Director: Stephen Earnhardt
Cast: Beanie Andrew, Miss Jeannie, Larry Parrot
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Mule Skinner Blues proudly bills itself as a story about a man with a gorilla and a dream. The gorilla is actually a cheap costume and the dream is to make a horror film. As an avid fan of both “filmmaking” and “redneck” documentaries, I knew I had to check it out. How can you go wrong with a documentary about trailer park denizens making a horror movie with a ratty gorilla suit?

This project began when music video producer Stephen Earnhardt was in Jacksonville, Florida recruiting extras for a Jim White video. One of the extras was an eccentric old man named Beanie Andrews. Beanie was a singing, dancing, kazoo-playing kook who happened to have a cool old car.  He was glad to put his talents to use in the music video, but this small taste of show business made him want more.

After the film crew was long gone, Beanie got his hands on a video camera and began documenting the residents of his trailer park. He sent these tapes to Earnhardt and they established a correspondence. This correspondence resulted in Earnhardt returning to Jacksonville with a camera crew to help Beanie produce a no-budget horror flick called Turnabout is Fair Play. The film being produced is an E.C. Comics inspired piece of hokum about a murdered blues musician who turns into an ape on a quest to find his severed arm.

Beanie enlists the talents of several of his trailer park comrades who simply have to be seen to be believed. Beanie crew includes: a timid horror fanatic with a mail order bride; an elderly lounge singer who hopes her song “DUI Blues” will be her ticket to the big-time; a loony costume designer who keeps her dead dog on ice. There are also a couple of alcoholic guitar players and chicks with bad dental work involved in the production.

The first two thirds of the film that deal with the creation of the film are a lot of fun. Beanie’s strange charisma and obsession with bringing his vision of “a gorilla rising from the muck” are priceless. As strange and misguided as these people are, there’s something compelling about them. There’s also something about the filmmaking process and the way it throws very different people together in a high pressure situation that will always be interesting.

As the film enters it’s final third, it takes a sharp turn into much harsher and even poignant territory. Basically, a series of tragedies halt the production of the film and send Beanie spiralling into an alcoholic depression that leaves him living in a dirty mattress in the woods. The strange little group of people that he brought together have disbanded and found their own serious problems to deal with. When Earnhardt and his crew return, they find that a lot has changed since production shut down on the little horror film.

Finally, with much post-production help from Earnhardt, Turnabout Is Fair Play is completed. You won’t be surprised to learn that it sucks… however, it doesn’t matter. The screening brings together the friends and enemies that comprised the crew of the film. The finished project, has a powerful, maybe even healing impact on all of them.

Ultimately, Mule Skinner Blues rises about other classics of the redneck genre like Jessco the Dancing Outlaw and Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It becomes a lot more than an excuse to laugh at rednecks. Instead, it makes a powerful statement about the redemptive power of creativity. These people with all their weaknesses and flaws, just want to “rise out of the muck” and create something meaningful… and that’s nothing to laugh at.

Review by Christopher Sharpe.

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