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“One of our Biggest Challenges Was Painting the Pool”: Isaac Gale on Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson’s Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is a gonzo doc that perfectly reflects its trio of carpe diem stars — fun-loving musicians who reside in a bachelor pad in the hedonistic San Fernando Valley (aka the capital of porn). That Swamp Dogg, Guitar Shorty and Moogstar also happen to be in the AARP demographic (two of the three octogenarians) only adds to the unconventionality of it all.
As does the filmmakers’s choice to forego the usual biopic route, which they clearly could have taken. The titular star, born with the far more staid name Jerry Williams, has spent the past 65 years as a singer and songwriter, performer and producer (and A&R man), earning him revered cult status in the music industry. Indeed, Swamp’s also been called “the soul genius time forgot,” though the OG Dogg probably couldn’t care less about being “forgotten” — he’s too busy jamming with his friends and hanging by the pool with “neighbors,” fans like Johnny Knoxville and Mike Judge who swing by unannounced. (And, yes, that’s the pool that’s being painted.)
Instead we’re treated to personal reflections and heartfelt praise from Dr. Jeri Williams (Swamp’s neurologist daughter) along with a series of gloriously batshit scenes: an infomercial for Swamp Dogg’s cookbook “If You Can Kill It I Can Cook It” (1-866-DOG-FUD); Guitar Shorty killing it on “The Gong Show”; Moogstar relaying a goofy tale, rendered as a Scooby Doo cartoon, about visiting Evel Knievel’s grave with a group of strangers after a gig that develops into something much more poignant. (And also weirder as an opera singer bursts into song, and a naked lady cavorts in a waterfall at McDonald’s.)
Just prior to the theatrical release of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted (May 2nd in LA, May 9th in NYC), Filmmaker caught up with director-writer Gale to learn all about the years-long collaboration and cinematic celebration. As well as the film’s charismatic protagonist whose secret to life is, “Overall, just be cool. And it’s also fun just being yourself. That’s fun like a motherfucker. But you got to find yourself.” (Here’s hoping for a Tao of Swamp Dogg sequel.)
Filmmaker: You noted in your directors’ statement that “this film has been a labor of love for over six years,” which made me curious about the production itself and how structured it might have been. How much time was actually spent shooting with Swamp Dogg and his roommates? What was off limits to the camera? What boundaries were set?
Gale: We began filming in 2018 with the poolside conversations and initial interviews with the housemates. Just getting a feel for the place and how everyone handled being in front of the camera. It really helped that Ryan and Swamp Dogg already had a friendship and musical collaboration going back a couple years earlier. Nothing ever seemed to be off limits to us, but I also think the style of film we were making wasn’t trying to be invasive in any way.
The filming itself was definitely loose, and that was a purposeful aesthetic. We had some ideas as to what we wanted to capture but we were also open to any surprises. And that led to some great moments. All told it’s hard to say exactly how much time was spent with Swamp at the house — quite a bit.
There is a heavy archival element in the film, and it took us awhile to figure out how large the scope of it was. There were days spent digging through Swamp’s closets full of tapes, photos and all sorts of random stuff. That really opened up the film in totally new ways. It gave us a real feeling that we should pursue the project becoming a feature-length doc. Whenever we could find a way to go to LA and check in on the house, whenever there was more music being made, we tried to be there. So we continued filming on and off until the fall of 2022.
Filmmaker: The film seems to have almost a “potluck” aesthetic, with the visuals and sound design as varied and unpredictable as Swamp Dogg’s musical career (and Swamp Dogg himself). So what informed your artistic choices? Was the process a collective effort? Something that was pre-planned or developed organically?
Gale: I think the artistic choices are fully inspired by Swamp Dogg himself: His album covers, his personality, his humor. Sometimes we were able to put together a shoot for a scene that was more polished, but a lot of the time we were as scrappy and DIY as we needed to be. There wasn’t anyone checking in on what we were up to, so we followed the Swamp Dogg compass and felt free to try out ideas.
“Potluck” is a really great descriptor! Everybody who appears in the film, and everybody who worked on this film, are friends or friend-of-friends. They all came to Swamp Dogg’s pool party and brought their famous dish, and all the dishes somehow fit together on a plastic folding table.
My friend Joe Midthun came in to do the hand-painted traditional animation that illustrates Moogstar’s stories. He lives two blocks from me and takes care of my cats when we’re gone. Then there were our good friends Seth Rosetter and Molly Kroeten. Seth’s a musician and coder, Molly a brilliant comic artist and designer. Seth came to Minneapolis for a week and helped us build the datasets and set up the entire process for the psychedelic image flow in the intro of the film. Molly made a bunch of graphics for the doc. It goes on and on, the entire credits of our film really.
It was an eclectic crew that came together in an organic way. (And it worked. We all still like each other!) Ryan and I had an overall vision of what the film could be, but everyone played a unique role in filling in the various parts. We hope the fun we had making the film proves infectious to the viewer. That certainly seems to be the case so far.
Filmmaker: There’s also a running motif of celebrity “neighbors” stopping by to sit and chat with Swamp by the pool (another motif), serving as prompts down memory lane. So how did you come up with this idea? How did you decide who to cast?
Gale: The idea for the film came after a music video shoot that Ryan, our co-director David McMurry, and I did in 2017 for the song “I’ll Pretend” off Swamp Dogg’s Love, Loss & Autotune album. The first thing we shot was Swamp sitting at the edge of his dried up, broken down pool. During that trip we heard him asking our friend Jesse Willengbring, a gallery-represented fine art painter, if he knew anyone who painted pools. (He’d apparently asked him several times before as well.)
On our way to the airport from that shoot, we felt inspired by Swamp and the house. We really just wanted to keep hanging out with Swamp Dogg and hear more stories. The whole thing sort of popped into view, title first: Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted.
The film plays around with time, the structure is free flowing. The pool is the anchor point to reality. We could spin off into any story thread, back or forward in time, go down wormholes that don’t feel real, and come back to the pool being painted. We tried our best to keep the guys in the same outfits, so that the pool painting seemed to take place all at once. (It really took around five years. We came back and did a shoot, and Swamp had lost a little weight, and we noticed in the edit that his hat fit totally differently.)
Everyone who appears in the film is a friend or fan of Swamp Dogg’s. We hadn’t done very much research, and only knew that Swamp Dogg had produced and recorded some amazing music. So we would send people to sit at the table and just talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. If it got awkward we would try to throw out a prompt, but it really never got that awkward because Swamp is such a pleasure to talk to. He’s constantly setting up a punchline that takes you by surprise. He’s a great storyteller. I think everyone involved just really wanted to be there. I hope that feeling comes through in the film.
Filmmaker: What were some of the challenges you faced, both logistically and emotionally?
Gale: One of our biggest challenges was painting the pool. It needed a lot of work, and we could only really guess whether it would be a functioning swimming pool at the end and not some kind of chlorinated paint soup.
After it was repaired, and Jesse finished painting it the first time in 2018, we hired someone that told us we should seal it. They put extra layers of sealant over the mural for protection. The sealant destroyed the entire painting — it turned white and disappeared. It was a pretty big blow, that seemed to be in line with other world events, and we weren’t able to get back there to paint it again until 2022.
That passage of time was both logistically and emotionally difficult. I’ve never worked on a project that has taken this long before, so keeping the subjects and ourselves excited and convinced that it was still happening was a big challenge. There were a lot of plans that were ruined by the pandemic. We couldn’t go out to the house for a year. John Prine passed away in 2020. Guitar Shorty had been in and out of the hospital, and he passed away in 2022. We knew there was a ticking time bomb at the heart of the project, that Swamp Dogg was going to turn 80 that summer, and we needed to find a way no matter what to finish the movie.
Filmmaker: Swamp Dogg and Moogstar both seem to be quite involved in the promotion of the film, which makes me curious to hear what their hopes are now that it’s being theatrically released. Do they plan to play concerts? Sell cookbooks? What’s next for all of you?
Gale: Swamp Dogg and Moogstar have been playing amazing shows, most recently at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. The band is crushing it right now at every show I’ve seen. There looks to be plans for them to keep touring, sometimes in conjunction with screenings of the film. I hope the doc helps get more Swamp Dogg albums into record collections everywhere.
The cookbook will be released by Pioneer Works Press a few weeks after the film’s theatrical premiere. That’s been so fun to be a small part of for us, to watch it all come together in this beautiful book. There will be a full episode of the cooking show that is presented as an infomercial in the film.
As for the rest of the film team, hopefully we can keep the band together for more projects. I’m so proud of everyone’s work on this, I can’t really imagine working with anyone else. But if this is the last film ever because the world ends or something, I won’t be shocked. I’ll be glad we went out with a bang.
