Dancin Outlaw

[mr Raffles]

Awesome documentary about the last of the "appalachian mountain dancers" This guy lives in a trailer park, worships Elvis, and does this absurd tap dancing to really bad country music.  He also does Elvis karaoke (using a cb radio thing as a microphone) and argues with his wife, a fat lady in a guns'n'roses t-shirt.  Hard to find, apparently it was on tv in West Virginia for some reason.

[Will]

You're not going to believe this, but I work at the documentary studio where the idea for Dancing Outlaw was originally pitched.  It ended up not being distributed by us, but we were at the beginning.  We have another documentary on the originator of psychobilly music, Hasil Adkins, in which Jesco White's sister gets in a bar fight.

Julian Nitzberg, the producer of Dancing Outlaw, directed that one and worked here at Appalshop for a couple of years.

Whotta coincidence......I met Jesco once....very scary.

[peter johnson]

Surely there must be a way such grand badness can be generally seen by us all?

[Will]

Unfortunately, Dancing Outlaw is currently out of print.  Julien's contract with his distributor ran out and no one else has picked it up.  I myself have a bootlegged copy of it and its sequel (yes! The sequel!  When the first one came out, Rosanne and Tom Arnold saw it, loved it, and invited Jesco to Hollywood to appear on an episode of Rosanne.  It's truly classic.)

You can get The Wild, Wacky World of Hasil Adkins from Appalshop.  It's nearly as good as Dancing Outlaw.

[Abby]

JESCO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jesco Fan Page


Love Jesco!!! It's one of my favorite documentaries. Didn't like the second Jesco as much as the first (the one with Rosanne), but it's still fun as heck. Me and a friend almost hired him to perform at a party a few years back.

I also have the junkyard documentary.

[Will]

You've good taste, Abby....from Jesco to Girdler.....
Yeah, Jesco's bringing in $1000 per performance now, so he's an expensive good time.....Last I heard his brother Dorsey died while demonstrating that the gun in his hand was unloaded by putting it to his head and pulling the trigger.  Guess it was not unloaded after all....Jeez, I used to see him dancing down the road quite often (I grew up in VA, but only about 40 min. from Boone, WVA, where Jesco lives).

[Abby]

I bought my copies of the two Dancing Outlaws through Flower Films (!?!) --- probably about two years ago. Before that, I had a bootleg that featured the first Jesco and the Junkyard film.

Jesco was asking for $800 when we tried to book him. Spilt between two of us, it was pricey, but worth it for what we were doing at the time. He was already booked, though.

I read on his Yahoo fan clubs last year that he's very bitter about how he was portrayed in the documentaries, and he dislikes the director (Jacob Young, is it?). Jesco feels like he got the shaft. I've also read about him pulling guns on the "crew" during shooting. Must have been a lot of fun making those flicks :)

The second Dancing Outlaw felt very forced -- too staged. But in a weird way, the fake quality of the whole thing mirrored what actually happened on Roseanne -- as in, Jesco wasn't accepted on his own terms.

[Will]

Yeah, Jacob Young was the director.  Jesco loved the film when he got noteriety, but as his flash in the pan started to burn out, he decided it was Jacob and Julien's (Nitzberg, the producer) fault.  Insane.

[Abby]

By the way, according to the Flower Film's Website, they ARE still offering the two Dancing Outlaw movies for sale:


Dancing Outlaw


Jesco Goes To Hollywood