WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT: A Tender Muddying of a Monomyth

WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT opens at Austin Film Society on July 23rd. The July 23rd 7PM, July 24 6PM, and July 25 4PM showings include post-show Q&As with the filmmakers, Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield. Find tickets here.

There are as many ways to film a love letter as there are ways to write a folk song. Sometimes the song calls for a whisky night around a kitchen table with friends rather than a drums-driven recording session; Without Getting Killed or Caught, the new Guy Clark documentary by Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield, matches this mood par excellence.

As I’m sure Guy himself would attest considering his multiple breaks with record labels who forced extra noise on him, the telling of a story is as important, or maybe more, than the story being told. For any devotees of Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, and a whole cadre of outlaw country and Americana musicians/artists/painters who came up together, many of the story beats relayed in this intimate documentary will be familiar. But the way this legendary tale of love and loss, success and yearning, artistic integrity and commercial stardom is spun… there’s the ballad.

The film opens with an aquamarine VW bus waiting, poised for a journey. The doors bounce shut and we see: “somewhere in West Tennessee. November, 1971.” It’s a perfect way to take both the initiate and the novice by the hand, guiding them into a tale that flows between Great American Archetypes and highly specific moments that could only have occurred in a particular place between these figures after a voluminous consumption of booze and after a certain number of days on the road. 

While this is ostensibly a tale of Guy Clark, one of Americana’s most enduring and influential songwriters and performers, I found myself watching it more as a document of a time and a cohort and a way of trying to live in the world. For a certain type of kid who grew up smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap whisky and wine under a busted carport in the dead hot still of a Texas summer; for a certain type of kid who grew up around musicians and artists, some who “made it,” some who didn’t; this movie feels like home. Naturally, here, the stakes are much higher and the names in much brighter lights, but the story often goes to great lengths to bring that familiar feeling into focus: whoever you are, you might be just one cross-country move, one lucky connection, one flash of inspiration, and twenty years of grinding work away from greatness. It’s a dusty red dragon to chase, and you better not let it out of your sight for a minute or it could be gone forever.

Telling the story mostly in Susanna Clark’s words (narrated here by the incomparable Sissy Spacek) is a brilliant, humanizing, game-changing touch. So much of the story’s dynamic push and pull is due to her words; often when something is said with utter certainty on a recording from Guy or in an interview with one of the other musicians that made up their national family, Susanna’s words will offer a counterpoint that needfully muddies the water. This is no monomyth, and it shouldn’t be. Life is never just one thing. The events and feelings relayed in the film are not cohesive in the way living every day in the world isn’t cohesive and is, in fact, often utter fucking chaos. A story only comes together neatly when someone else carelessly tells it or when you lie to yourself. This doc is neither careless nor untrue; it holds up a faceted gem and slowly turns it before you to alternate clear and distorted views, presenting a deeper picture than you would’ve received staring straight on.

Honestly, there’s tons more to explore here about “art” versus “commerce”, gender dynamics in the Americana scene, life imitating art imitating life, creation of myths and archetypes, and ashes in a bronze goat’s ass, but you should see the movie and find out for yourself. “Guy wasn’t in the business of harvesting stardom,” says Rodney Crowell about halfway through the film, “he was in the business of harvesting art.” For my money, for my soul and intention, a Singular Artistic Vision and the will to carry it out are always worth celebrating.