“Serendipitous Connections” | Isaac Gale, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
A wildly entertaining and fittingly unconventional documentary, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted celebrates convention-defying singer, songwriter, and record producer Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, one of the great cult figures of 20th-century American music whose singular voice and ideas have shaped the history not merely of soul music, but of country, hip-hop and a dozen other genres.
In the film, the titular artist and his “bachelor pad of aging musicians,” including the charming Guitar Shorty and lovably quirky Moogstar, navigate the tumultuous music industry, transform their home into an artistic playground and invite fellow musicians like Jenny Lewis and John Prine and superfans Mike Judge, Johnny Knoxville and Tom Kenny to play in their unique musical sandbox…and paint Swamp Dogg’s pool.
Bursting with infectious personality and stoner energy, this one-of-a-kind documentary—directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson—will screen Monday, May 5, 4:30 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre, as part of this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival.
Ahead of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screening at the festival, Gale graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, his individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I studied visual arts in college, and ended up with a BFA in filmmaking. It was more of an artistic medium for me to play around with, than a career I was pursuing. I always played in bands around Minneapolis, so when some of my friends had music careers that were taking off, they needed music videos or someone to come on tour with a camera, so I started doing that. Almost 20 years later, all of these things are colliding in this documentary.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
In 2017, we went out to Swamp Dogg’s house to make a music video. Meeting him in person, and hanging out with Moogstar and Guitar Shorty for the weekend, we left totally inspired. They’re such unique characters, with endless hilarious stories and some brilliant music. When we were shooting with Swamp at our friend Jesse’s painting studio, he asked if we knew anyone who painted pools. It all just clicked, film title first.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
A Poem Is A Naked Person by Les Blank. Around five and a half years into making our film, with most of it already shot, we sat down to watch some documentaries for inspiration before we began to edit. We had our minds blown by all these serendipitous connections. Right away, it opens with a pool being painted! Studio A at Sound Emporium in Nashville appears in both films, completely unchanged. It was wild to see Leon Russell making music there 50 years earlier in the same room where we had filmed. There’s a scene in our film where Moogstar is taken on an adventure to visit Evel Knievel’s grave. It turned out the person who brought him there and documented it was Harrod Blank, Les Blank’s son. This a hyper-condensed version, there are so many more connections. We were looking for cosmic permission to finish our film the way we wanted to, and A Poem Is A Naked Person gave it to us.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
Swamp Dogg’s house in Los Angeles is the heart of the film. It’s at once an artistic playground, a time capsule, and a spaceship, disguised as an average house in the suburbs. If someone else lived there, you might not look twice; maybe the neighbors have no idea what goes on inside. But Swamp Dogg is so incredibly inviting, and he’s created this wonderful space for these prolific artists to live and work and create magic together.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
I can’t think of one particular experience, but going to the movies has just always been a big part of my life. My brother and I would visit my dad in Washington, D.C. over school breaks and watch every movie that was out at the time. In the ‘90s, I’d go by myself to the Uptown and Lagoon Theaters in Minneapolis and see whatever was playing on the weekends. It was an amazing time in independent film, and they’d let me into everything, even though I was a kid. My first job, at 15, was in a movie theater. All comedies are funnier in a movie theater, so I’m super grateful to Magnolia for giving our film a theatrical run, and I really hope we can get some people in the seats to laugh together, before it becomes a completely forgotten shared experience.