biopic: Leadbelly (1976)

Subject: leadbelly biopic
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 01:53 PM

some time in the 1970's there was a biopic made about Leadbelly. Did anyone catch this or get a video, or buy the album - has it made it to dvd.
in the early days of satellite tv it was shown a few times in the early hours of the morning, but nobody I knew was capable of videoing it.

I've always had a hankering to see this film, even if it stinks, I feel it was an all right concept

any information gratefully received!

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: fat B****rd
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 02:17 PM

You can find it on various movie websites. In my opinion (AND IT IS ONLY MY OPINION !!) it's crap. By the law of averages it'll come round again, so watch and see. ATB from the fB.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Nerd
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 02:23 PM

Yeah I caught it once on late night TV. Not a great flick, not that accurate either. But the guy who played Leadbelly was OK.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:04 PM

HERE is a little poop on the movie. I checked Blockbuster and they list it, but say it's not available for rent or purchase. I got it from the Seattle Public Library, so if you have a fairly large library nearby, that may be a place to check.

I took it for what it was, enjoyed it, and thought it was actually a pretty good movie. Hardly accurate, but then when I was a kid, I saw a lot of movies like A Song to Remember, which was supposedly a biopic about Chopin escaping from Poland and giving concerts in Paris to raise money to drive the Russians out, and Song of Sheherazade, presumably about Rimksy-Korsakov's adventures when he was a cadet in the Russian navy, courting a Spanish beauty in Morocco, and trying to write music at the same time. They were accurate only in the broadest sense—that these were real people, the story followed the general curve of their lives, and some of what they depicted was accurate—but with a lot of Hollywood goat-feathers thrown in for the sake of sheer story-telling.

Leadbelly is much the same, but what makes all three of these movies good is that they are packed wall-to-wall with the music of their protagonists.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Nerd
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:10 PM

Wow! That imdb page reveals that there was a character in the movie called Dicklicker. I didn't notice THAT when they played it on TV!

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:13 PM

ANd here I thought biopic meant "myopic in both eyes"!! :>))

A

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:15 PM

i never held a mans profession against him. In some schools the careers advice isn't what it should be.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: GUEST,jennifer
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:18 PM

Ha! I'm not alone, I thought until recently that the word was bi-O-pic and meant a close look at something, rather than BIO-pic as in biography. Further misunderstandings... misled pronounced mizzled and meaning sort of puzzled, int-RAV-enous rather than intra-VEN-ous meaning a way of feeding somebody if they're not hungry... comes of reading too much and not talking to people.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Little Robyn
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:28 PM

As well as Dicklicker there's someone called Sugar Tit! I don't see any mention of Alan Lomax, though John is there.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 03:31 PM

dicklicker is fairly unambiguous though. hard to believe he knew somebody with that name and it didn't make it into a song....

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Mark Ross
Date: 11 Jun 04 - 11:27 AM

I do believe there is a song mentioned somewhere in one of the books by Lomax, or about that era, called DICKLICKERS HOLLER.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jun 04 - 11:35 AM

I don't suppose the lyrics would be suitable for publication....


A

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Jun 04 - 11:41 AM

Well, there was certainly a Leadbelly song called Dick's Holler. I think Dicklicker's Holler is stretching credulity a bit far.

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Jun 04 - 02:43 PM

oh come now surely somebody remembers the old Dorset folksong:-

Oi am the village dicklicker
And my name is Sid
My brother he's the arselicker
We does it for a quid

Subject: RE: leadbelly biopic
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 03:57 PM

Check Leadbelly Foundation for the the title Dick Licker's Holler. Hmmm its THERE!