Here Is What Is
This documentary film on a year in the musical life of Daniel Lanois debuted yesterday at the Alamo Draft House. The Alamo Draft House is an amazing theater experience, with deep aisles between the rows of seats, with a narrow table in front where you can eat. Menus lay scattered in front of every other seat, along with short golf-score type pencils where you write in your order, standing it up vertically in between the table and a metal band. The wait staff sees your order, comes by and takes it; delivering hot or cold food shortly thereafter. It makes for a great movie-watching experience. Every city should have a few of these around -- really. Daniel Lanois, as many of you know, is the ambient production mastermind behind such noteworthy artists as Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan and U2.
This gem starts off with an extraordinarily long intro, a solo piano piece that focuses in on pianist Garth Hudson's fingers. This intro flows from the piano to the ensemble, featuring Daniel on pedal steel guitar. It's mostly music throughout the 93-minute movie, but there's a little bit of conversation, like the chatting between production partners Brian Eno and Daniel. Early on Daniel brings up the movie and his goals for it, hoping for input from Eno, who shares that something he'd like to see out of this movie is the process -- "how things come out of nothing." He wanted to encourage people not to be duped or intimidated into thinking that Beethoven's Fifth, for example, just existed up in his head and he wrote it all out for the symphony to play. No, the creation process comes out of nothing and progresses a little bit at a time. He used a colorful metaphor to describe the crude stages of songwriting before it evolves into something great.
Other tidbits of information shared include Lanois' own narrative about traveling down from Canada to New Orleans to find the groove. "Groove lives close to sexuality," he says. This perhaps explains the psychedelic go-go dancing that weaves in and out of the movie at times. Lanois reveals his "secret" or main philosophy to producing music. If he had to boil it down to one word, he said, it would be "Feel." He showed up close and personal (with a camera right behind him) how he approaches the mixing console in the studio. He realized that his fingers and hands were large enough to move lots of faders at once, so he began to practice a form of "performance mixing" that he described as being a contrast to the "floral arrangement" philosophy that follows the creed of "that's how the band played it, leave it alone." The scene where he does some performance mixing, complete with narration announcing each move is impressive and memorable. He introduces another pedal steel guitar scene by revealing that "the pedal steel guitar takes me to a sacred place." He calls it "my little church in a suitcase."
A montage accompanying a song about "Joy" gives a nice climax and send-off to the movie. Overall, it's a great piece of music cinematography that shares lots of insight into a creative and great artist of our time. I was amazed by how much he shared and "gave away his secrets," though it's apparent that most of his philosophy is intuitive and could be learned without the aid of this film, but I imagine there will be more than a few young musicians who see this and run with the information, taking their creativity to another level.
This was the world premiere of the film, so Lanois was there, along with directors named Adam: Vollick and Samuels (who also plays bass); and drummer extraordinaire Brian Blade. Lanois answers a question about the obtrusiveness of cameras by explaining, "that's why one guy did it," refering to Vollick, who incorporated a previous job skill installing small security cameras. "I'll gain fidelity from proximity of subjects." This philosophy allowed for one guy to film all that was going on. They also shared how they wanted to allow the camera to capture a moment in one take -- even in a world of one second edits. The effect worked like a charm, as lots of mesmerizing moments happened on film here. The "Joy" montage at the end included footage of the "electric slide" style of dancing that happens at drummer Brian Blad's father's church when people get excited. They were just jamming as the church band at a get together when this happened. I can't say enough good things about this flik. It's available as a limited edition deluxe DVD set at daniellanois.com via his newly started label -- Red Floor Records.
Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma
Watching this documentary brought me right back to Uganda, whose fresh faces and countrysides are only 3 weeks' away in my memory. This guy volunteered his medical skills and services as part of the "Doctors Without Borders" group. He did extensive work in Somolia and Rwanda, where he had to deal with the real-time results of genocide. The title comes from the decisions they had to make when the hospitals were inundated with way too many patients to see at once. One group, identified by a piece of tape with a number written on their forehead, was treatable; one will survive with immediate treatment; another can wait to receive treatment; and a third won't survive even if treated, and they are left to die, basically. It's a horrible dilemma for a doctor to face. This guy's struggle to deal with what he saw in the early 90s has scarred him, and he returns with a camera to document visually the book he's writing to process this. He was aghast that a guy forming a new work at the hospital wasn't keenly aware of what had happened in those hallowed halls. He took him around and shared about being able to see the genocide on the other side of a fence surrounding a hospital and how the dogs would tear away at the victims' bodies. The high cost of helping out in a situation like that cost a few workers their lives. One of Orbinski's colleagues talked about this cost in several cut-away interviews throughout the film. One of the uneasy feelings that was evoked through this pair of eyes was the feeling of being called into action while over there. I couldn't help but think of the intimidation I felt when on the sidelines as our high school played the giant players at Tehachapi High School and its thousand-yard runner, Mark Ricker. If our defensive coordinator had yelled, "Van Pelt! Get in there," I had no choice but to run into the fray. That almost describes the fear and trepidation of going over to a place like that. Jumping in and getting involved at some point becomes a non-choice, as human compassion compells your action. Being that close and not getting your hands dirty is a strange feeling. I was also reminded of the great hope and the resiliant spirit of the African people. This one guy, named Hussein, started an orphanage in the wake of the genocide. He went to the feeding centers and picked up children that were left orphaned and he took them in. Now, some 15 years later, many of these children are bright. Hussein saw these children as the seed of Somolia's future. This was a very moving picture, for sure. I wish the filmmaker and Orbinski had been present for a Q&A after this screening. The room was respectfully silent after this one ended.
Full Battle Rattle
This was an interesting documentary at an interesting time. It's about a training facility in California's Mojave Desert, where the army simulates some Iraqui villages as a training ground before troops get deployed to Iraq. Iraqi citizens and others are employed to act in character for the 2 to 3 week training period. The film makers immersed themselves into the training, just as the soldiers did, sometimes losing themselves in the simulation. Afterwards the directors -- Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber -- were onstage for a Q&A. I figured this would be an interesting and heated discussion, as Austin is the liberal hotbed of the "red" state of Texas. Joining them on stage were three of the soldiers (including one Colonel) and two female Iraq simulators/actresses. It was revealing to understand that one of the women did not sign her clearance to be in the film until after her parents were safely out of Iraq. Once they had fled to Syria, she signed on. This was for her safety and the safety of her family. The first question was a pointed one about "embedded journalism," to which one of the directors paraphrased as, "Do you mean, did we drink the kool-aid?" He admitted, "As East Coast liberals, their goal was to paint a complex picture (of a complex issue) and leave it complex." He stated that he didn't want to simplify the issue, as he sees all too often in this country. He stood up to a crowd of many leftist people in Austin. Wow. Good for them. I was impressed. He said, "the views in the film might be the dominant ones in this country. As East Coast liberals, we might be the minority opinion in this country. We did what needs to be done -- we listened." I thought that was pretty noble of him. They showed respect for the military guys on stage with them. The other director answered another question about the tricky part of documenting in a action-style a simulation of real-life action, to which he asked the rhetorical question: "What is real? WE live in an Escher world, don't we?"
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