Pickin’ & Trimmin’ in a Down-Home North Carolina Barbershop: Award-Winning Short Film

Pickin’ & Trim­min’ is a doc­u­men­tary short film from 2008 pro­fil­ing “The Bar­ber­shop” in Drex­el, North Car­oli­na, where Lawrence Antho­ny and David Shirley have bar­bered for decades, and where blue­grass musi­cians have jammed in the back room every week­end. Direct­ed by Matt Mor­ris, the award-win­ning film show­cas­es the peo­ple and atmos­phere of a small com­mu­ni­ty in rur­al Amer­i­ca, per­haps bet­ter than any­thing you’ve seen before. And the music played in the back room is sim­ply won­der­ful.

You can find pho­tos tak­en at The Bar­ber­shop on Flickr here. The film itself has been added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our Free Movies col­lec­tion.

Update: Lawrence Antho­ny, the head bar­ber por­trayed in this film, passed away in 2009. His son con­tin­ues to run The Bar­ber­shop, but severe water dam­age has left the shop in need of repair. Here is a video show­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.


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Comments (6)
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  • Won­der­ful­ly heart­warm­ing record of a van­ish­ing way of life. Bril­liant music. I love this film!

  • Mauno says:

    Good musik. I like it. Mauno from Fin­land

  • Mary Wiese says:

    My father was from Ten­nessee and nat­u­ral­ly we were acquaint­ed with this music. My train­ing is clas­si­cal; but a big part of my heart is with Pickin.

  • Allen Partin says:

    Won­der­ful film. I sent check for $15 for a copy and have heard noth­ing. Avail­able?

    Allen

  • Rad says:

    The rear view mir­ror on the lazy boy kills me! Prob­a­bly as close to May­ber­ry as you can find these days, and I mean that in a good way. Miss those days and ways. Great film!

  • Tony says:

    Great film.

    When I lived in Spokane, WA, I played in an AMATEUR blue­grass band. A bunch of peo­ple with some degree of tal­ent and a lot of exu­ber­ance. Great peo­ple and great fun. A lot like these guys except we had a few women in our ranks.

    I won­der how crowd­ed the Back Room on Sat­ur­day has become since the release of this.

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