Arthur Russell documentary has the same spirit as the artist’s music

In the last four years, the music of avant-garde cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, who died of AIDS in 1992, has experienced a renaissance through a series of carefully curated re-releases and fanboys coming out of the woodwork such as LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy. Born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the musician ran away from the Midwest in 1967, briefly detoured to a San Francisco commune before ending up in New York, where he created compositions with Allen Ginsberg and Ernie Brooks from the Modern Lovers, and premiered music by Philip Glass.

Illustrious company aside, Russell was somewhat of a peripheral character in the New York art scene of the '70s and '80s, despite his populist fantasies of creating "Buddhist bubblegum" music, as he once stated to Ginsberg, or his post as director at the Kitchen. Russell, who enjoyed a couple of disco hits (such as "Go Bang!" with the exuberant Lola Love), alienated himself with an insatiable sense of perfectionism but it was also a quality that gained him respect and fascination from his peers.

Matt Wolf's documentary, "Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell," a delicate 71 minutes that explores Russell's prolific musical life, is a testament to the slippery effort of making a movie about someone on the fringes with limited live footage of the artist and only a handful of photographs. Screened at Outfest's Platinum Showcase on July 15, the movie is as much about the characters who occupied Russell's life as it is his incredibly personal cello playing that darted around his folkie-lost-in-the-discothèque voice.

The main characters here are his parents, who might be judged at first glance as the stereotypical Midwestern knobs but who clearly have endless affection for their son and a few regrets that Wolf beautifully captures. And then there's Tom Lee (pictured, left), Russell's partner and inspiration for many years; with a sweet smile and watery blue-gray eye, he rifles through the hundreds of DAT tapes Russell left behind, playfully singing a version he remembers of "Love Is Overtaking Me." These three, along with Brooks, the ultimate, if frustrated, believer, and Ginsberg, who speaks fondly about his collaborator and former roommate in a taped conversation he gave at a memorial for Russell in 1992, create a rich, complicated picture of the musician who was often seen lurking on the edges of dance floors in New York.

Ginsberg's taped compliments aren't the only unusual bit of footage to be found in "Wild Combination." Wolf, 26 and a graduate of NYU, is resourceful and refreshingly open-minded about source material. Several scenes in the film are staged but it's far from the corny dramatic reenactment one can find on, say, "America's Most Wanted." David Mancuso of the Loft is filmed spinning records; a birthday party that could've come from the Midwest in the '60s is staged and shot on Super 8; a man dressed in Russell's typical uniform of jeans and flannel stands on the Staten Island Ferry. It's all to bring the viewer closer to a man who's gone but whose music always contained a shadowy magic.

--Margaret Wappler

"Wild Combination" will be released on DVD in the fall. It also will screen in L.A. again, but a venue isn't set yet. Check back for updates.

[Photos courtesy of Matt Wolf / "Wild Combination"]