jackassworld

Not to sound like Grandpa Simpson here, but time was back in the ’80s and early ’90s that you had to seriously work for your cult video clips, docs, and flicks. Those of the Interweb/IGS generation will no doubt fail to grasp how difficult this once was, what with the now omnipresent and ridiculous ease of a simple Google search, but for a kid in the hinterlands of the Midwest then you certainly had to do your due diligence to be an anti-social, non-conformist, art weirdo. It was not just a keystroke and click away.

Fifth generation VHS copies of these rarities were often the norm and you didn’t even think about quibbling over the crappy resolution or quality (I still remember a bootleg VHS copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show I’d acquired in 1987 that looked more like an impressionist painting than a film). You were just thrilled to have mined a subcultural gem in a time when most small town video stores tended first and foremost to the entertainment needs of the mainstream blockbuster crowd.

This all changed of course once I moved to progressively bigger (and consequently more progressive) cities, where you could always find at least one decent closet-sized outlet that specialized in carrying cult, schlock, and art films by the likes of Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Warhol, Roger Corman, Errol Morris, Ted V. Mikels, Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters, and more.

One of the more oddball documentaries I eventually ran across was The Dancing Outlaw, featuring a hillbilly by the name of Jesco White from the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. I never thought I would one day meet Jesco, much less witness him dancing before my very eyes, and I gotta say it was kick-ass to add another notch to my cult classic dream belt.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Los Angeles, CA; 2009)

more wild whites:

more wild whites of west virginia on jackassworld