Phil Nugent's Favorites:
LOUIE BLUIE (1986)
Terry (Crumb, Ghost World) Zwigoff made his first movie when he got a load of Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, a veteran singer/musician -- he played guitar, fiddle, and mandolin -- and raconteur, then in his mid-seventies, and decided that such a one should have his passage among us mere mortals properly recorded. A natty, courtly hedonist, Armstrong seems to embody the spirit of self-invention and robust folk art at its least genteel and polite whether he's playing comic blues, razzing his buddies, or proudly showing Zwigoff his homemade "encyclopedia of pornography." He may be everything that Zwigoff's later leading man, Robert Crumb, ever really wanted to be; he is definitely from that otherwordly place that the vintage record collector played by Steve Buscemi in Ghost World invokes when Enid asks him if he has any other records like the Skip James version of "Devil Got My Woman" he sold her, and he can only shrug, "There are no other records like that." Armstrong died in 2003 at the age of 93, eight years after releasing his first solo album.
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