Filmmaker Bill Daniel has contacted me about showing his film “Who is Bozo Texino,” at FL!GHT Gallery in January. Looks like the date is set for January 18th, and 5 dollars. Anybody who has seen me rabidly watch the trains go by and try to read the chalk marking on them will understand just how darn excited I am to be able to show this in the gallery.

OFFICIAL TITLE:

This Spectacular Travel Adventure Faithfully Photographed In Realistic Black And White Film At Considerable Risk From Speeding Freight Trains And In Secret Hobo Jungles In The Dogged Pursuit Of The Impossibly Convoluted And Heretofore Untold History Of The Century-Old Folkloric Practice Known As Hobo And Railworker Graffiti And Chronicling The Absurd Quest For The True Identity Of Railroading’s Greatest Artist Will Likely Amuse And Confound You In Its Sincere Attempt To Understand And Preserve This Mysterious Artform.

####### WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? #######
Collosus of Roads in San FranciscoBozo Texino
Read on for images and statement.

Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film, “Who is Bozo Texino?” — the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and white travelogue — shot entirely on film — tells the mostly-factual account of the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading’s most mysterious artist.

Tour schedule and more info at:
www.billdaniel.net

In 1987 Daniel and his trusty Bolex camera began hanging out in hobo jungles and riding freights across the West, looking for clues to the identity of a strange boxcar graffito. While gathering interviews and discovering clues to the identities of many of the most legendary boxcar artists, Daniel discovered a vast underground folkloric practice that has existed with little notice for over a century. Today these drawings live on as a new breed of hobos have taken to the rails and kept the tradition of “moniker chalking” alive. This artform provides unlikely common ground between mostly conservative railworkers and old school tramps and the kids whose approach includes spray cans and punk lifestyles.

Since completing the film in June last year, Bill Daniel and his film have been on the road, wowing audiences of punks, geezers, folkies, foamers and graffiti toughs all over the nasty ol’ usa. “Who is Bozo Texino?” premiered at Deitch Projects in New York and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. It screened at this year’s Rotterdam festival, and several other European festivals, and has been presented on tour in 90 cities and universities in Canada and the US.

On line reviews:

http://northbankfred.com/p_bill.html

http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/manifesto/

http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/content/view/241/1/

http://www.sfbg.com/39/52/art_marks.html

“Who Is Bozo Texino? is a great American movie, and its greatness is tied up very closely with its American-ness. With this brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled hobo film-maker Daniel places himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie – a fine, long tradition of American artists who look for their inspiration to the marginal, the underclass, the vagabond and the outcast. Nominally a chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a tradition as old as the railroad itself) and the men who create it, Who Is Bozo Texino? soon transcends its narrow subject-matter to become a gloriously rough-edged elegy for an America which is being swept away before our eyes.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of documentaries – even entertaining recent examples like Murderball, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked – Daniel’s film manages a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content, And it does so in consistently accessible style: at first you’re intrigued by the stunning monochrome images captured by his self-effacing, sensitively-handled camera(s); by the startling kineticism of his fluent editing style; by the sheer range of voices, music and sound-effects we hear as he tracks down a series of grizzled hobos and wisdom-dispensing graffiti-’markers.’

Then you realize that, just as these men have always instinctively rejected authority and convention, Daniel has likewise embraced the unorthodox in his style of filmmaking – even down to his choice of title and running-time. Indeed, in less than an hour Daniel manages to say more about life, art, America and the simple joy of filmmaking than most directors manage in decades.” — Neil Young, Neil Young’s Film Lounge

“I am not going to hold back any enthusiasm… it is the best movie I have ever seen.” —Josh from Edmonton

“Bill Daniel’s homegrown epic is as kinetic and raggedly beautiful as the trains he hopped to make it. …a film about freedom as literal passage across the land. Corporations brand things to say they own them, but there are ways in which humans have marked things to say they can’t be owned.” — Jem Cohen

“Seasoned DIYers like film and video artists Vanessa Renwick and Bill Daniel whose “Lucky Bum Film Tour” has crossed the old-fashioned road show with avant-garde film to become a national subculture phenomenon.” — Randy Gragg, The Oregonian

“Daniel and Renwick makes some of the liveliest work on the microcinema circuit, wherein film, video art, and music collide with edgy, confrontational, unpredictable and often exuberant intensity” — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Collosus of Roads at an art show