![]() ![]() I'm wondering how you got that quality, exactly? You're obviously moving chronologically through all this information, but the actual images you're seeing on screen are often more surreal. NFS: Well, sort of to that point, the film has a very poetic quality. So when we were looking for something of a certain emotional tenor, we would just scroll through these images, knowing they were all relevant. ![]() So then we got temp versions of countless hours and hours of the films, and then Adam Kurnitz, one of my two film editors, basically put it into our editing system and arranged it not by name of artist or year, but by topic, or category, or title, or location: Velvets, films with the Velvets, New York City, trains. They introduced me to a lot of footage of Warhol films that I had not seen before. Carolyn, Julie, and Chris from Motto, and Christine, my producer, and Brian, and I all went to Pittsburgh to the Warhol Museum. We all partnered with Motto Pictures, who produce documentary films. Haynes: Brian O'Keefe, my partner, who's a researcher and real lover of film and music, started with the broadest list of titles, year by year, during these key years, of the films and the filmmakers. NFS: How did you organize the footage when you were going through it? That was both a limitation and a creative opportunity, because it meant that all of these amazing filmmakers and their films were relevant to this story but also insanely beautiful and really diverse. So, their images resided almost exclusively in avant-garde cinema, mostly exclusively that of Andy Warhol. That was largely because there's very little traditional footage of them. ![]() I was interested in making a gay documentary! I was interested in making an avant-garde documentary, using the culture and the language of the art scene surrounding this band, as the way to tell the story. Haynes: I wasn't interested in making a straight documentary. NFS: How did you decide to make a straight documentary as opposed to a fictionalized history? I think it's a unique thing for music to make you feel invited into the process. ![]() You could be a musician if you didn't have virtuosity, you could make a painting, or a film. Even though I'm not a musician, it sort of made me feel like I could do anything I wanted. My reaction to the Velvets' music was a real creative opening. It was music that spoke to me, and I think a lot of people feel, when they discover the band, like they’ve discovered something very unique that only they could find. I'm obviously biased, perhaps even this film's ideal viewer, but I think it would withstand any test you might put to it. Many of the shots of the musicians themselves are hypnotically straightforward, just faces, staring at you, saying nothing mixed with this approach is dizzying artistic footage, the cultural meat of their times, from Warhol, Brakhage, Anger, Mekas, and from the actual air in the streets-you can almost smell it, this is such an immersive experience.Īnd then, of course, there's the transporting, intellectually disheveling music. Because my feelings haven’t changed, I was overjoyed to watch Todd Haynes’ new documentary about the band, The Velvet Underground, which is a sincere, direct, knowledgeable exploration of work by artists he loves. When you listened to them, you became the songs and the words. This was the nature of my love and respect for the Velvet Underground when I was a teen. You will brook no criticism of that book, film, album, band, burrito, tree, or shoe that you have formed a bond with anything short of total allegiance and worship could be grounds for permanent dismissal. When you're young your tastes can become, at times, almost rigid. Check out our interview with director Todd Haynes! ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |