Considered by Les Blank to be one of his major accomplishments, A Poem Is a Naked Person is a documentary about the compelling singer-songwriter Leon Russell. Blank and Gosling spent much of the period 1972–74 filming in northeast Oklahoma, but the film was only released posthumously in 2015, when Harrod Blank was successful in resolving creative differences with Russell and clearing the music rights. “A Poem Is a Naked Person is, finally, a reflection on what it is to be alive, told in the visual and aural and musical idioms of its time and place. It’s that big. It is about life as motion, just going, from day to day” (Kent Jones, Current).