Heartworn Highways - Enzian Theater

New Restoration!

In the mid-‘70s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly-long-haired Willie Nelson’s embrace of hippie attitudes and audiences, a younger generation of artists including Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle, Charlie Daniels and Guy Clark popularized and developed the outlaw sound. It borrowed from rock, folk and bluegrass, with an edge that was missing from mainstream Nashville country.

Musical highlights include Clark’s brilliant “Desperados Waiting for a Train” and Van Zandt’s emotional “Pancho & Lefty”. The hard living—and hard partying—lifestyles of outlaw country’s figureheads are played out on screen as we visit Van Zandt’s Austin trailer, see Coe play in Tennessee State Prison, join the gang in Nashville’s notorious Wig Wam Tavern and witness a liquor-fueled Christmas at Clark’s house. No wonder the film’s original tagline read: “The best music and the best whiskey come from the same part of the country.”

This newly restored edition includes rarely captured performances of the aforementioned musicians as they perfected this then-new style and helped change the course of country music history.

1976, 92 minutes, USA, Directed by James Szalapski, Unrated

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“Sometimes, a documentary maker is present at precisely the right moment to capture lightning in a bottle.”
– LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
“Heartworn Highways fell in line with the great hangout movies of the past 50 years when authority started to lose its power and a few moments of creativity was worth more than its weight in gold.”
– James Clay, FRESH FICTION
“Its cinéma vérité approach creates one of the most realistic and valuable documents in country music history."
– Paul Sexton, UDISCOVER MUSIC
“The film itself plays as a lyric, scenes of rolling highways and seemingly commonplace moments rendered powerful, even poetic, through the music and the moment.”
– Doug Freeman, AUSTIN CHRONICLE