Docs That Rock

As readers know from an earlier post, I really dig the doc Young@Heart, a film about the elderly chorus who sing alt rock standards. It’s one of the top five highest grossing docs of the year with more than a $3 million take at the box office. But according to the Los Angeles Times, it hasn’t really scored for Fox Searchlight, which paid $1.5 million for the film. The piece quotes an exec who says the art-house audience ignored the film, maybe due to ageism.

The film is shown as just one example about how the doc market is crappy this year with no Michael Moore or Al Gore blockbuster to break sales records. Quote the piece:

After the success of crossover hits such as “Bend It Like Beckham,” “March of the Penguins” and “Juno,” millions of dollars flooded into independent film production, creating not only hundreds more movies but also higher expectations for their box-office performance. Marketing costs for specialized films consequently are soaring, up from $17.8 million per film in 2006 to a whopping $25.7 million last year.
As companies once content with art-house singles started swinging for wide-release home runs, the audience followed their lead: If a new film didn’t have a must-see buzz surrounding it, moviegoers would just wait for it to arrive in their Netflix mailers.

Hmmm…on one hand, there are no hundred million dollar docs. But creatively, particularly for music films, its been a vibrant year with many more solid films on the horizon. Anyhow, you can make the case that in today’s narrowcast world, the big screen may not be the best point of distribution for these docs. What’s wrong with Netflix mailers anyhow? The vibrant and growing Netflix and Internet distribution channels are likely to ensure these films reach their audience (and earn dollars.) Seems like another distorted perspective from a film snob, who say if it fails in the big screen, it doesn’t matter.

Fox Searchlight will try to prove ‘em wrong when Young@Heart is released on DVD on September 16. As a runup to the release, Rhino will digitally distribute the film’s soundtrack on August 19. Here is the chorus in action performing Walk on the Wild Side.

It could be a loud summer of music docs. I’m in process of writing a post about an upcoming metal doc when I noticed that IFC is premiering tonight Heavy Load, a film about a British punk band. Some of the members have learning disabilities, such as the drummer who has Downs Syndrome. The film follows the band while recording their first album The Queen Mother’s Dead and graduating from gigs at social services day centers and disability clubs in East Sussex to mainstream festivals. The band does a fun cover of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head and also sings about the need for the disabled to rebel against their caregivers and enjoy late night pub life. As Andy Webster puts it in today’s New York Times, “It’s about struggle, the efforts of an ensemble wrestling with artistic obstacles as well as biological ones.”

Music docs are challenging to market. Sure, the diehard fans will tune in to see their favorite acts but how to make sure to reach the larger audience? And like the rest of the doc field, finding marketing and promotion dollars to reach that larger audience is always a challenge, especially for the more obscure musicians.

So while this isn’t a business blog, I was still surprised and happy to learn that the fine folks at Microsoft’s Zune division introduced a limited edition player to hype the cinema release of Grant Gee’s Joy Division documentary. Each of the 500 limited edition 80 GB players will come pre-loaded with the film. The player was designed by famed record sleeve designer Peter Saville. Kudos to the smart folks at the Weinstein Company for setting this up. While this deal would seem to only appeal to Ian Curtis completists, I like the long term play as this could apply to other acts (akin to U2’s iPod deal.) I realize there are few who want to watch a 90 minute film on a two inch screen. But think futuristic - as file sizes shrink, these portable media devices carry all your movies and you can plug in to your larger home theater (or friends home theater) to play ‘em. There will be instant wireless downloads perhaps that may obviate the need for a portable device. But I’m sure airplane rides and remote connections off the grid will require some portability.  For now, seems like some bundling of devices with preloaded content - movies or music - would make the sell-through a bit more attractive while showing your colors (i.e., music doc fans, buy the taupe Zunes or iPods and get the 20 greatest music docs of all time!)<P>

Non-Zune buyers can check out the film when it’s released stateside on June 17. Trailer below:

Right after trashing poor Alicia Keys’ film (though admiring greatly her efforts - read the last post!), I noticed that the slate of HBO Documentary Films for 2008 were announced. There’s a bunch I want to see (the Polanski film, and the ones about former white house reporter Helen Thomas and former madame Heidi Fleiss - I have diverse interests!) But I especially am excited for the African music doc We Are Together. It features the Agape Children’s Choir of South Africa, composed primarily by kids who have been orphaned by AIDS. From such circumstances, they’ve created some of powerful, uplifting music, which would standout even without the tragic backstory.

I was first introduced to the choir by fellow Brooklynite Dan Zanes who had the choir sing on his album Catch That Train. The song, Pigogo (about a peacock), became a big favorite of my children Lila and Ruby. We dug it so much that we made sure to catch the choir when they did a North American tour last year (see Lila with the lead singer of Pigogo. For her, it was like meeting a rock star.) The CD of Agape singing traditional Zulu songs is available here.

I realize I’m way off topic. We Are Together got great audience response at Tribeca and I’m really eager to see them sing again on film and learn more about the life stories of the choir. I’m glad HBO included this music doc on its slate for 2008. Trailer below:

There’s a lot of things to admire about Alicia Keys and her documentary Alicia in Africa: Journey to the Motherland. Its always inspiring when a celebrity uses their unique platform for a worthy cause, as Alicia does with this film to raise money and awareness for HIV/AIDS. (More than 800,000 people have contributed at least $5 to the charity Keep A Child Alive.) She is at the forefront of new distribution tactics by putting her entire film online for free (streaming and download options) and using her American Idol appearance to promote it.

The only part of the strategy that’s wrong is the filmmaking! The 45 minute doc plays like the world’s longest public service announcement. Every interaction in this film is a monologue by Professor Keys to the camera. We meet aid workers, orphans and grandmothers taking care of children (whose parents had died of AIDS) but just just a moment until we’re on to the next scene or location. Keys hears stories of misery, but briefly. Later in the film, there is a roundtable of AIDS orphans where she asks questions like “What are your dreams?” We get quick answers but we never even learn the names of the children. There are a few singing and dancing scenes and Alicia only sings near the end.

Usually, the lack of celebrity time on the ground is the biggest impediment to making a good film. Keys spent one month in Africa yet the film feels like she jetted in and out. I wish there had been more moments of interaction with real people or more of a project she was building instead of just a surface tour of the projects she helped fund. A more intimate doc with Keys would be great if she would ever allow someone into her interior thoughts and/or her conflicted self or even angry self. Her voice does rise with a touch of indignation every now and then and you hope more arrives but it never does. She’s always right on message (she’d make a good politician).

The film is a real lost opportunity because Alicia Keys is beautiful and articulate. The film is also beautifully shot by director Earle Sebastian. There are some all-star landscape shots of Africa though the poverty may look a little too pretty in Soweto, Mombosa, Kampala. (Always a debate: does real suffering turn off potential donors? But aren’t pretty pictures of poverty contrary to the documentary tradition?)

Check out the film’s pretty impressive trailer below; the full film can be viewed at the Alicia in Africa website.

In 1968, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones traveled to a small village in Morocco to find the birthplace of world music. By some counts, the legendary Master Musicians of Jajouka have played for 1300 years, distinguished by african oboes, lutes and bamboo flutes. Beat Generation hoi polloi like artist Brion Gysin, and authors Paul Bowles and Williiam Burroughs were fans. (Gysin introduced Jones to the group.) Before he died, Jones recorded Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka. Three years later, Robert Palmer, who was the first-ever rock critic for the New York Times, repeated the journey. (Before his death in 1997, Palmer was also a contributor to Rolling Stone and was considered the country’s pre-eminent music critic.)

Palmer’s relationship to the Jajouka players will be the subject of an upcoming film called The Hand of Fatima, directed and written by his daughter Augusta. I caught notice of this film because it was recently named one of ten winners of the Independent Film Project’s Documentary Lab. The program mentors filmmakers in a four day seminar and provides info on technical, creative, and post-production issues for films in the rough cut stage. The docs later screen at IFP’s Independent Film Week in September. I’m definitely catching this one. When cross-continental music docs cohere, they can be pretty unforgettable music and cultural works. (We still get requests to show our project where Dave Matthews and Trey Anastasio went to Sengal to play with Orchestra Baobab. It predated our VH1 Rock Doc franchise but helped give us confidence to proceed with a documentary series.)

To whet your appetite for The Hand of Fatima, here is a clip of the Master Musicians of Jajouka:

I’m obviously still having some trouble with my incoming links because I missed this thoughtful post on Jim Harrington’s Concert Blog. He tries to establish a methodology for ranking concert films, a genre he says has “few keepers.” But I’m at odds with his restricting titles only to the big screen. Straight-to-DVD and Internet concert flicks should be worthy of consideration, because its awfully hard to amass a screen-worthy audience these days because of so many, such diverse musical acts (liberated, I should say, from the narrow bottleneck of big screens, radio and mass retail.) It’s a good thing and we should scour all distribution outlets for quality films. And just because there hasn’t been an amazing ones yet worthy of canonizing doesn’t mean they should be excluded.

Also, he says concert films may only document a single event. Yet he includes multi-night runs and festivals, but not tours. (This disqualifies Phish’s Bittersweet Motel, Neil Young’s Year of the Horse and the Stones’ Gimme Shelter.) For me, I think the criterion is whether a film is mostly performance or narrative.

Griping aside, here are Jim’s picks…nice to see that two of them (Awesome: I…Shot That! and Fade to Black) we acquired for TV to run under our VH1 Rock Docs banner.

1. Stop Making Sense (1984)
2. Awesome, I . . . Shot That! (2006)
3. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture (1973)
4. The Last Waltz (1978)
5. The Grateful Dead Movie (1977)
6. Rock the Bells (2007)
7. Monterey Pop (1968)
8. Fade to Black (2004)
9. The Song Remains the Same (1976)
10. Jimi Plays Berkeley (1971)

Billboard reports that Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister will be the subject of an upcoming music doc slated for 2009. It will celebrate the 62 year old front man as the epitome of hard rock with interviews from Slash, Dave Grohl, Mick Jones, and Alice Cooper among others. Nice quote here from co-director Greg Olliver:

Shooting Lemmy is like filming dangerous wildlife. He never does what you expect him to do, and he never does anything you want him to do. A lot of the coolest shots are shots we had to wait for four or five shows to go by before we could get them.

Sounds like any musician in a doc! The film has no distribution deal yet (does anyone think it would play well for VH1? Hmmm.) A teaser clip featuring Lemmy telling dirty jokes can found here and also at the Lemmy The Movie site (sorry no embeds yet.)

The Marley estate, like the Hendrix estate, are tough negotiators. (We know!) Very protective of the reggae founder’s legacy and music, all of which will likely make headaches for any filmmaker who wants to present a true honorific to Marley, not just a glorification. Maybe that’s why today’s Variety reports that Martin Scorses, citing scheduling reasons, has dropped out of filming Marley’s documentary. Taking over is Jonathan Demme, no slouch in the music doc department, having filmed The Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense and Neil Young’s Heart of Gold. (Per Variety, he’s at work at another Young concert film now, the Neil Young Trunk Show.) The Marley film has a target release date of February 6, 2010, the 65th anniversary of Marley’s birth.

Any New Yorkers can meet Demme next Tuesday night at the IFC’s Stranger Than Fiction doc series when Demme will do a Q&A after the showing of his 2003 film The Agronomist, an amazing, intimate, uplifting and sobering film about the founder of Haiti’s first independent radio station. Its notable for this blog since Wyclef Jean composed the score.