Ryan Olson and Isaac Gale’s “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is a wide-spanning documentary biopic of one of the biggest cult icons you’ll likely be unfamiliar with. On paper, it seems to be what its title proposes: a telling of Swamp Dogg’s life story while he gets his pool painted. In practice, it’s a biography, music history lesson, home tour, and buddy hangout film. Along with his two housemates, Moogstar and Guitar Shorty (who passed away during the making of the film), Swamp Dogg and his cohorts are an oddball group of artists. They embody just about every fashion and music aesthetic under the sun, and the documentary about them embraces them all.
Hallucinatory transitions, funky title cards, and poetic asides combined, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,” much like its subject, refuses to be defined. When asked his philosophy on life, he says: “Just be cool. And it’s also fun being yourself. It’s fun like a motherf*cker, but you gotta find yourself.” And found himself, he most certainly has.
Every element of Swamp Dogg’s life and career feels just for the hell of it. Whether making a Beatles cover album performed by dogs or album artwork of himself inside a hot dog because it’s his favorite food, his iconicity always has roots in the bizarre. Yet all his zaniness is a testament to a zest for life, not artistic flippancy. He’s a musician, producer, label manager, cookbook author (entitled If You Can Kill It, I Can Cook It), and the (un)official great-grandfather of West Coast hip hop. He managed Dr. Dre during his early days with World Class Wreckin’ Cru, produced and created music across all genres, and was highlighted in Jane Fonda’s Free the Army tour.
His resume is as wide and diverse as the film’s tally of incongruous cameos. From Tom Kenny (voice of Spongebob) to Johnny Knoxville, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” leans into its preposterous double-take humor. As nearly every new featured friend prompts first a feeling of confused surprise, then hits the realization that it somehow just makes sense. And while every debut of a quirky figure ramps up the character of Swamp Dogg, it’s the reflection on his relationship with his late wife, Yvonne, that paints him in the most vivid color.
Not only were they life partners but work as well, and Swamp Dogg reminisces on how he had the creative drive and she had the business mind, encouraging him to invest in the idea of hip hop in its most early stages. We also meet his daughter, a doctor, and see just how much pride he has in being her father.
The true heart of “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is not simply the impressive biographical bullet points, but rather the gift of witnessing its subject being unapologetically himself. Swamp Dogg on camera feels so blisteringly authentic that it’s near impossible to imagine he’s any different once the lights go off. He’s a man who has lived, and continues to live, a hell of a life; one that is marked by boundless creativity, loyalty, drive, and plenty of not giving a f*ck.
