Musician, writer, artist and poet, Billy Childish has released over 100 albums, created over 2,000 paintings and published thirty books – and yet the question still remains for most people: Who is Billy Childish?
First time filmmaker Graham Bendel sets out to answer that question in this raw documentary about the man who has influenced the likes of The White Stripes, Patti Smith, Kurt Cobain and Tracey Emin.
Combining concert footage, poetry readings and interviews with the enigmatic man himself, this is a fascinating portrait of one of Britain’s leading cult figures.
‘I never intended to direct or even produce this film,’ says Bendel, who first saw Childish play eighteen years before when he was just twelve years old, ‘I just wanted to see it made. In the end after every conceivable door had been shut in my face, I borrowed my brother’s camcorder and started shooting it myself’. Childish says he had very little to do with the documentary other than telling Graham what the title was to be. ‘My reason for the title was that I noticed most of the interviewees speak of me as if I’m already dead…It’s not my business to stop a kid digging me a grave. But be warned – I won’t get in it and I won’t lie down!’ JvF
