The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack

"Ballad Of Ramblin' Jack Elliott" (2000) documentary: Wonderful portrait of a '60's era rebel and artist of high gifts who never quit the 60's...and he's 81 years old in 2012.

The cult movie titled "My Dinner With Andre" (1981) poses the question "What if the 1960's were the high point of civilization, and it's all downhill after that, from now on?" Well, maybe it is.

People who want to see a portrait of a true 1960's person with the wonderful mentality of those long departed times should see this documentary movie.

Ramblin Jack Elliott was (and is...still living at age 81 in 2012 as this is written) a true 1960's person, and was before the 1960's even started. He started his 1960's life in the 1940's when he ran away from home to become a cowboy, and later became the protégé and house mate of Woody Guthrie in Queens (NYC), New York before Woody lost his health.

See the Wikipedia biog article about Ramblin Jack Elliott to learn about what is shown in this wonderful documentary, made by his daughter, Aiyanna Elliott.

She's a predictably bitchy radical feminist, and so was her mother....no wonder Ramblin Jack spent little time with either of them over the years, and no wonder he apologizes very little for his avoidance, non-presence in their lives. Dreadful women, and the documentary shows that, though that is not supposed to be the point of what is revealed.

Jack Elliott is a wonderful person and a gifted artist. This movie shows that.

He was part of the 1960's and never left it, never gave up.....is still out there "doin" it.

I've never seen such a terrific portrait of a 1960's person as in this documentary. Another worth seeing, which shows the same thing (a 60's guy who never left the 1960's, even in his old age) is the documentary titled "George Harrison: Living In The Material World" (2011).

Neither Elliott nor Harrison were political....both were musicians, primarily, and the music in both docs is wonderful to hear and remember, especially for those who were there for the 1960's and remember it well, and miss it.

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Written by Tex Allen, SAG actor.

Email Tex at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.

Information about Tex Allen movie credits, biog facts, and interests at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen.

Of general interest due to Ramblin' Jack Elliott's role in creating the archetype of the American folk music hero, given tangible historic expression in his serving as the link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, specifically, as the model for the latter's original stage persona. Elliott, fashioning himself after, as protégé of, Guthrie, was one of the first to imagine and create the role of the American minstrel from which innumerable others have borrowed and to this day continue to borrow.

This film would have been infinitely more interesting without the first-person intrusion of the film maker, Elliott's daughter, who from the start sets out to have that one heart-to-heart with her daddy she never had; she almost makes herself the subject of this film, but who would see it if she were? The daughter-in-search-of-father theme interferes not only with the objectivity of this biography of folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott (1931-present), but it disrupts the chronological depiction of events: the film jumps confusingly between recent and distant past to accommodate the daughter's story, which includes redundant home-movie footage of her as a child. Does the world really need one more egocentric female narrative of the parent-that-never-was, of familial "dysfunction"? Bookstore shelves and the rolls of indie films are already overfilled with every conceivable variant of this bourgeois American-woman self-preoccupation. This domestic mindset is so pervasive that I suspect its root cause is the feminist parochialism of university writing and film departments in which these women were initially "empowered." And/or is this the self-pitying cultural legacy of psychoanalysis? (Faulkner: "motherblood with hate loves and cohabits.")

Yes, Ramblin' Jack was a lousy parent, always absent, on the road. Anyone who expected otherwise had to have been totally impervious to who and what he was. The very qualities that make him special, for which he is prized and loved, namely, his unspoiled childlike sense of wonder, the freshness and simplicity of his vision, his offbeat folky genuineness, all arise from the fact that Elliott from the first refused to grow up, that he willfully turned his back on the world of adult responsibility and conventional adult social identities, choosing, instead, to live out the fantasy of the cowboy troubadour, literally running away from his Brooklyn home to join the rodeo at the age of 16. Was this in reaction to the anhedonia of his Jewish parents, the echo of the holocaust in modern America? His mother (we are told) was a driven, unpleasant woman who wanted Jack to be a doctor just like his father, who (we are told) was an aloof workaholic. Elliott Adnopoz--Jack's real name--obviously rebelled against being force fed the conventional American dream, sought instead bohemian outlet in the romanticism of the American frontier, the American West.

Unlike Louis Prima: The Wildest, which was redeemed from its adulatory distortions by ample actual footage of its subject performing, this film mercilessly cuts into Ramblin' Jack's performances to editorialize on his failings and vent his daughter's frustrations. Still, because Elliott's life intersected so deeply and so often the currents of American folk and pop music, we are inevitably given a backstage glimpse of that larger, more important drama. His journeys encompassed the cultural suffocation of the Eisenhower years, the skiffle movement and origins of rock music in England, the American folk renaissance of the 60's, and the hippie culture of the West Coast. Alan Lomax, Dave van Ronk, Arlo and sister Nora Guthrie, Odetta, Kris Kristofferson, and Pete Seeger all check in with impressions and recollections of Jack.

One could only wish that Aiyana Elliott could have imbued her film with more of her father's casual charm, his gentle whimsiness. The heavy hand of this author makes one appreciate all the more Errol Morris, whose documentaries tell themselves without even the voice of a narrator.

Ramblin' Jack's story is in many ways the story of American music in the 20th Century, and this documentary tells that story with vitality from the unique perspective of a daughter trying to come to terms with her father's family-excluding career. As such, it may be a tad too ambitious, but the result is certainly entertaining and as personal and powerful a picture of an artist as I can remember seeing. Largely without pretension and careful to get a variety of perspectives, the film provides a faceted view of an evasive subject. The historic documents - a shot of young Zimmerman in the crowd at a Ramblin' Jack show, rare film of roots artists, home movies - are just amazing, and the interviews with the Guthrie clan and other survivors of the 50s folkie era are illuminating. The film's secondary story - the daughter's quest for understanding of her dad - may not be everyone's cup of coffee, but it worked for me, putting a human frame around an epic life.

Mostly, the film awakened for me that sense of endless possibility in mid-20th Century America, before the mass packaging of culture crushed so much of the country's promise. Folk was a musical movement born in backwaters and the public squares of melting pot cities, of the fusion of cultures - black and rural, diverse and rich as the world - into the raw stuff of entertainment. Jack's life echoes Kerouac and the Beats in his quest for experience, and his role as Woody Guthrie's heir-designate puts him square in the heart of American radical politics, though those politics largely seem to have evaded Jack's attention. Jack's identification and fascination with cowboy music establishes a link to American myth and the dreams of a decade that yearned for the freedom of boundless frontiers while established powers did their best to suppress cultural deviance. Jack's life, his persistence today, and the small but vital subculture of his heirs - guys like Tom Russell and Steve Earle - attest to the ornery survival of essential difference in a world that punishes nonconformity

The BORJ is a revealing and well told of story of the great Jack Elliott. Jack, a folk/country legend, is a hard one to figure out. The documentary takes you on a tour throughout his life, from his childhood up until the very present. His daughter (who directed this feature) has Jack, family and friends tell his story.

The film allows you to judge for yourself what kind of man he really was. A musician, a cowboy, hard traveller and a father. The documentary will help you understand and appreciate his place in music. As a companion to Woody Guthrie to his influence on Bob Dylan.

What's nice is nothing is pushed in your face. The viewer is left to reason out for themselves why he distances himself from his family and friends. Although, it's never clear what makes him click as a person or a father you can't help but want to know why.

It's a well done film that will have you asking questions and leave you wondering about Jack. I came out of the theater a bit sad but appreciative that there are people in the world like Ramblin' Jack Elliott.

This was very informative and enjoyable, but one problem. I would have to agree about the teller getting in the way of the story. But more importantly, Jack's daughter complains about the lifestyle her father lead. One that left a gap in their relationship. The typical he was never there story etc. My problem is the fact that she's making a documentary about this gap. The whole premise is not very genuine. I mean if he was an asshole, and your going to exploit that to further your career, then do that. Rather she complains about him, makes a documentary, to me, that proves otherwise. I guess that if I was upset with my father and the career that he led, I wouldn't showcase the very "root of the evil." Seems like she was trying to make a buck off of her father, and in the process tried to force some, "my daddy was never there" story to put herself in it. Which is generally a no, no for directors/writers.