The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack (2000)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Rambling Jack Elliott could not have earned himself a more fitting nickname. Lord, he was born a rambling man, but a man who rambles too much is a man that you can't pin down. He was a folk singer, a man whose soul could whip up the most heartfelt music you ever heard, yet he never seems to have had a commitment to anything.The documentary "The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack" is very much about what kept his career from taking off. Directed and narrated by his daughter Aiyana – from his fourth marriage – the film is a personal essay mostly from her point of view about what it was like growing up the child of a man who never seemed to have an organized thought in mind. In his music, as in life he rambled and rambled and rambled.In the 50s and early 60s he came up alongside Woody Guthrie and a budding young singer named Robert Allen Zimmerman (who you know as Bob Dylan). He knew them both well, but somehow those two had a better plan in life and in their music. During a tribute concert for Guthrie following his death in 1967, Dylan was a headliner but Elliott was left off the program. As time went on, he would watch both men become legends, while he became a footnote, seen only as a meager thread between the end of Guthrie and the beginning of Dylan. Reading a review of his own career, Elliott – still alive at 82 - blows the paper a satisfied raspberry.He was born in Brooklyn in 1931 as Elliott Charles Adnopoz, a doctor's son who ran away from home at an early age to join up with the rodeo. He had a deep passion for the cowboy life and, despite his origins made his own image as the kind of folk singer whose music was the cry of the wounded. He rambled from one thing to the next and just kept right on rambling. That was the problem, the rambles kept him from finding a foothold in the industry. Late in the film, one of his managers laments that "I respected his talent, but he was too disorganized." We can see that early on in a clip from his appearance on The Johnny Cash Show as Elliott befuddles his fellow players – and even Cash himself – as he can't quite decide on which key to begin.It's hard to know where to stand with this documentary because you become so fixated on the fact that it was Elliott that killed his own career. He rambled on and rambled on, never finding a place for himself. By the end, you wonder if he liked frustrating those around him, or if his mind blew from one thing to the next just like his music.

"Ballad Of Ramblin' Jack Elliott" (2000) documentary: Wonderful portrait of a '60's era rebel and artist of high gifts who never quit the 60's...and he's 81 years old in 2012.The cult movie titled "My Dinner With Andre" (1981) poses the question "What if the 1960's were the high point of civilization, and it's all downhill after that, from now on?" Well, maybe it is.People who want to see a portrait of a true 1960's person with the wonderful mentality of those long departed times should see this documentary movie.Ramblin Jack Elliott was (and is...still living at age 81 in 2012 as this is written) a true 1960's person, and was before the 1960's even started. He started his 1960's life in the 1940's when he ran away from home to become a cowboy, and later became the protégé and house mate of Woody Guthrie in Queens (NYC), New York before Woody lost his health.See the Wikipedia biog article about Ramblin Jack Elliott to learn about what is shown in this wonderful documentary, made by his daughter, Aiyanna Elliott.She's a predictably bitchy radical feminist, and so was her mother....no wonder Ramblin Jack spent little time with either of them over the years, and no wonder he apologizes very little for his avoidance, non-presence in their lives. Dreadful women, and the documentary shows that, though that is not supposed to be the point of what is revealed.Jack Elliott is a wonderful person and a gifted artist. This movie shows that.He was part of the 1960's and never left it, never gave up.....is still out there "doin" it.I've never seen such a terrific portrait of a 1960's person as in this documentary. Another worth seeing, which shows the same thing (a 60's guy who never left the 1960's, even in his old age) is the documentary titled "George Harrison: Living In The Material World" (2011).Neither Elliott nor Harrison were political....both were musicians, primarily, and the music in both docs is wonderful to hear and remember, especially for those who were there for the 1960's and remember it well, and miss it.--------------- Written by Tex Allen, SAG actor. Email Tex at [email protected]. Information about Tex Allen movie credits, biog facts, and interests at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen.

This was very informative and enjoyable, but one problem. I would have to agree about the teller getting in the way of the story. But more importantly, Jack's daughter complains about the lifestyle her father lead. One that left a gap in their relationship. The typical he was never there story etc. My problem is the fact that she's making a documentary about this gap. The whole premise is not very genuine. I mean if he was an asshole, and your going to exploit that to further your career, then do that. Rather she complains about him, makes a documentary, to me, that proves otherwise. I guess that if I was upset with my father and the career that he led, I wouldn't showcase the very "root of the evil." Seems like she was trying to make a buck off of her father, and in the process tried to force some, "my daddy was never there" story to put herself in it. Which is generally a no, no for directors/writers.

Until I saw this film, I'd never seen Jack Elliott "in concert." I've seen Dylan, many times; see Arlo Guthrie once a year when he plays Harrisburg, Pa., with his daughter Sara; saw Dave Van Ronk when he played here a couple of years ago with Rosemary Sorrels; never saw Jack Elliott. Until now.And what a concert. No back-up singers; no jazz; no fancy lighting; no special effects. Just Jack Elliott, playing and singing and talking about his life and his times and his adventures, picking away on his guitar for punctuation, singing deep and throaty about where's he's been, who he is and making fun at a lot of ideas about what other people think he means. No apologies; no excuses; a living tribute to what Henry Ford II once said: never complain, never explain.It's hard to believe that this film was made by his daughter. It's a true, genuine, open statement about a man who has lived his life with absolutely no plan in mind about what he would do or say or where his choices would take him or what effect it would have on other people or things, but never hesitated to follow his heart, follow his curiosity, outrun his shadow with every step. Pick up and leave; pick up and go; never look back and never let go. Never stop working, never stop playing, take every breath and every encounter and every day and tell other people about it on a guitar. Invite them in for dinner and some stories while sitting on a barstool. That's Jack Elliott in concert. It almost sounds as if his life has been selfish and self-serving, but this film clearly makes the distinction between living a life of greed, which is what drives selfish people, and having a sense of self, which is what Jack Elliott has worked on and what he devoted himself to and has shared with us through his music. He meant no harm; he has always just been looking.The film evolves into a masterpiece of objectivity despite the potential for the obvious pitfall of a daughter trying to understand her father and asking the whole world to watch with her while she searches. What courage. She's made of the same stuff her father is and this "road trip" they took together is made singularly more sweet because they invited all of us along with them.Folk music is all about the stories, recording people and events musically, in common terms and without the frills, just straight up stories. And this film tells a great story and in the telling, has itself become a story.My sons and I are going to a Bob Dylan concert on August 16th. I'm bringing a tape of this film to them to watch before the concert. Music helps us understand who we are, where we've been and where we're headed. Having seen this film, I'm going to listen to Dylan with a whole new set of ears. And I've been listening to him for forty years.This film is an important guidepost in the history of American folk music because it gives us the life's work and "ramblings", up front and on a personal level, of a true American folk legend.