I’ll never turn off a music documentary. Whether it’s an obvious classic like The Last Waltz or The Kids Are Alright or a more recent production like Wilco’s I Am Trying To Break Your Heart documentaries focusing on musicians and their unique stories always seem to get heavy rotation in our DVD player.

And there’s been no shortage of quality music documentaries the past few years. Ones I’ve been able to catch include Tom Petty’s Runnin’ Down a Dream, The Clash’s Westway to the World, Joe Strummer’s The Future is Unwritten, Billy Bragg & Wilco’s Man in the Sand, Bruce Springsteen’s Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born to Run, The Who’s Amazing Journey,  Bob Dylan’s No Direction Home and Ronnie Lane’s The Passing Show. 

A few days ago my wife Valerie and I viewed the 2004 Gandulf Hennig documentary, Fallen Angel, detailing the life of Gram Parsons. As with the Ronnie Lane film this was especially refreshing. Though I’ve always been a big Parsons fan I wasn’t familiar with much of the documentary’s content/footage. There’s something special about a film which brings re-newed interest in the life and music of an artist who hasn’t been documented all that well before. And that was definitely the case with both the Ronnie Lane and Gram Parsons films.

Music has influenced my filmmaking as much as film has. And it goes without saying that there many artists, both local & national, that definitely fall into the awesome documentary waiting to happen category. So many musicians are deserving of an in-depth documentary so their unique story can be told. Maybe one of these days, once I complete some of my pending projects, I’ll try my luck with a music documentary. After all, I live in Fremont, New Hampshire - home to the legendary Shaggs…

I have to thank my friend, filmmaker Jeff Palmer, for the heads-up on this one - a very candid article from the New York Times on the reality of independent filmmaking (i.e. most of the time for a indie filmmaker, if you really want to get your film made, you’re going to have to use a lot of your own cash). The story focuses on ‘White Irish Drinkers’, the upcoming film by John Gray. Click here to read the article. 

Even by Nugent’s low standards of dependable lunacy mixed with over-the-top macho posturing (not to mention lousy music) the Motor City Madman may have even topped himself in a recent interview. How classic rock stations can still play any of his music in good conscience is beyond me. Here’s the link  - our next feature-length film, the anti-hunting black comedy Death & Glory,can’t start production soon enough… 

I need to thank my friend, filmmaker Todd Norwood, for bringing this informative article on self-distribution D.I.Y. (‘do it yourself”) to my attention. It’s entitled “Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself” and it was published in the January 17, 2010 issue of the New York Times. The writer, Manohla Dargis, does a nice job of chronicling the various self-distribution strategies that filmmakers have employed through the years, from John Cassavetes to Sacha Gervasi. Click here to read the article.

Image via Wikipedia

A few things I learned from Directed by John Ford, Peter Bogdanovich’s fascinating 2006 recut of his 1971 documentary on the legendary director:

• Ford didn’t like rehearsing; he thought a scene could go stale quickly and often used first takes.
• Ford didn’t like dialogue and would eliminate as many words as possible from a script.
• Because he didn’t edit his own films Ford would be careful to not shoot too much coverage as he feared this would leave studio editors too many shots to pick from which could easily destroy Ford’s shot sequence.
• A basic Ford directing principle was to never place the skyline in the middle of the frame.  
• A Ford set wasn’t the most pleasant place; the director enjoyed to humiliate actors in front of the cast/crew if he thought it was necessary to get a point across.
• Maybe it was all an ‘act’ but Ford, at least in public, was a grumpy and not particularly pleasant person.
• Ford was very modest when asked about his astonishing body of work and the indisputable influence it’s had on filmmakers for decades.

I’m really enjoying working on my short story book The Winter Thaw. These are my locations, towns, roads, etc. Upbeat or depressing, traditional or weird, first or third person narrative, it doesn’t matter…

Franklin Pierce, UFOs, Abandoned Gas Stations, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Depot Road…

Compared to the unnecessary gimmicks and politics that have overtaken much of  local filmmaking writing this book feels very refreshing. It reminds me as to why I decided to get involved in the arts in the first place, more than twenty years ago.

Almost makes me want to keep my film gear on the shelf a bit longer…