Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt

Film Festival Showings & Theatrical Screenings

"Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling.
 It's like the difference between being broke and being poor."
                                                                                                - Townes Van Zandt


Townes Van Zandt, subject of the new documentary,
"Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt"
by Margaret Brown.

Palm Pictures Gets Townes Van Zandt Doc, "Be Here to Love Me"

FILM TITLE:

 Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
Programme: Real to Reel
Director: Margaret Brown
Country: USA
Year: 2004
Language: English
Time: 99 minutes
Film Types: Colour/HDCAM

Production Company: Rake Films
Executive Producer: Chris Mattsson, Paul Stekler, Louis Black
Producer: Margaret Brown, Sam Brumbaugh
Cinematography: Lee Daniel
Editor: Michael Taylor, Karen Skloss, Don Howard
Sound: Bob Kellough, Tom Hammond
Music: Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett
Principal Cast: Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle

A new doc about Townes Van Zandt that premiered earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival has been acquired by Chris Blackwell's Palm Pictures. The company plans to release Margaret Brown's "Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt" in theaters during the middle of next year, followed by a DVD release.

Van Zandt, who died in 1997, was a country/folk music artist who released dozens of albums dating back to the 1960s. The new film includes, among others, Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Guy Clarke and Kris Kristofferson.

"This is a fantastic documentary and a moving portrait of an important artist, said Palm's David Koh in a statement. "Palm is proud and privileged to distribute it and to work closely with Margaret Brown on the release. We want to be known as one of the premiere go-to labels for music driven projects, and 'Be Here to Love Me' is another great step in that direction." Among the recent Palm acquisitions and releases are "Dig!," "Scratch," "1 Giant Leap," and "Tom Dowd & the Language of Music," as well as the Directors Label series, featuring the music videos of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham.

David Koh, Palm Pictures' Head of Acquisitions & Production negotiated the deal with Micah Green from Cinetic Media, representing the filmmakers and producers. Margaret Brown and Sam Brumbaugh produced the film, and it was executive produced by Chris Mattson, Paul Stekler and Louis Black.

by Eugene Hernandez

- Article by Sean Farnel

Steve Earle offered to "stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots" to declare him the world's greatest songwriter. In concert, Lucinda Williams often dedicates "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" to him. His songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as Emmylou Harris and The Meat Puppets. In other words, the late Townes Van Zandt was a songwriter's songwriter, the kind of artist who is always more famous dead than alive.

That Townes is so achingly present in this tender documentary portrait owes much to Austin-based filmmaker Margaret Brown's feel for his art and œuvre, expressed with an elegant assembly of lively archival footage and heartfelt interviews. Fans of Van Zandt's music will be pleased to find that the songs are at home here, impressively haunting this evocative biography. For those of us slackers new to the music and to the man, they are a revelation: sad and beautiful and perfect.

Born into wealth, but oblivious to it, Townes was an outsider from the get-go. An itinerant youth - Texas, Colorado, Montana - prefaced life as a troubadour, the urge, he says, toward "blowing everything off," to "get a guitar and go." Clinical depression, for which as a teen he endured months of shock therapy, steered the ragged course, as did a long road of dissolution from drug and alcohol abuse.

Having set out with "some kind of vague notion of making it," Townes eventually had a hit, the Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard cover of "Pancho and Lefty." The royalty cheques were welcome, but this mainstream cameo seems to have been awkward for him and there's tangible discomfort and detachment from it all. Had Townes begun to question if we got it, if we ever would, if it even mattered?


Margaret Brown was born in Mobile, Alabama and studied at Brown University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she won the Nestor Almendros Award for excellence in cinematography. She has directed several short films and has also worked as a camera assistant. Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (04) is her first feature as director.