Music Documentary

(FILM FIRST COMPANY/TIGERLILY PRODUCTIONS (85 minutes; Unrated); 2024)

It was absolutely NOT a predictable thing that Brian Eno would ever agree to having a documentary film made about him; he’s on record as stating that he hates most musician biopics, and he has little interest in discussing or examining his own past. But when director Gary Hustwit approached the wunderkind artist/producer/lecturer/thinker/modern philosopher about a project in this realm, it was NOT the ordinary pitch. Hustwit had already worked with Eno on his previous film RAMS, a documentary about influential German designer Dieter Rams, for which Eno did the score. Hustwit had already been working on ideas for a “generative” approach to filmmaking, a way for film to NOT always be the same when watched. In the pamphlet handed out for his film about Eno, very useful in understanding the project, he says this: “When everything went digital, both filmmaking and exhibition, this constraint of a film having to be the same every time or having to be a fixed piece of art was gone. So I reached out to my friend Brendan Dawes, this amazing digital artist and creator who I’d known for 15 years. And he was game to try… First we started experimenting using all the raw footage from RAMS, including Brian’s music. We both realized that Brian would be the perfect subject for a generative documentary and ended up showing Brian a demo using the RAMS footage. He was excited to get involved. I don’t think he was excited about having a documentary about himself, but I think he was excited about the possibilities around the generative film system.”

It goes without saying that there was going to be tons and tons of potentially interesting footage of Eno’s artistic odyssey from which Hustwit could draw to make his experimental doc. You’re talking about the guy who was a founding member of glam rock pioneers Roxy Music, the groundbreaking artist who made crazily inventive albums like HERE COME THE WARM JETS and ANOTHER GREEN WORLD in the mid ‘70s, the man who gave a name to and contextualized the fresh new genre called ambient music, the groundbreaking producer who put his name on some of the most important albums to emerge in the ‘70s and ‘80s by artists like Talking Heads, David Bowie, U2, James, Coldplay and many more; the guy who began creating unprecedented changing light sculptures and exhibitions throughout the world, and a truly visionary creative “philosopher” and thinker who raised many significant questions about the purpose of art, and the complex nature of the world’s problems, and how we should try to think about solving them. Brian Eno is easily one of the most influential artists in music history, and has had a hand in more things than most people might realize. Did you know, for example, that his collaboration with David Byrne, MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, was one of the first records to use sampling, and that it influenced many early hip hop artists? That he composed the Microsoft Windows startup theme in the early days of the internet? And that despite the early scorn that some critics heaped on ambient music back in the ‘70s, the genre became a truly significant phenomenon by the late ‘90s, and exploded into new relevance during the pandemic. It is now inescapable throughout the world, and is closely married to the world of film scoring, giving Eno regular work in that realm with projects such as FOR ALL MANKIND, THE LOVELY BONES and Michael Mann’s HEAT. So it would be a daunting task for ANY filmmaker to put a doc together on Mister Eno. But it sure helped that Eno gave Hustwit hundreds of hours of rare, often never before seen footage to utilize and that the generative program he developed was able to ensure that no showing of the “final” film would be the same as any other showing. Weird and unprecedented, eh?

Screenings of ENO have sold out in most cities where it is shown, and I wondered if I would ever have the opportunity to experience it. But when the Speed Art Museum in Louisville announced a single screening of the movie, my chance arrived. And wow, was it a fascinating, often breathtaking event! Each version of the film is set up with little technological “triggers” that cause certain other sequences to come up next, without filmmaker or audiences knowing what that will be. The film itself contains these transitional “indicators” that let the viewer know a change is about to happen. So yes, you might get some special footage of the early days of Roxy Music, like I saw in MY version of the film, with the glammed-up Roxy boys singing “Virginia Plain” and showing what absolute originals they were. But you might NOT. And even if you are thrilled to see the footage, it’s gonna end before you’ve had your fill, probably. Up next? Will it be Eno’s early video for “Seven Deadly Finns?” Something featuring Laurie Anderson? A discussion of “Oblique Strategies” and how Eno used them to work with David Bowie on his “Berlin Trilogy?” YES, to those latter two things for the version I saw. We get to learn all about the formation of the specialized deck of cards intended to help break creative stalemates. Eno talks about how he and Bowie drew conceptually opposing cards when they were recording the track “Moss Garden” on HEROES. Wryly, we see David Byrne reading a couple of simple cards, and Byrne is featured prominently in a discussion of MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS. Not much about Talking Heads, however, which was disappointing. But there is a lengthy and amusing segment on U2 and some of the tension that had to be worked through during the production of THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE, and in particular the song MLK.

I was perhaps most delighted by the amount of talking we get to experience Eno doing, such as his discussion of “why we like music” and how ultimately most humans are driven by “the need to feel you belong.” And about how he tended to always question his own habits, asking the enduring question, “What if we DON’T do it that way?” That ends up having relevance not only for music, but for complicated moral and technological issues as well. My version of the film featured a lot of footage of Eno in his garden, talking about the influence of the natural world on his music, and how what became known as “ambient” was the result of Eno wanting to create a “place” and “inhabitants” and changing movement in his sonic creations. He demonstrates some sound-building efforts in his studio, and I was riveted by these scenes. “I want a sky,” he says of one evolving composition. “What ELSE do I want in this world?” He discusses his enduring interest in “more and more complex and beautiful things,” and shows us his plethora of detailed notebooks that he’s been keeping for decades, to help organize and capture “new ways of explaining things.” And frequently there are memorable scenes such as when the legendary producer admits to breaking down in tears during the creation of the track “Spirits Drifting,” as it came about during a terrible period of insecurity when he was certain he was wasting money on expensive studio time and did NOT have (seemingly) the ideas or impetus to get anything finished.

Wow, that happened to ENO? The guy who has finished more groundbreaking projects and fresh ideas than arguably anyone else in the industry, over time? So, there are indeed some cool revelations like that as well as plenty of music, discussions about art and the problem of being a morally concerned citizen of Planet Earth. We have some options for making things better, Eno says, but we also may just screw it up in the end. My piece here summarizes what I got to experience at this particular screening, but if you are lucky enough to see the film somewhere at some time, you may catch completely different segments. At any rate, for any fan of the truly legendary Eno, this film is a must-see. No, it is likely NOT going to be a comprehensive overview of his whole career, and as my companion pointed out, some may be bothered by the lack of narrative consistency or “arc” in this experimental movie. But boy, I ate it up. And I can hardly wait to see a bunch more versions of the film, should I get that chance.