Trading Marty for Johnny

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.