Michael Schorr, Schultze Gets the Blues

Bearded, bespectacled and frequently laughing, German writer-director Michael Schorr contradicts the popular conception of the serious, humorless Berlin artist. With Schultze Gets the Blues, Schorr had a surprise box-office hit back home with a film that is partly ethnological cinema but mostly a droll, deadpan comedy about a rotund, retired mine worker whose epiphany while listening to New Orleans zydeco music prompts him to make a pilgrimage to Texas and Louisiana. Schorr, 40 at the time of this recording, was inspired by his own travels to that region as a student 15 years ago and filmed Schultze with a small crew of 12, letting the locations and people he met often dictate how scenes were shot.

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