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Benjamin Smoke

2000, Movie, NR, 80 mins

Benjamin Smoke: Review

BENJAMIN SMOKE
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Odds are VH1 won't be profiling Georgia musician "Benjamin" anytime soon, so make sure you catch this spooky and moving portrait of this highly unusual artist while you can. Born Robert Dickerson, Benjamin was a gay, HIV+ speed freak who lived out his final days a veritable shut-in in his ramshackle house in the impoverished Atlanta suburb of Cabbagetown. In his day, however, Benjamin was bold enough to don a tutu and front a few bands, including the punky Freedom Puff, the 10-piece-and-counting Opal Foxx Quartet and, ultimately, Smoke. That band's music — a stark, eerily beautiful combination of old-time Americana and growling, strung-out poetry — caught the ear of Benjamin's idol, Patti Smith, who then asked Smoke to open for her own band (R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, whose production company helped produced this film, also counts himself as a fan). It was to be Smoke's finest moment: Benjamin died of liver failure shortly after in early 1999, but Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen's appropriately scrappy documentary is a fitting tribute to a true original who could quip like a trailer park Quentin Crisp and sing with all the tortured, down-and-out lyricism of a latter-day Baudelaire. Using Benjamin's own water-damaged photos, footage of Smoke in action and plenty of interviews shot on bits and pieces of leftover film stock, Cohen and Sillen assemble the craziest of biographical crazy quilts, a surreal and at times harrowing tapestry of a life lived dangling over the abyss. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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