The first time I met Mamie White she was on acid and broke up a three woman cat fight during a documentary I was shooting. The second time I met Mamie she was also on LSD and told me I had to come to her birthday party because she was going to have a cake “with tits and a pussy on it;” never one to say no to cake, I took her up on the offer. At the party, I met her brother Jesco. His jailhouse tattoos made me a bit nervous, but after talking to him, I saw the poetic beauty that the bad ass tattoos were hiding. A week later, I returned with a camera and shot the footage that led to the cult classic documentary Dancing Outlaw, which exposed the world to Jesco White and inspired songs by artists as diverse as the “Kentucky Headhunters,” “Big & Rich,” “Live” and Hank Williams III.
Eighteen years later, Johnny Knoxville approached me about returning to Boone County to make a documentary about the rest of the White family. Knowing that the Whites seemed to breed the most hilarious, outrageous and extroverted people I had ever met, I decided to follow multiple generations of the family to see if I could figure out whether certain White family tendencies (including their love of sex, drugs, and crime) were learned or genetically imprinted.
The Whites represent a part of America the media avidly avoids. Poor and with no ability to buy into the American dream (or interest in buying into mainstream values), they are the part of our country that is too often demonized or stereotyped. With this film, I set out to represent the Whites for what they truly are - a people who embody the original pioneer spirit- the settlers who left Europe not for opportunity but just to be left alone to cause as much trouble as they could. This is a portrait of American “badassdom” at its best.
- Julien Nitzberg
(photo by Jack Parker)
