Phil Cambliss movies 'discovered' by cognoscenti

By JOHN BEIFUSS
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Born and raised in a tiny Arkansas community named Locust Bayou, former security guard Phil Chambliss is the filmmaking equivalent of a folk artist.

For 30 years he's been cranking out crude, homemade short films to entertain friends and family, never assuming they'd be seen by anyone outside southern Arkansas.

But Chambliss _ like a backwoods blues singer or a rural self-taught painter of Bible scenes _ has been discovered by the cognoscenti, or at least by those with a taste for the weird, funny and expressively personal.

On Oct. 25, Chambliss will make his second-ever airplane trip for a screening of his short movies during the 50th annual London Film Festival.

Recently, he was the hit of the ninth annual Indie Memphis Film Festival, a two-hour drive from his East Camden, Ark., home. There, his films were viewed by an appreciative crowd that included director Craig Brewer ("Hustle & Flow"), actress Joey Lauren Adams ("Chasing Amy") and actor Ray McKinnon ("Deadwood"). The program was titled: "Phil Chambliss: Auteur from Arkansas."

"I don't know how to spell the word, but I think the word is 'astounded,' " said Chambliss, 53. "I never dreamed that any of my films would be shown in Memphis or anywhere. That wasn't my ambition."

Compelled by a desire he can't quite explain, the Chambliss painstakingly writes, funds, directs, shoots and edits his films himself; he also writes the music and creates the credits. He's finished 30 films since he began in 1975 when he bought his first home movie camera.

His wife wasn't happy with that purchasing decision, but Chambliss said he was pursuing a lifelong dream.

"I was a great fan of an actor called Lee Van Cleef," he said. "Course, where I'm from, we had hogs in the woods, wild hogs, and we'd ride horses, and we didn't have VCRs. I said, 'We got horses here, we got guns, someday I'm gonna buy a movie camera, we're gonna make Westerns and I'm gonna be the bad guy.'"

Chambliss doesn't play a bad guy, but he does appear briefly in his "Film No. 19," titled "Shadows of the Hatchet-Man" (1982), a 26-minute black-and-white cross between Andy Milligan and Guy Maddin that transforms South Arkansas into a comically eerie David Lynchland. The unintentional rawness _ the unconvincing amateur performances, the dubbed dialogue, the ill-timed edits, the distressed and grainy condition of the print itself _ adds to the hypnotic impact.

Other Chambliss shorts include "The Devils-Helper" (1995), a comic tale of ex-cons who encounter a satanic figure near a deer hunter's stand, and "The Mr. Visit Show" (2002), in which a reporter's interview with the owner of a day care center for birds degenerates into violence.

Are these odd narratives supposed to be symbolic? Do his films contain recurring themes or any particular message?

"I never went to film school and I don't really understand that kind of talk," he said.

Yet Chambliss also has been invited film festivals in Nashville and faraway venues as the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Chambliss _ who retired in February from his job as an Arkansas Highway Department security guard _ said locals both mock and enjoy his work. "At least every other time I'm in Wal-Mart, I'll run into somebody who'll say, 'Hey, we saw "Pink Christmas" at so-and-so's house.' "

Chambliss said his movies are not supposed to fall into the category of "so bad they're good."

"I'm directing them the best I can. I do a lot of re-dos, but they're not good actors."