Will Wood Dives Deep on His Film ‘Slouching Towards Branson’ [Guest Blog]

You know when Will Wood is involved, it’s going to be something maximally creative and innovative. And that’s what you get with Slouching Towards Branson, a new film that Wood just debuted to his Patreon members on August 15th (the film can also be purchased by non-members as a one-time fee). The film combines live stage performance, music, and stories about characters he encountered during his “big dramatic hiatus.” Inspired by Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and W.B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming, the film hones in on Wood’s ambitious theatrical performance piece of the same name that he developed for his recent tour.

As far as ingenuity goes, this film is right up there. Wood’s solo performances have always included elements of storytelling and stand-up comedy. But he wanted to do something that would bring all of these elements of his art together, including his music. Wood has described it as existing “a little between” mediums. Wood took the reins on the project, but received valuable contributions and input from filmmaker Jake Feldman. He had previously worked with Feldman on his “White Noise” and “Sex Drugs Rock ’n’ Roll” music videos, so they already had a rapport. The project was carefully edited together by Feldman based on footage from shows on Wood’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” tour that occurred last year.

Wood joins us today for a Guest Blog and a deeper look at Slouching Towards Branson.

“In Joan Didion’s 1968 book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, the author cites a W.B. Yeats poem describing a vision of the second coming of Christ as a ‘rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouch(ing) towards Bethlehem to be born.’ In the preface, she states, ‘I had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I understood it no longer existed. If I were ever to be able to work again, it’d be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.’

“That’s basically what my movie Slouching Towards Branson is about. It’s almost like a concert film, maybe almost like a stand-up special. I’m not sure what to call it. A one-man rock opera about my personal life. That sounds like a terrible idea. But maybe in the era of A.I., the best type of art is when you start with a terrible idea. After all, if you can turn any idea into something stunning with a few words and a push of a button, then we won’t be able to make anything really good unless the idea is as big a swing as its execution. So maybe that’s the first step to A.I., proofing yourself. Be weirder than the machine, and have worse ideas than the prompter.

“Or maybe that’s hopeless, and in two generations tops our relationship with media will have transformed in such a way that renders our current reverence for The Arts(™) completely obsolete. Money’s on the latter. Just gotta come to terms with disorder.

“I don’t like the blog I wrote last time (for V13, which Will contributed in January 2023). I look back on it and am frankly rather embarrassed. What on earth was I thinking? What was my point? I tried so hard to end on a positive-ish note that it became incoherent. That’s what happens when you try to be firm about your thoughts but soft about your feelings. I had no soft feelings at the time; I was all harsh edges, resentment, and rejection. And I had not accepted the reality of my life as much as I tried to trick myself into thinking I did. I still struggle to. But at least after what happened in the past couple of years, I know I need to try, and I have a little more practice following through on it now and again.

“I won’t tell you what happened in this; I’ll let you watch the movie. That explains it better than I could in a blog post. Instead, I’ll tell you a few other things that might be relevant. Some thoughts, feelings, and theories that are all some type of honest and might give viewers of the film more context or deeper insight into that gish gallop of goofs, gaffes, and dramatic inhales. An about-as-true-as-a-true-story-can-be-while-still-being-a-story story about an about-as-true-as-a-true-story-can-be-while-still-being-a-story story.

“I’m not sure if timeshare salesmen use their real names. They probably don’t. Lord knows I wouldn’t tell dozens of people a day, ‘Hi, I’m Will, and I’m a criminal.’ Not that they’re literally criminals, what they do is at least technically legal. I wouldn’t be surprised if they put on fake accents and wear silly outfits as part of some psychological trick or to stop it from being a slog.

Will Wood “Will Wood is Dead Tour” 2025 tour admat

“Can you imagine finding deceiving the elderly with appeals to their impending mortality and financially abusing them for generations to come a slog? I’m sure they can. They’re criminals. Maybe not literally, but in the sense that they are certainly of the criminal personality type. Not an allegation, more like an unofficial diagnosis. Although maybe an allegation, I don’t know. Sue me, (insert name of one of the world’s largest hoteliers here), even if I lost it still wouldn’t be much worse of a hit than having bought a timeshare.

“I never mentioned how much attitude they gave us when we wanted to switch rooms. I said revelations, but it was actually Ephesians. Couldn’t decide on which was more thematically relevant, because they both are in a way. Last time I overheard someone muttering quotes from Ephesians to themselves, they turned out to be a pederast, Walter. Not a pleasant subject, nor as relevant, but mostly true in a way. The point is that they wouldn’t even let us pay extra for a suite. We got the ‘King’s Studio,’ which is a weird thing to call a thing. The bed may be technically king-sized, but it’s not even really a bed, and kings don’t sleep in studio apartments.

“Pigeon Forge is an interesting place. We didn’t go to Dollywood, or Hatfield & McCoy, or any of the Good Things. Just Feaster’s on Teaster’s, which was worse than I described it as. It was kind of funny in the show, but in reality, it was just maddeningly boring and an incredible rip-off. No offence to the likely-tax-exempt heroes ladling cold beans onto prison trays in the high-plush velvet panoramic theatre, they’re doing what they think is right.

“To be honest, if you believe in hell and aren’t an obnoxious belief-pushing Bible-thumping missionary hell-bent and shoving Jesus down everyone’s throats, you’re kind of an asshole. You think I’m about to spend ten million years ten million times over (and still not even making a dent in my sentence) being hog-tied by goat-men and bathed in lava, and you’re not going to do anything about it? Save me. Come to my home. Picket my shows. Anything to stop your mean old God from doing that to me.

“I don’t mean to come down hard on religion; I spend a lot of time in churches for a non-believer, and I don’t even want to identify as a non-believer. Irish Catholicism courses through my veins like air bubbles from a bad I.V. drip. My Judaism mostly expresses itself through my conflation of complaints and conversation, and my anxieties toward Instagram comment sections. I don’t really consider myself an atheist unless I’m in a really bad mood. Pop some boomers, and I don’t see the difference between God and a lack thereof, though, so grain of salt. What I will come down on, though, is… I don’t know, wokeness? Those darn wokes and their cancel culture. Had to cut out some of my edgier jokes because of those nasty wokes. Now I’ll never be friends with Joe Rogan. Darn.

Will Wood in Portland, photo by Alex Gonzalez (alez___gonzo)

“I wanted to mention the roadside Dinosaur dark-ride with broken-down Jurassic Park props in the show, but I had already taken too many artistic liberties and felt bad blaming Branson, Missouri, for Pigeon Forge, Tennessee’s mistakes. They’re different places, despite being the exact same place. Gatlinburg was the real hellscape. That candy store guy will never recover from me cancelling him so hard.

“I do actually feel sort of bad. I’m self-loathing to the point of wanting to forgive even the most monstrous of people, let alone some schlub with a bad sense of humour. But then my fiancée, Brett Favre, reminds me that Mr. Toad was kind of the leering type and definitely had bad intentions, and I have to concede because she’s my eye for bad vibes. I’ve let a lot of people with ‘crazy eyes’ into my life and gotten screwed bad by them. I’m a terrible judge of character, and forever at war with myself; the desire for radical forgiveness and my borderline pathological misanthropic cynicism raging inside me like the Devil and God did in what’s-his-name. Lacey. Moving on.

“Rats have very short life spans. In the wild, they’ll get maybe a year to scurry around before getting yoinked out of their mortal coil by one of the millions of ways their embarrassingly fragile species kicks it. In captivity, which is a very dark word for ‘being taken care of,’ they get two or so. Since they’re social animals, you need more than one at a time, which means being a rat owner is a constant revolving door of two-year cycles of love and repeat death in short bursts. I don’t know if The Beeb and I will continue to keep rats after Snooterman and the Dirty Boys go off to the great lava ledge in the sky.

“It feels like I’m losing a part of myself by giving up on being a rat guy, but also, we have cats now. A whole bunch of them. Derrjerr, Zozzle, Clopey, and Aunt Bibble. (Forgot to mention we found homes for the 78 other cats we rescued.) And it’s funny, nobody tells you this, but cats actually make pretty good pets.

“It sucks to keep learning conventional wisdom on your own accord. No wonder most people walk a straight and narrow path. Tradition has its place; not as social law and order but at least as some kind of rudder now and again. But I think I’m going to keep learning other people’s hard-learned lessons and ignoring popular conviction. Except for when buying a home. Don’t fuck around with that. Get a realtor. Or when leading some big effort, like managing record sales, a charity, or any sort of business. Definitely do that by the book. Don’t try and be ‘chaotic good’ when the phrase ‘lawful good’ can be used literally. I’ve had the good sense to trust others on that sort of thing. Others try to be punk rock about too many things and end up in big trouble. I’m no cowboy. Too many timeshare cowboys in this world.

“But a rudder doesn’t help in a maelstrom. If the center will not hold, sometimes you just have to let go. ‘Bless the torpedoes,’ as a handsome genius once said. Tradition, conventional wisdom, popular sentiment, what-have-you; be careful where you prod at the boundaries of culture. Some pushes are necessary, some things must change, and you can only adjust yourself in accordance with it. Sometimes you have to be like a wind chime; make music not in spite of disorder but because of it. Just cause the wind blows where it must.”

Will Wood in Portland, photo by Alex Gonzalez (alez___gonzo)