Movie Reaction: Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead

Formula: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas / Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

 

 

This is one of those tricky movies for me to write about. There's an amount of level-setting I have to do. Outlaw Poet is a smaller movie than I typically see in a theater. I technically didn't even see it at a movie theater. It's a documentary about more of a local celebrity and it wouldn't be fair to say something like "It didn't look as polished as a Ken Burns doc."

With that in mind, I found Outlaw Poet to be an interesting slice of Kentucky history that I didn't know about. I hadn't heard of Ron Whitehead before this. He's the current US National Beat Poet Laureate. He's had a decades-spanning career and worked with a lot of those cool figures that college kids mythologize; often for the wrong reasons. Guys like Hunter S. Thompson and Allen Ginsberg. The film is the result of a ten-year effort by co-director Nick Storm and others to follow Whitehead and capture what's unique about him.

The movie does a good job working around a number of limitations. Like, there's just not a lot of high-quality footage of Whitehead. One of the downsides of being in the underground scene is that you tend to do things out of sight. Also, by his very nature, Whitehead is very often a facilitator rather than a star. It seems like there's much more archival footage of him talking up and introducing others than others talking about him. Part of why this movie feels overdue. He appears to be a great poet, but he might be an even better collaborator.

 

Despite only being about 100 minutes, the movie does drag some by the end. There's a large portion late in the movie that feels more like a Hunter S. Thompson tribute and seems to forget about Whitehead. I get why, somewhat. It's good content about Thompson and most is tied to an event put together by Whitehead. There's a feeling I got throughout the movie that it was trying to sell me on Whitehead's importance through his proximity to more famous people. The thing is, Ron Whitehead is a fascinating guy. He's this unique Kentucky character who looks like a cross between a hippie and a biker. You just look at him and think "if I talk to that guy, I'm going to hear some stories and maybe get in some trouble." I really would've been happy with something a little less focused on mythmaking and more about seeing what Whitehead is about. Like, just going on an errand with him feels like it could be an adventure.

 

I do feel bad that I didn't like the movie more. There isn't much of a film scene in Kentucky, or more specifically Louisville. It's nice to see someone documenting something about this area that isn't horses or hillbillies. I appreciate that the movie gave me a peak into a scene I know next to nothing about. I think I was hoping it would be more Ron Whitehead and less legend.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend