invite you to come along on this ride with us. Our Kickstarter goal is $75,000, which will get us further down the road with licensing, equipment rental, crew, insurance, accounting, legal, and everything else that comes along with a project of this magnitude. We are grateful for your support and vow to finish this film and make everyone proud.

And if you can, please support our campaign within a campaign. This is close to my heart. I want to be able to show Guy a list of people that not only supported the film for larger rewards, but who gave “Just $5” because they have been touched by a Guy Clark song, bought an album, attended a concert, shook his hand, shared a smoke or a joke or a drink, wrote a song, sat in his workshop, or just appreciates the grand poet that he is. If you can do that, pledge $5 or add an additional $5 on to the reward of your choice. Let’s do Guy Clark proud.

Follow us as we make this film:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/guyclarkfilm?ref=hl
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16IxUN-qEUc
Twitter – https://twitter.com/TamaraSaviano

 

Liv Carter

Liv Carter

Liv is a career coach for creatives, and the people who work with them.
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Liv Carter