Archive for the ‘Jesco White’ tag
‘Wild and Wonderful Whites’ gets Blount County screening
Back in November, we caught up with local boy Robb “Storm” Taylor, a Heritage High School grad (class of ‘85) who’s been working for the past several years on a documentary of Jesco White, the famous “dancing outlaw” of West Virginia.
First featured in a PBS documentary in 1991, White grew to — and into — something of a rural legend: a hard-living, hard-drinking backwoods hillbilly who carries on the tradition of mountain dancing, a mix of clog and tap that’s native to Appalachia. Taylor’s documentary — “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia” — raised White’s profile even more, and after being featured at a number of prestigious film festivals around the country, it’s getting a proper screening here in East Tennessee.
(Click here to watch the trailer. Or you can click here to rent and watch it online.)
It’ll be shown on Friday, June 4, at “The Shed” at Smoky Mountain Harley Davidson, 1820 W. Lamar Alexander Parkway in Maryville. It’s a limited-seating event — only $100 tickets will be sold. Those cost $15; get them here.
Despite his various ventures, Taylor has remained a Blount County resident. While at UT, he was part-owner of The Underground, a dance club where he served as deejay. During that time, he befriended P.J. Clapp, a South-Doyle high graduate who would go on to stardom as Johnny Knoxville. From there, he did some traveling with and production work for the MTV show that Knoxville made famous — “Jackass.” He had an idea for his own program, and after returning to Maryville to work in real estate and development, his idea was turned into a program on the Turner South network. “Yokel” ran for a season before Fox acquired Turner South and slowly killed the network.
Johnny Knoxville serves as producer for the White documentary; in addition to that, Taylor has recently launched a new pop culture publication, One Eighty Magazine.
I ran into him Friday at “The Shed,” and he said The Whites will likely be making the trip down from West Virginia to attend the June 4 screening.
Check out Storm’s shout-out on the “Jackass World” website, as well as the Facebook page for One Eighty Magazine.
Local folks, entertainment accomplishments
How cool is this??? I wish I’d had a teacher like this when I was in high school. I received this e-mail last night from Lea McMahan, formerly of Blount County and a Heritage High alum. It’s too cool not to share.
Hi. My name is Lea McMahan and I’m a theater teacher at Farragut High School. I grew up in Blount County (Wildwood) and graduated from Heritage High School in ‘86.
This semester my advanced theater students and I decided to produce a movie instead of doing a spring play. We decided on an old-school horror movie -zombies, to be exact. Six of my students wrote the 32 page script. Then we filmed it – now we are in editing. We will premiere our movie on April 24 & 25 on the Farragut High School campus.
Would you please print one of the photos I’ve attached for publicity purposes? My students and I have worked so hard on this project & we would love to have an audience to view it!
Most awesome, Leah. Congrats! I hope you handed out Max Brooks’ “World War Z” as assigned reading!
In other “local folks do good” news, got an e-mail from Blount County boy Rob “Storm Taylor, whom some of you may know from his days as a Knoxville deejay and from TV. (He hosted “Yokel,” which aired on Turner South for a season or so.) Lately, he’s been hard at work on a new film, producing “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.” It’s a documentary being made under the MTV banner about “Dancing Outlaw” Jesco White, and it seems to be going places, Storm told us — he’s taking it to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, taking place at the end of the month, and he’s got a sweet 9 p.m. slot on Saturday, April 25, to show it. Congrats, Storm!