SEARCHING FOR THE
WRONG EYED JESUS
Year: 2003
USA: Shadow Entertainment
Cast: Jim White
Director: Andrew Douglas
Country: USA
USA: 82 mins
USA Release Date: 13 July 2005 (Limited Release)
Synopsis
"Yes and there are projects for the dead and there are projects for the living... though I must confess sometimes I get confused by that distinction..."
—Jim White, "Still Waters"
SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG EYED JESUS is an attempt to answer two simple questions:
Why does so much music and writing come out of this place?
What are the elements that come together to make it so stimulating for artists?
SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG EYED JESUS is a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the South. 'Alt' Country singer Jim White takes his white-trash muscle car through a gritty terrain of churches, prisons, truck stops, biker bars and coal mines. Writer Steve Haisman says we were "trying to pin down what it is about this baffling place that inspires musicians and writers. This whole area was so fascinating - somehow it was a raw image of ourselves, or at least something we've lost sight of or forgotten. Our own world seems so sophisticated and so devouring, it assimilates everything but is at the same time so lacking in a certain content.... We suspected the Southern Church and the internal conflict with, shall we say, secular impulses, was somehow central to the creative process, and this certainly seemed true of Jim's music."
This is a journey through a very real contemporary Southern America, a world of marginalised white people and their unique and intense homemade culture. Along the way are roadside encounters with present-day musical mavericks including the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, David Eugene Edwards and David Johansen; old time banjo player Lee Sexton; Rockabilly and mountain Gospel churches - and novelist Harry Crews telling grisly stories down a dirt track.
Everybody has a story in some form, almost invariably of sudden death, sin or redemption - yet all transformed by the characteristic grim humour and natural eloquence of the Southern imagination.
And all the while, a strange Southern Jesus looms in the background.
