Benjamin Smoke Trailer (2000)

Trailer for the documentary Benjamin Smoke.

Robert Dickerson lived in Cabbagetown, a broken shell of a dead mill town near Atlanta, "home of the go-karts and little kids that go to jail really young, whose parents all do inhalants." A veteran performer from the local punk music scene, the heavy-lidded, emaciated Dickerson, known locally as Benjamin Smoke, rasped like Tom Waits with a two pack-a-day habit, often in drag. Before he died of HIV complications in 1999, heaven magically granted him a fantastic wish, to open for Patti Smith who memorialized him in her song, Death Singing.