Wise blood

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

(2012)

I'm sure I'd seen the guy in a dozen movies before then (well, no: a quick scan of IMDb suggests that the number was only about a half-dozen, though supplemented by lots of TV appearances), but the first time I was ever really aware of Harry Dean Stanton was in Repo Man, of whose place in my cinepsyche I have given a fragmented account. Since then, I've never seen enough of him, notwithstanding his ubiquity, never gotten enough of that cracked-desert-earth face and the weird, sad stories it tells, even when the just-a-couple-more-cigarettes voice is silent.

This is a documentary, I suppose, 'cause what else are you going to call it, but really it's a conversation, with song--an extension of a featurette on the Criterion Collection's Repo Man. Harry Dean remembers, Harry Dean philosophizes, Harry Dean dismisses the interviewer's interpretations, and Harry Dean sings another old song, beautifully (in the same way Harry Dean's face is beautiful). And again, at < 80 minutes, not enough.