Hey Dillon (2009) Online

I loved "Hey Dillon!" Ten years from now, if The Voice and The List win, I think we're all afraid, this film and much of it will be a complete anachronism. A bricks and mortar music store? A radio station with someone you can TALK to? Radio employees who go to performances and meet songwriters??? But right now, it's a time capsule containing artifacts from today - Austin Cunningham's song from the movie is on the charts right now -- and that's great to see. And it's a sorely needed portrait of everything that's right with Brett Dillon, with Americana radio and with Americana itself: We care, we listen, we love, and we keep getting it out there. Brett shows us how it's done: It's done real. I was grateful this film reminded me of that, and I, too, salute Brett Dillon, and hope that we learn from this film the value of what he does so that he is not, in fact, the Last Great DJ but, instead, one of the first.

Although eclectic movies aren't for everyone, an argument could easily be made that this movie isn't for anyone. Brett Dillon is a great DJ, and, like any great DJ, he has a terrible haircut, dresses like he robbed a corpse, and is persistently annoying. What Brett lacks in talent and camera presence, the film makers enthusiastically match with there own bland style of storytelling. This would include interviewing people about Dillon in a manner which implies that we, the viewer, should already know who these "legends" are.The editing between the interview subjects and the stock footage is just atrocious. A wide variety of tasteless, pseudo new wave country rock is also on display here. This movie is pretty much the equivalent of being stuck in a long line at the grocery store or some other such outlet, and the person either in front of you or behind you is a work a day laymen who attempts to get your attention by venting about there job at the sock factory.From the first you moment you meet Brett Dillon, you want to punch him. Keep watching and you'll want to do worse to the people responsible for this "endeavor".

Dean J. Augustin's glowing documentary of Brett Dillon is the behind-the-scenes story of one of the last old-time disc jockeys still at work today.

I saw the film on The Documentary Channel and enjoyed the story of a lost art form. Brett is a likable character who has devoted his entire adult life to radio. Augustin structures his film like a classic three act play. The first act takes us on a historical tour of Dillon's career, which started when he was 15 in the town of Grand Island, Nebraska. Using a U.S. map we follow Brett as he moves from place to place across the country and through the years. At one time he served as the "Voice of Yellowstone," operating out of Powell, Wyoming.

He eventually ends up at The Range, at a time when it was independently owned, and management eschewed the use of mandated play lists.

The documentary includes interviews with Brett and a number of the singer/song writers all the while including musical selections from these artists. It's a pretty good lineup of area-based alt-country talent.

A GREAT colorful character; and the country-themed musical selections alone are enough to tone into HET DILLON – THE LAST GREAT DJ.

Hey, in the world of Dallas country music radio Brett Dillion may be a gem and stand-out kind of guy, but in this documentary he comes across as just, well... ho hum.

It isn't Dillion himself, it's the endless slow pans, zoom-ins and zoom-outs, false color substitutions, frame dropouts, unrelated jump cuts, flickering time-lapse, extreme close-ups, etc., the filmmaker employs that makes this, for me, practically unwatchable.

Longs cuts of Dillion lighting cigarettes and strolling through backyards and ruined buildings and over-enhanced by the visual tricks of every music-video director ever doesn't create the instant iconography that the filmmaker, Dean J. Augustin, seems to intend. Rather, it's as if your young son and mine were trapped together in a windowless room for 43 straight hours with nothing but a PowerBook, a dated copy of iMovie, a pack of unfiltered Camels and two hours of Augustin's uncut video.

One scene is a single slow pan —way slow— of Dillion standing backlit by two large windows in an empty building, sound-tracked with an unnamed song by an unnamed band. Another scene has Dillion wandering slump-backed and forlorn through a roofless and windowless building with flickercuts of Dillion slumped shirtless in the corner of a small room, apparently recovering from a dose of heroin and suffering desolate ruined-building flashbacks.

Brett Dillion's message is simple: that we're losing too much through the use of technology and the consolidation of radio stations by media conglomerates, but his message stands completely antithetical to Augustin's overuse of technology, by his "unique method of filmmaking."

In documentary filmmaking it's better to delve into the life and beliefs of a man through study and cinematic reflection, rather than attempt to make that man fit into your own jump-cut false-color "vision."