Ready, Steady, Go!

By David Geffner

Penelope Spheeris on location for Decline of Western Civilization III
Photo: John Goleaud.

Tuning in to the proliferation of music documentaries these days, it's tempting to think the genre MTV dubbed the "rockumentary" has reached levels of popularity previously unseen before the advent of cable television. But, the format, as any classic rocker will tell you, has been around as long as the tunes have.

A quick jog down memory lane reveals such standout efforts as Richard Lester's New Wave inspired Beatles track, A Hard Day's Night and D.A. Pennebaker's masterful one-two musical punch, Don't Look Back, documenting Bob Dylan's 1965 U.K. tour, and 1967's Monterey Pop, which showcased the talents of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who two full years before Woodstock.

If you're a product of the 1970s, then films like Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz or Peter Clifton and Joe Massot's The Song Remains the Same which charted the last days of Led Zeppelin's 1973 American tour, can fire memories of a teenage world before videotape and the $200 concert ticket. Even Rob Reiner's unforgettable mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, which lampooned the self-important airs pop music had taken on in the 1980s, did so with great affection.

In truth, there really is no format in moviemaking quite like the musical documentary. The immediacy of a band on tour, the unpredictability of a live concert and the presence of a live audience, present all sorts of technical and thematic problems (and opportunities) for directors. Even when the behind-the-scenes shenanigans are kept to a minimum and the music takes center stage, as in Phil Joanou's masterful account of Irish band U2's 1988 American tour, Rattle and Hum, there's little doubt the subjects are playing to a bigger audience beyond the one watching in the theater.

What are the unique tensions and strengths the musical documentary presents for even the most experienced filmmakers? Penelope Spheeris, whose three films in her Decline of Western Civilization series form a 20-year history of punk, heavy metal and heavy rock said, "I've always maintained that musical documentaries have a life of their own. It's my responsibility as the director to let the movie take me where it's going to go, rather than the kind of planned control you strive for on feature films. Musical documentaries are organic and unpredictable. They demand the director work on instinct to capture the best moments as they occur."

Although Spheeris first began making films in 1973, she is very much the model for the modern-day musical filmmaker. A graduate of UCLA's film school, Spheeris was first hired by CBS Records to make "musical promo films," long before music videos existed. Starting a one-woman company, Spheeris shot, directed, edited, produced and delivered her musical promos on 16mm answer prints. Her own immersion in the underground L.A. punk scene led her to eventually take camera in hand for her own feature-length documentary on the world as well.

"Because most of the musicians in the punk scene were my friends," Spheeris recounted, "I felt like I had this mandate from God to document what was happening. I worked without a script, operating a single camera by myself. That's how I've worked on all three movies in the series. From the very first film, I felt very proprietary about telling the story of these people. I knew the music was part of a social trend that was larger than just one concert or even one movie, and I very much wanted each film to be an accurate time capsule of the period."

While Spheeris freely admits her approach to the musical documentary is subjective and colored by her own affection for the people she was filming, hers is one of many paths taken to tackle the genre's challenges.

Stan Lathan, who was already a veteran of directing multiple camera variety shows on network television in the early '70s, approached his landmark concert film, Save the Children, with the precision of a military campaign.

"Operation Push, which was a Jesse Jackson organization, was giving a huge exposition in Chicago in 1972 to encourage black-owned businesses," Lathan recalled. "It was always planned to have this gathering of black talent, and myself and a few other people including Quincy Jones and Matt Robbins, got together about six months before and came up with the idea of doing this film to help support the Black Expo. We raised $750,000 from the Ford Foundation as a grant and put it together."

At the time of Save the Children, Lathan was a director on Sesame Street and had done both dance and music specials for PBS, as well as multi-camera musical variety shows. "The big challenge for me was that we were shooting on film," Lathan noted, "and we were in this massive convention center with terrible acoustics. We used eight cameras, all shooting 16mm film, and I devised an elaborate com­munications setup with each camera. I took a bird's-eye position and directed as if it were a live TV show. The difference, of course, is that I had no video feed, so I tried to keep the coverage varied from camera-to-camera, and keep track of who was shooting what."

Lathan said that despite the technical challenges involved, shooting in the days before video assist, his team had the advantage of shooting for three days straight.

"We shot 28 groups," Lathan explained. "Everybody from Marvin Gaye to Gladys Knight and the Pips, to the Jackson 5, to the Rev. James Cleveland and a 100-boy choir. We spent a lot of time before the event with a chalkboard discussing camera coverage the way you'd talk about defenses for a football game. We knew which groups were going to be moving around a lot — Gladys Knight and the Pips were known for their dancing for example — so the key was to make sure each camera had assignments beforehand. What happens if you don't give assignments in a multiple camera concert shoot is that five cameras will shoot the same guy because he's the most interesting one on the stage at the time."

Although Lathan's approach was worlds apart from Spheeris in scope and complexity, the two directors converge in other respects.

"Most of the cameramen I used for Save the Children were documentary filmmakers who were comfortable with just roving around and getting the stories beyond the music," he recalled. "I remember going to see Gimme Shelter and recognizing the advantage those filmmakers had because they essentially lived with the Rolling Stones and could come back with very personal stories. If there's anything that would distinguish a musical documentary it's the relationship between the audience and the artist and what's really going on inside the artist's head. With things like MTV, MP3, DVD, etc., we can already deliver musical recordings at a very high level. So, today's documentary filmmaker should bridge the gap between the artist's life and the music. I think you have to do that to stand apart."

Brian Robbins, director of Varsity Blues, Good Burger and Ready to Rumble, knows all about making personal documentaries within a subculture. Robbins' 1995 musical documentary, The Show, was a wise examination of the rap and hip-hop culture in the mid-'90s. Virtually alone in its category, The Show featured in-depth interviews with such highly touted performers as Dr. Dre, the Notorious B.I.G., Sean "Puffy" Coombs, Kurtis Blow and Snoop Doggy Dogg, as well as a live Philadelphia-based concert which brought all the luminaries of the mid-'90s hip-hop scene onto the same stage. With the subsequent deaths of rap's guiding lights, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., Robbins' film has become a historical time capsule.

Formerly a star on the hit TV show, Head of the Class, and a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who grew up loving hip-hop music, Robbins approached one of the heavyweights in the rap music industry, Russell Simmons, to help get his dream of a rap concert film off the ground.

"When I came to Russell wanting to do a concert film with rap artists," Robbins said, "the whole idea of a concert film had disappeared for a long time. Because of cable TV and MTV Unplugged, etc., it had been so easy to reach people on television with a concert film, that filmmakers were reluctant to try the genre with a feature."

Robbins said that his award-winning documentary, Hardwood Dreams, helped build confidence for Simmons that the young, Caucasian actor-turned-director could pull off a documentary on the African-American-entrenched rap industry. "Russell was my entree into the culture," Robbins said. "Our goal was to put together a representation of all the different classes of hip-hop music that were popular at that time."

Robbins spent over a year following different artists around with a tiny crew: himself, a camera operator and assistant, a sound person and a line producer. The young director actually went out on tour with such incendiary groups as Wu Tang Clan, with whom he spent three weeks in Japan, and followed Los Angeles-based Warren G out on tour for an entire month in his own tour bus.

Brian Robbins (center looking down at camera) on location during The Show.

While the documentary aspect of The Show was time-consuming, it was straightforward compared to capturing the live concert footage Robbins had envisioned. "We proposed a budget of about $1.5 million (shooting in Super 16) to Rysher Entertainment," Robbins noted. "We knew that nearly half that amount would be spent toward the live concert footage, with the remainder spent on post-production and costs for filming the artists out on the road. There was no question the concert aspect of the film was the most challenging part. We knew going in that just getting all these artists together, many of whom really hated each other and were in conflict, on the same stage would be tough enough, let alone shooting a live event."

One reason Robbins decided to invest so much of his budget in a live concert event was that so few rap groups were touring at that time, due to the tensions over violence at rap and hip-hop events. Like Spheeris before him, Robbins had always envisioned The Show to be a historical document on the music he loved, as well as an opportunity for younger rap fans to see their favorite artists live.

Still, nothing in Robbins' young background could have prepared him for the challenge of not only shooting a live concert event in front of 4,000 fans, but also having to produce and promote the concert in advance of his shoot dates.

"I had two key allies Russell Simmons had hooked me up with," Robbins explained. "Chris Lighty, who is now the premiere manager in the black music business, and Hiram Hicks, who is now president of Island Music. Hicks lived in Philadelphia and helped to find the venue and promote the concert on radio, and Lighty made sure all the artists showed up. Without those two individuals, I doubt I would have been able to pull it off. They had the total respect of their peers in the rap industry."

Robbins secured the Philadelphia Armory, an intimate venue, which featured soaring glass windows behind the stage that Robbins could flood through with large Xenon lamps for visual effect. The documentary portion of The Show was shot in color, with the concert footage executed in black and white.

"I didn't want to have to worry about mixing and matching colors and filters with all this color concert lighting going on," he said. "I felt that shooting in black and white eliminated that concern and gave the footage a raw feeling which better suited a live show."

Like Stan Lathan on Save the Children, Robbins used multiple cameras in The Show's Armory concert. However, having the advantage of two decades' worth of technological advancements, Robbins was able to install a video tap on each camera and direct each operator's frame with great precision.

"It was like a giant math problem," Robbins said. "We had to time when each operator rolled out for our changeovers, and make sure the cameras were not rolling out at the same time. I decided to use basic positions for each camera: a wide shot of the stage, another camera stacked right next to that one with a long lens on it to follow the lead artist. Down front in the pit I had a camera on a dolly, which gave me great movement back and forth. I used a hand-held up onstage, two cameras on cranes in the wings, and a reverse camera behind the stage. I think I also used a locked-off camera behind one of the VJs. The toughest part was that we had no chance to rehearse. We had a set list and a sound check. But, we had no idea what the artists were going to do once they got up there."

Robbins described the adrenaline level of that memorable night in Philadelphia as "incredibly high. Half the film's budget was at stake for three live hours of footage. Not only had I not even seen a rehearsal of the show, I wasn't sure all the acts were going to show up. We sent a PA out to Snoop Doggy Dogg's house in the San Fernando Valley to pick Snoop up, drive him to the airport, ride with him on the plane to Philly and drive him to the Armory for the show. The moment I saw Snoop walk into the building I felt such relief. The final piece of the puzzle had finally come into place — it was an anxious and intense night."

Yet, with all the challenges directors face in shooting live concerts, it is still the quiet, personal moments with their subjects, after "the show" is over, which filmmakers prize most. "In the end, it all comes down to trust," Robbins observed. "You want to be a fly on the wall. You want to be unobtrusive and capture moments that are real and completely spontaneous, and the only way to do that is to have this trust and confidence with the musicians. Of course, it's a fine line because once that camera is rolling, people are always onstage. Musical documentarians do force reality to some degree. They shape real life in order to satisfy the story they're searching for in their films."

David Geffner is a freelance writer who specializes in the entertainment industry.

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