Guy Terrifico Is Fantastico

Last night, M'lady rented what she thought was a true-life story of 70's music legend Guy Terrifico. About five minutes into the flick, we realized that The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico was actually a mockumentary, a Spinal Tap-style send-up of the early-70's off-Nashville progressive country rock scene personified by Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, and Gram Parsons (pictured above). Haggard, Kristofferson, and Parsons' former road manager, Phil Kaufman, are in on what's essentially a self-deprecating joke (as are fellow castmembers Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm), and the film, which features a main character not-so-loosely based on Parsons himself, is an absolute fucking blast. Evidently, this film screened at the '05 Toronto International Film Festival, but never saw any sort of sustained theatrical release stateside. I highly recommend this as a DVD rental for anyone fond of the so-called Outlaw sound. And this winter's hotly-anticipated Judd Apatow-John C. Reilly comedy, Walk Hard, promises a more fictionalized reaping of this soil.