The Changin' Times of Ike White

Sometimes a documentary maker stumbles upon a better story than they could have reasonaly expected to find. Ike White was convicted of murder as a young man, but such was his talent as a musician he managed to make a hit funk record while in gaol. He got out, blew his shot at fame, and disappeared. The film tracks him down, seemingly living a very mellow life on the Californian coast. But the whole story turns out to be much more complex than that. The take home message is really that some people are truly multi-faceted; both the bad and the good about Ike's life seem to be true, and while the stories he told about himself are most definitely not to be trusted, the truth itself is also pretty wild. With the help of some of Ike's numerous exes, the film manages to be both charming and disturbing; and well worth watching.

Amazing documentary with a very unexpected story. Emotional and comedic in places. Undoubtedly one of the best of this genre.

I first heard of Ike White about 15 years ago when a friend found his album. This friend was notorious for making things up, so when he started going off about Ike White's back story I rolled my eyes and said "yea sure". Through this documentary I was amazed to find that he was not only underselling the story, but the only thing he was wrong about was Ike's death (at least at the time).

This documentary started out about where I was expecting, the background of Ike's early life and the recording of his one album. But where it wound up going really took me by surprise, as well as the filmmakers I'm sure. The guy really had talent, but couldn't quite harness it constructively.

The film doesn't exactly nail down the absolute truth, but rather basks in the mysteries and uncertainties about Ike's life that will never be known. He was an enigmatic person, definitely had some demons he could never shake, left a lot of hurt in his wake, but he lead a full life for better or for worse.

Everything proceeds pretty much as you'd expect; then, suddenly, you're hit in the solar plexus by a "present day" event that leads to the uncovering of a massive amount of often startling backstory.

So, having moved along sedately for about 45 minutes, things move up several gears and this becomes a captivating documentary.

The only real negative is that, despite seeing so much of Ike White's life via his personal video archive, I really can't claim to understand why his life took the course that it did. (Perhaps there's a clue in his striking similarity -- it's the eyes -- to Salvador Dali? Perhaps Ike White was really only cut out to be an artist, rather than a fully-rounded human being?)