Nostalgic Deep Ellum Documentary “Round Pegs Square Holes” Premieres at DIFF

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, one of the biggest breakouts of the Deep Ellum scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Source: The DMN
Photo Credit: Courtesy Russell Hobbs

These days, Deep Ellum is a neon-lit playground of sleek storefronts and $10 cocktails, but it was bleak in 1984, when long-haired wanderer Russell Hobbs started Theatre Gallery, a provocative mix of art and music that became the first embers of a roaring scene.

“I didn’t want to do the shiny clothes, the shiny car, the shiny building,” says Hobbs in Round Pegs Square Holes, a documentary making its world premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival this Friday at Texas Theatre. What emerged from his outsider impulse, as Hobbs joined forced with savvy booker Jeff Liles and more clubs followed, was a vibrant counterculture of punkers and rockers and oddballs in a burned-out warehouse district that was once the stomping grounds of street musicians like Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Hobbs directed and produced Round Pegs Square Holes, along with Michael Dunaway, but this is less vanity project than love letter to a lost era. Scenesters of yore will enjoy time-traveling to the early days of Tripping Daisy, Funland, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Sara Hickman, the Old 97’s, the Toadies and other locals who managed to gain national followings. (Several are interviewed.) Gen X nostalgists can revel in pre-fame Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana tearing it up onstage or the time REM’s Michael Stipe crashed a Theatre Gallery show. (That’s a good story: Stipe winds up on a rooftop naked, if legend is to be believed.)

Hobbs directed and produced Round Pegs Square Holes, along with Michael Dunaway, but this is less vanity project than love letter to a lost era. Scenesters of yore will enjoy time-traveling to the early days of Tripping Daisy, Funland, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Sara Hickman, the Old 97’s, the Toadies and other locals who managed to gain national followings. (Several are interviewed.) Gen X nostalgists can revel in pre-fame Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana tearing it up onstage or the time REM’s Michael Stipe crashed a Theatre Gallery show. (That’s a good story: Stipe winds up on a rooftop naked, if legend is to be believed.)