jackassworld

The whole world’s a bottle,
And life’s but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain’t worth a damn.

—Bob Dylan, from the song “Moonshiner”

Yesterday was a sad day indeed. Famed moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton died at the age of 61 (some say 62) at the Parrotsville, Tennessee, home that I’d interviewed him in back in the fall of 2008. Just last month Sutton was sentenced to 18-months in Federal Prison for illegally brewing spirits and possessing a firearm as a felon. He was supposed to start serving that sentence later this week, but that was not to be. He allegedly committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide in an old Ford Fairlane he kept in a barn on his property.

Unfortunately it makes sense, for at his sentencing in February Popcorn told the court that he “would like to die at home and not the penitentiary.” He referenced death a lot as I sat with him last October saying, “I don’t have much time left” and he was “just about a dead man now.” He showed me the casket that he “bought years ago” and  was to be buried in when he passed. He kept it in a spare bedroom in his house along with the shovel to dig his grave and the plastic flowers that were to be laid on top. He even had his gravesite’s footmarker already made and sitting at the bottom of his porch. It read, “Popcorn said fuck you.” I don’t know if I should or shouldn’t but that makes me laugh even now.

I would say Popcorn Sutton appeared to be ripped out of the pages of an Erskine Caldwell novel, but I don’t even think Caldwell could have written a character as authentic and richly eccentric as Sutton. He was a sharp, defiant, and funny old man and now he’s gone. And it’s an understatement to say he won’t be forgotten.

Sincerely and love,

Johnny Knoxville

[Ed. Note: Johnny Knoxville has since posted an update/correction to this article here.]

(Ford Fairlane photo by Storm Taylor; 2009; all other photos by Lance Bangs; 2008)

We‘re in the process of going through the footage shot last fall to find more stories from the life and times of Popcorn Sutton, but in the meantime here’s the original interview conducted by Johnny Knoxville.

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