Leslie Harrod Blank Jr. was born November 27, 1935, in
Tampa, Florida. He attended
Phillips Academy, and
Tulane University in
New Orleans, where he received a B.A. degree in English. He also briefly attended
University of California, Berkeley. In the early 1960s, Blank studied filmmaking at the
University of Southern California and received his
master's degree. Following his university education, he worked for a production company called Operation Success, making films that he would later describe as "insipid films that promote business and industry." In 1967 he founded his own production company, Flower Films, with the release of
God Respects Us When We Work, but Loves Us When We Dance, a short colorful document of Los Angeles'
Elysian Park Love-in. During
Mardi Gras in late February 1968, Blank,
Barry Feinstein and others were in New Orleans as part of the original “underground filmmakers” crew of
Easy Rider which produced the acid trip segment of that movie, but was replaced afterwards by a more experienced crew. This was followed by ''The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins
(1968) and The Sun's Gonna Shine'' (1968) about
Houston blues musician
Lightnin' Hopkins. He never went back to work making
industrial films and all of his films were independently produced, often with the assistance of grants from cultural agencies, both governmental and non-governmental. Most of his films focused on American traditional music forms, including (among others)
blues,
Appalachian,
Cajun,
Creole,
Tex-Mex,
polka,
tamburitza, and
Hawaiian music. Many of these films represent the only filmed documents of musicians who are now deceased. Blank's films focusing on musical subjects often spent much of their running time focusing not on the music itself but on the music's cultural context, portraying the surroundings from which these American roots musics come. , in 1981 Other notable films on non-musical subjects include
a film about garlic and another about
gap-toothed women, as well as two films about German film director
Werner Herzog:
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) and
Burden of Dreams (1982), the latter about the filming of Herzog's
Fitzcarraldo.
The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (1994) and
Sworn to the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella (1995) were Blank's last two films using 16mm film. He later worked in digital video. One of his last films,
All in This Tea, which was co-directed with his creative partner Gina Leibrecht, was a profile of the western
Marin County-based
tea importer and adventurer David Lee Hoffman. In 2014, his last film
How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock in Normandy was completed shortly after his death by Gina Leibrecht, and was a portrait of the co-founder of Direct Cinema,
Richard Leacock. In 2007 Blank was awarded the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal in the Arts. Les's son,
Harrod Blank, has also become a documentary filmmaker. Blank lived in the
Berkeley Hills and for more than 30 years he was a resident of
Berkeley, which celebrated Les Blank Day on Jan 22, 2013. The nonprofit Les Blank Films continues to release Blank's work. ==Legacy==