There is, one would imagine, plenty of anonymous talent struggling to get attention while people like Carson Daly and Larry King are becoming famous for reasons that remain unclear.  One of the undiscovered is Beanie Andrew, a fifty-something man who latched onto director Stephen Earnhart while he was making a music video in Beanie's stomping ground of Buckaneer Trailer Park in Mayport, Florida (near Jacksonville, which might explain the whole Fred Durst thing).

Through what I can only assume was both an inability to shake the tenacious Beanie and a legitimate curiosity to learn what makes the guy tick, Earnhart made a documentary about the diminutive future star, and the result is Mule Skinner Blues, a film that smacks of American Movie but doesn't come off quite as successfully as that film did.

The similarities are too blatant not to mention, as Movie was about a rural Spielberg wannabe named Mark Borchardt and his attempt to make an improperly pronounced horror film called Cöven, while Blues' Beanie has always dreamt of creating a horror flick of his own.  So after teaming up with local janitor and recent mail-order-bride newlywed Larry Parrot, he crafts what will become the basis for Turn About Is Fair Play, a film about an armless guitar player who turns into a gorilla swamp creature from "pre-history" (laugh if you will, but it's a lot more original than most of the mainstream stuff out there).

The trailer park is packed full of incredibly ambitious people who, right or wrong, believe they're prepared to be The Next Big Thing, whether it's the recently DUI-charged elderly yodeler Miss Jeannie, or dueling drunk guitar players Steve Walker and Ricky Lix.  A neighbor keeps her dead dog in the freezer.  Most of the Buckaneer residents are ex-shrimpers who have found themselves unemployed because of reforms to the industry.  Harmony Korine couldn't write these characters if he tried.

Blues is definitely funny stuff, but it's more of the "laughing at" variety than the "laughing with."  After a while it begins to get a little tedious, because Earnhart's film takes a few serious turns.  Yeah, it's a documentary, but you can't have it both ways – you can either make fun of your subjects or make them sympathetic characters.  I felt bad enough chuckling at Borchardt in Movie, but Beanie makes him look like John Nash. He's clearly not right in the head (imagine a cross between Cotton Hill and Ian Holm's Bilbo Baggins), but if you're into an old guy talking about his lifelong obsession with gorillas and "gettin' down in the mud," Blues is the film for you.

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