Neko Case & Mike Nesmith Talk REPO MAN For Film Acoustic: Part 2

This is part 2 as the conversation between Neko Case and Mike Nesmith at the Carolina Theatre in Durham following a screening of REPO MAN earlier this week was so enjoyably rich with insights that I wanted to give it more space (click here for Part 1). For the second installment of the new series, Film Acoustic, the acclaimed singer/songwriter Case had chosen the 1984 cult classic, being one of her all-time favorites, to screen, and invited its executive producer, Nesmith, who you also may know from a little band he was in called the Monkees, to discuss it and other related topics with her.

Here, Nesmith speaks about the Monkees' sole film project, the possibility of a REPO MAN sequel, and whether or not popular singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett had a cameo in the film.

Nesmith on HEAD, Bob Rafelson?s 1968 psychedelic masterpiece starring the Monkees: ?It?s actually a masterwork. And whose masterwork it is, is Jack Nicholson?s. When HEAD came about, it was, I don?t want to build too much ? take it on fact, that the movie Bob and Bert (Schneider) had decided to do, HEAD, as a kind of assisted suicide for the Monkees and they hired Jack to come in and help them. ?Cause they wanted to kill the monster. The monster had turned on them.

They had been praying for the little wooden boy to come to life and suddenly it did, and it scared the hell out of them so Geppetto was going to throw the marionette off the bridge. Well, okay off the air, but what do you do in that particular case with the music? What do you do with what that film is about to become? And Jack was able to bring the music into that film in such a way that it satisfied what everybody wanted out of that movie, that wanted anything out of the movie. And instead of killing the monster, it imprinted it forever on the history of film. And there it is, there it jolly well is.

Bob tells this story in the commentary of the movie?s Criterion release of HEAD where he says that Jack and him were sitting around loaded, and Bob gets dark and Jack said ?what?s going on?? ?I?m thinking about the blackest, darkest thing in the world.? And Jack said ?well, what would that be?? And Bob said ?Victor Mature?s hair.? And Jack said ?that?s it! The whole movie takes place in Victor Mature?s hair!? I thought Jack had one of the greatest dope riffs I ever heard!? But he took that and suddenly he made it all work around that music.?

Nesmith on his favorite line in REPO MAN: ??The life of REPO MAN is intense? is the fulcrum. That?s talking about intensity, it?s talking about what happens to you when you watch the movie ? it?s intense.?

On Alex Cox having the rights to the screenplay to REPO MAN: ?Now Alex has the right to make a sequel if he wants to.?

Milazzo: ?If he rang your phone and said ?hey, would you like to jump on this journey again with me??

Nesmith: ?No.? (audience laughs) I know, it sounded flip but no. It?s not because it was a bad experience because that?s not?I?m not sure that there is a sequel to REPO MAN. I think REPO MAN is a whole complete thing.?

Case: ?I?d be really sad if they made a sequel.?

Nesmith: ?Yeah, I?m kinda following you in on that. He wrote the sequel called ?Otto?s Hawaiian Holiday.? (audience laughs) Just as funny as you think it is.?

Questions from the audience Q & A:

Audience member: ?The last scene, or near the end, with the guy that says ?I love my job? and they bring out a book, I think I remember that being a copy of ?Dianetics? but I didn?t quite pick it up in the movie??

Nesmith: ?I?m so glad you asked me that, because it?s one of the funniest jokes in the movie and nobody sees it!?

Audience member: ?And I just watched BATTLEFIELD EARTH yesterday!? (laughter)

Nesmith: ?You see, and this is an example, like how we got the generic food, they?re not gonna let us use Dianetics!? So Alex calls it ?Diaretics?!

Another audience member: ?Jimmy Buffet is credited as one of the blond agents, which one is he??

Milazzo: ?Where?s Jimmy Buffett in this film??

Case: ?Did they make that up??

Nesmith: ?No, no ? Jimmy was there.? (audience laughs)

Case: ?You guys planted this stuff like they?re little landmines that are just gonna keep going off for years and years.

Nesmith: ?Nobody planned it. They just fell off the truck and landed some place.?

Case: ?Jimmy Buffet?s on the lot.? (laughter) ?Do we have a size 44 blazer? Show Mr. Buffett in.? (more laughter)

Nesmith: ?That?s exactly what it was. That very thing. He and I were sort of friends, and hanging out, and was ?what are you doing?? ?Shooting REPO MAN,? ?oh I want to come to the set.? Alex said ?do you want to be in the movie?? and handed him a blazer and a pair of sunglasses. And he is part of the team when they set the body on fire that?s on the park bench, he?s one of those guys and if you look at it ? he?s standing by the back of the van. That?s Jimmy.?

Nesmith on the legacy of REPO MAN: ?Alex and Peter were all frustrated by the way that movie got distributed, and what happened to it in the public?s mind. The fact that it has gotten some traction, and there are people who love it, and people who really get it, is nourishing. 

Case: ?And I?m thinking that it probably made more money than GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN that came out that same year.? (audience laughs)

Nesmith: ?Actually, that?s my favorite movie, GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN.? (more laughter)

Milazzo: ?Goes without saying.? (even more laughter)

The next Film Acoustic is a real doozy: Frank Black from the Pixies Presents Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, another favorite film of mine, on Thursday, March 19th. Tickets are on sale now.

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The Pixies? Frank Black Blabs About BRAZIL For Film Acoustic

As I wrote in the Raleigh N & O, the third installment of the new series Film Acoustic was a real doozy: Frank Black of the iconic punk rock band the Pixies presenting Terry Gilliam's 1985 classic BRAZIL. The event went down last Thursday evening, March 19th, at the Carolina Theatre in Durham with a screening of the film, which I believe is the best film of the '80s, followed by a chat conducted by Modern School of Film founder and Duke graduate Robert Milazzo, a bit of audience Q & A, and solo acoustic performances of four songs (?Wave of Mutilation,? ?Monkey Gone To Heaven,? ?Los Angeles,? and ?All Around the World?).

Here are some highlights from the fine evening:

Milazzo's introduction: ?Terry Gilliam was asked ?what was your favorite review of BRAZIL?? from the critics because the critics loved this film. And he said ?it was from Salmon Rushdie. Salmon said ?we are all Brazilians. We are all strangers in a strange land.?? I offer you that bit of cultural anthropology because tonight?s guest studied for a moment or two cultural anthropology on his way to making music history. He told me last night though that the classes that he had the most fun were the cinema classes.

We?ll ask him if he feels that way in about an hour. Please welcome to the Modern School of Film, Professor Charles Thompson, everybody, Frank Black.?

(audience applause)

Frank Black: ?I should probably mention, I uh, made a bit of a popcorn mess by my seat.?

Milazzo: ?Really??

Black: ?I tried to get, I got, I threw half of it before it even started, but thank you for the popcorn. And uh, I didn?t know what to wear tonight ? ?cause my film professor Don Levine, who taught Avant Grade Film 302-B, used to always wear a black turtleneck, and a black jacket, black pants. And he had a black carrying bag also. And I didn?t have any turtlenecks. But uh, so I wore sweatpants because I wanted to be comfortable tonight, so uh, technically, these are pajamas actually. I wore my pajamas, and figured it was black, you know??

Miliazzo: ?The movie, as Jonathan Pryce says the movie is half real, half dreams, so its apropos that you would wear half real, half dreams?and clocks which I love, they tie the outfit together. Thank you man, thank you for being here.

Black: ?It?s hard to believe that the suits at Universal would?ve seen any cut of that film and said ?you know, we?ve got a couple of ideas we?d like to, uh?? (laughs) You know what I mean? It sort of seems like ?really?? How could you look at a single scene, you know, ?we like what you?re trying to do here but?? It?s sort of shocking but it?s not shocking, I don?t know. The artist is always right the tour manager told me and if, you know, you hire some guy to make a movie, the artist is all obviously making art. Just leave them alone, ?cause you don?t know and they do because they?re right.

Milazzo: ?When we invited you to screen whatever film you wanted to share, why did you pick BRAZIL??

Black: ?Well, it really is like a knee jerk kind of a choice ? I liked it! You know, when I first saw the movie, and I?ve seen it many times, and even though you could talk about this film and analyze it, intellectualize it, talk about it on a few different levels I suppose, basically I thought, I really liked it. I was really entertained by it, and I loved the film, all analysis aside. Every time I see it, I?m reminded of that. Now we can talk about it on other levels, but I liked it.?

Milazzo: ?When did you first see it? Did you see it in ?85??

Black: ?I saw it when it first came out, I didn?t know what cut it was. I don?t recall it having a completely hacked ending. I believe when it was shown on television, or something, they tried to end it on a happy note. Right? They escaped to the countryside, and lived happily ever after. There was some version of that I heard about, but I think when I saw it in theaters it had the more poignant ending.?

Milazzo: ?What were you doing in ?85??

Black: ?I was living in Boston, I had just dropped out of college, and I was starting a band with Kim Deal and Joey Santiago.?

Milazzo: ?That worked out.?

Black: ?Yeah, I was basically going to the movies. When I was in between jobs, I went to a lot of films. We rehearsed, we had our day jobs, but basically I went to the movies a lot. Sometimes we?d all go to the movies together as a band, ?cause it would be very important to me: ?you have to see this film that I?m really into!? You know, and I would drag them with me. They?d go along, and we had kind of a cinematic origin I suppose, you know, in at least that was what I was looking at more than music. Obviously, I loved Husker Du, and Peter, Paul and Mary, but, and I?d go see Husker Du when they came to town, but the art of film, also especially like this, you know, the way it?s supposed to be. We didn?t have computers or laptops or tablets or anything, and if you were a young broke musician you didn?t have TV or anything, so I?d go to the cinema a lot. And I always did then. As soon as I had enough money to go to the movies, I guess from my late teens or whatever, I went to the movies a lot.?

Milazzo: ?On a script level, Tom Stoppard wrote, and Gilliam credits him as giving the guts to the movie ? the Buttle/Tuttle, the bug falling into the thing ? and Charles McKeown, and just a bit of trivia, this is my back-up trivia question, he?s in LIFE OF BRIAN, he?s in the Biggus Dickus scene. The script of this is pretty sophisticated in a sense of how it balances politics, the politics of every day ? do you watch it on that level? Do you watch it on the sort of middle management, working in offices, I mean, it?s not been your life per say.?

Black: ?I mean, it echoes the past, it echoes the present, it amplifies the future. I mean, it?s so incredibly apropos to any conversation, whether it?s today or whether it was 1985 when they made it. Or, I imagine, in the future, where it will all make a lot of sense.?

Milazzo: ?Your son is right.?

Black: ?Without getting into any kind of specifics, you know, bombs, control, misidentification, homogenization, pasteurization, whatever, the machinery ? where does one begin? It?s all there.?

Milazzo: ?One of the cool things, and you said it so well, and it?s even a more intelligent perspective, this film does better watching it more times, maybe in a way, watching it again here ? the samurai is made out of computer parts. You can only watch it if you scrutinize the movie. This whole retro-fitting thing ? he admits he sort of got it from Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, but this retro-fitting was in.?

Black: ?The Samurai I find particularly beautiful. When he?s defeated the first time by Sam, and the flames from the escaping gas coming out of him, something about it is really beautiful and evil and industrial??

Milazzo: ?And analog! You know, it?s like the movie is homemade in a sense. When you see Ian Holm with his face and those arms??

On the cast:

Black: ?I love Ian Holm, his tension, his pretending his hand?s broken?the casting is so incredible in this film?Jim Broadbent as the plastic surgeon ?cut cut, snip snip,? with his hair and everything, just beautiful.?

Milazzo: ?We talked about the performances a lot yesterday ? Kim Griest who takes a bad rap in a way is perfect, I mean, the way the casting of that is perfect.?

Black: ?One of the things I really liked about it, it involves her character of course, is just the idea of love. There?s this old school romantic thing where he?s just obsessed with this person. And he?s searching for this person, because he loves them?and that?s it. It?s so romantic, and he?s this dorky nervous nellie guy with all this existential ennui and he doesn?t know what he wants ? ?I want her, I think!? And it reminds me of when I first had a romantic crush when I was young. 

You know, that?s what you would fantasize about, like the backdrop of this film it?s like it?s all gone wrong, the world?s gone wrong, and I wonder what would it be like if there was an apocalyptic war and the world as we know it is falling apart, ?I?ll go to her house, to her parent?s house and I?ll go get her!? And we?ll get on a train, or a horse (laughs). We?ll escape, we?ll get out to the countryside just like at the end there. I guess, again there, the influence of BLADE RUNNER, I don?t know. Finally escape the grimy dark urban kind of tubular life that they lived, and they finally make it out to the countryside of the green, there?s the English countryside, much like the end of BLADE RUNNER. Finally we get out of Los Angeles where we can breathe! (Takes a big breath)

On the ending:

Black: ?That?s the noir ending, you know it?s like ?nope!? It isn?t alright! Nope! Death! No, it?s over. The bad guys win. Of course, that?s the ending you want. That?s the ending that?s gonna ?cause people to talk about it. We don?t talk about happy endings because, we forget them.?

On ?Debaser,? which was inspired by Luis Bu?uel?s 1929 surreal silent film collaboration with Salvador Dali, UN CHIEN ANDALOU:

Milazzo: ?What was the line between watching the film, UN CHIEN ANDALOU, and writing ?Debaser,? putting it out into the world, what was the creative chronology??

Black: ?I don?t really know, but I think the way I used to write songs at that time was that I?d use language in a kind of jabberwocky kind of way. I would find syllables and combinations of consonants and vowels that I liked the sound of them. So maybe they?d form a word I was familiar with and maybe they didn?t, but it would begin to take form that way. And then maybe I could, it would ascend into an actual intelligible word, and then maybe that intelligible word might inform the rest of the text, or the lyric, you know? So, it wasn?t like I had the need to write a song that was basically the Cliff?s Notes, sort of a pop song Cliff?s Notes version of UN CHIEN ANDALOU. 

A song is such a shrunk down thing, there?s a universe of ideas but you?ve only got (sings out a bit of melody made up of nonsense sounds) ? that?s it! That?s all you?ve got, and so how are you gonna get all this information in? I just took some of the language from my interpretation of the film, and I just, I don?t want to say it?s a hack job! 

But I kind of used something that I liked, you know, it wasn?t like I was saying anything. Other than, to quote Serge Gainsbourg: ?I am a surrealist!? So it was my way of saying ?I am a surrealist too!? and ?I?m borrowing your movies for my song!? That?s a French accent, right??

On ?In Heaven,? a cover of a song from the ERASERHEAD soundtrack:

Milazzo: ?Another song, ?The Lady in The Radiator? song, ?In Heaven,? which is an ERASERHEAD draw. Talk about that, watching ERASERHEAD conjuring that song. Do you recall that process??

Black: ?You brought it up, that is was the theme song to David Lynch?s ERASERHEAD, it was written, the lyric is by David Lynch actually, but the music is by a guy named Peter Ivers, and, of course, when I was a teenager I saw the film and I liked it, and we were a band playing nightclubs, we were an artsy fartsy band, so we did our loud version of that kinda simple song, and I thought we were so cool, but I found out that every metropolis on the planet has a band that has that song in their repertoire so we weren?t the only ones.?

On the use of the Pixies' ?Where Is My Mind?? in David Fincher's 1999 cult classic FIGHT CLUB:

Black: ?It was nice that our song was in it, but I was kind of more caught up in my cinema experience so I think I was able to compartmentalize it. I didn?t jump up and go ?that?s me!? But I mean, you know, I got a grand out of it, but I was engaged in the film. When it happened it washed over me like everybody else. It?s a great moment in the film, because it?s a great moment in the film not because of the song. The song works, but I think a lot of songs could?ve worked in that same spot. But he picked the right kind of song, I suppose, for his montage.?

On being up for a role in Fincher's ZODIAC: 

Black: ?You know, uh, David Fincher was making the ZODIAC movie, and he wanted me to play the Zodiac killer, because I bore a certain physical resemblance.?

Milazzo: ?Wow! That?s cool, man.?

Black: ?And so he sent me part of the script and some other materials, you know so I could get all Robert De Niro and really get into my role ? it was a little freaky, but, you know, I bought some combat boots that the guy was fond of, and tried to, you know, I went to an acting coach, we talked for a few minutes. And they know I?m not an actor and they weren?t trying to put a lot of pressure on me, but I sat there with him and his producer, and I was literally like, you know, Don Knotts, I was just like (makes unintelligible speech) ? I was just reading off a page and I couldn?t even like, it was just so hard. It was so hard to act, to even just read, to put, to get any kind of connection to the drama, even in the most casual setting? ?It?s okay, it?s alright , Charles? I said, I literally couldn?t even talk. And they were ?Thank you very much,? and I never heard from them again.?

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, April 13th, looks pretty damn interesting too: Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers screens Sidney Lumet's 1976 classic NETWORK. Tickets are on sale now.

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Wilco?s Jeff Tweedy Talks AMERICAN MOVIE For Film Acoustic

Last weekend, possibly my favorite installment so far of The Modern School of Film's series, Film Acoustic, went down in Durham: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco screened and discussed Chris Smith's 1999 cult favorite documentary AMERICAN MOVIE.

The film was well received by the audience at Fletcher Hall at the Carolina Theatre - many of whom had raised their hands when MSOF founder and moderator Robery Milazzo asked afterwards how many had never seen it before - and I enjoyed seeing it on the big screen for the first time, especially considering it was an original 35 mm print.

AMERICAN MOVIE focuses on aspiring Milwaukee filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempts to complete his short horror film COVEN, so that he can finance his dream project, an epic full-length feature named NORTHWESTERN.

Borchardt's sidekick, the lovably sclubby Mike Schank, who composed the music for movie, got a lot of laughs, but it was the director's Uncle Bill, who skeptically financed the project and is recruited to act, that most got the crowd rolling. 

After the screening ended, Milazzo relayed a message from Schank: ?Happy Memorial Day. Thank for showing the film and thank you, Jeff Tweedy.? Milliazzo then added, ?An hour later he texted me back and said ?Oh, if there are any hot girls in the audience that would like to call me, you c an give them my number.? And then he texted me a half an hour later ? ?Girls only though.?

Millazzo introduced Tweedy as ?former lead singer of Land Ho! And Black Shampoo,? and the Wilco singer came out to rousing applause. 

Tweedy discussed the film and several other subjects with Milazzo, including the Wilco rock doc I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, his contribution to the BOYHOOD soundtrack, and his mother's love of movies. Tweedy's 15-year old son Sam also came on stage for a brief bit and answered some questions.

But the best news for fans was that Tweedy had brought his guitar and performed solo acoustic versions of ?Less Than You Think,? ?I Am Trying To Break Your Heart? (see video below), ?The Losing End (When You?re On)? (Neil Young cover), ?One By One,? and ?You Are Not Alone.?

Here are some other highlights from the excellent evening:

On why he choose AMERICAN MOVIE:

Tweedy: ?One of the reasons that we wanted to watch this movie together is the idea that making things and immersing yourself in making things is an incredibly healthy and sustaining thing to do. I really have this fantasy that if everybody in the world were given the opportunity to make things, uh, it sounds pretty na?ve and simple saying it out loud, but I think the world would be a much better place. Everybody would be on the side of existence as opposed to destruction. Creation as opposed to destruction.

That?s the main focus in our house that it?s ?study hard, do good, try to be kind to people, and try to make stuff ? it makes you happy.??

?I see him (Borchardt) as a very optimistic and vocal person. He preaches it to everybody around him. To Bill, to everybody in the community, you know ?Do something! You gonna die and not do something? Do something!? 

I think people might, on one hand might be sort of cynical in indulging him, On the other hand I think that there?s a deep sense that they have to honor that. They have to honor that least there?s somebody in their midst that doesn?t feel like giving up.?

Milazzo: ?You guys are roughly the same age, you and Mark, I think there?s a year apart ? what separates you from Mark??

Tweedy: ?I ask myself that question all of the time. I think that anybody that has had any modicum of success whatsoever asks themselves that question periodically. ?Why me? Why not a lot of other people that have worked very very hard or our very talented people.?

On Sam Jones' 2002 documentary I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART:

Milazzo: ?Was it a big decision to kind of open yourself up that way??

Tweedy: ?No, I can honestly say it was a na?ve decision. I didn?t feel like Wilco had a persona worth any spending any amount of effort to prune or shape, I just didn?t think there was anything that could come from it that would be that, I don?t know. I felt that a lot of people who spend time on their personas, and their image, were people like Madonna, and I don?t know, maybe Bob Dylan, somebody like that, but it has never been a part of how I view what it is that I?m doing.

But I learned a lot - after the fact I realized that I would?ve never done that again. We basically just let him make the movie, and we didn?t have any say. Well, I mean, we probably could?ve pulled our songs from the movie, you know, so we could have some control if it was really really terrible, but we didn?t. We didn?t do anything. We just saw it when it was done, and said ?oh, that?s uncomfortable.? Imagine how very similar Mike and Mark might?ve felt if they went to a screening of this when it first came out.?

Milazzo: ?What did you learn about yourself though? You know, in the sense of watching the documentary of Wilco, did you ever have a moment ?oh, that?s my response? or ?that?s my process?? In a sense worrying that you don?t want to put yourself in that again, did you see yourself differently??

Tweedy: ?Yeah, there are?I haven?t seen it in a long time, but there were a lot of moments watching that movie, well, there were a lot of moments during the filming of that movie where, uh, the first time there was an observing ego in the room ? the camera??

Milazzo: ?Camera ? you do such a beautiful song called ?Kamera,? which speaks to that?

Tweedy: ?It just felt like, I don?t know if I?ve ever been able to put myself outside of myself enough to see what a camera might be seeing. And so there were a lot of moments during the process of making that record where I was like ?oh, no ? oh, no, that?s what the camera is seeing.? Obviously, this is not ? our relationship with Jay (Bennett) for example was made painfully obvious that there was a big problem in the way we were interacting, the way he was interacting with the band. And it?s really sad that it took a camera to do that or that we weren?t together enough, or grown up enough as people to see that without a camera.?

On Tweedy's mother, Jo Ann Tweedy, who passed in 2006:

Milazzo: ?One thing I thought was interesting about your cinema DNA is how it connects for your Mom, and Judy Garland of all people. Because when we asked about a movie I thought we?d be getting a Judy Garland film, not that that would?ve been wrong at the time. But what about when you were young and your Mom watching films with you or around you??

Tweedy: ?My mother was a night owl. She was a high school drop-out who had my sister when she was 16 years old, and I was born much much later than everyone else in my family. I?m 10 years younger than my youngest brother. And so by the time I came around, she had really given up on parenting. You know, there weren?t a lot of boundaries so I was up all night watching movies while my Mom fell asleep with cigarettes in her mouth. 

Yeah, right, it sounds like a terrible parenting thing ? it is. But my memory of it looking back is actually really warm. It?s a warm feeling. It?s actually one of the images that comes to mind when I miss my mother. But in St. Louis, the St. Louis TV stations had a movie program, or a late night movie called the ?Bijou Picture Show.? I think that?s kind of a Midwestern thing. There were a lot of Judy Garland movies that they would show, a lot of black and white, now it?s Turner Classic Movies ? it?s the same thing.?

Milazzo: ?If performance cures a sort of anxiety, what does writing cure for you??

Tweedy: ?Well, I think that, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Because I can?t help myself, we?re pretty philosophical in our house and we end up talking about a lot of things like this. I think the best that I can come up with, is that it?s like a really really healthy way of killing time for me. It?s actually, uh, I don?t know, I like not being there. I like to be gone, unburdened enough of having an ego. Which is like what happens when I get completely immersed in the process of making a song. Or making something ? it becomes, you become this thing ? it?s a maker.

But it?s not necessarily?in fact the more the ego gets involved, the more it suffers. It really suffers when you start to think ?well, are people gonna think I?m cool because this is so great?? Then you?re done. The song is done and you can?t return from that. You should put it away until some other time when you can get lost in it again. 

That?s why I said ?once a song is done, it?s on a record, or finished recording it, or finish writing it even, it?s already done all the good stuff that it was going to do for me. After that it?s all pain and suffering. Because even if people like it, it?s never enough. Or they see it somehow different, or they?re indifferent ? that?s the worst of all. ?

On his songs in BOOYHOOD:

Milazzo: ?BOYHOOD, the great Richard Linklater film, which to me was the best film of last year??

Tweedy: ?I think it should?ve been called ?Motherhood.? (Audience applauds) I think the most compelling character in the whole movie was Patricia Arquette. Beautiful.?

Milazzo: ?Speaking of beauty, one of your songs is in it. How did that come about? Could you demystify that process? What?s it like to hear your song in a really killer movie in a really killer moment??

Tweedy: ?Well, in that movie there?s a Wilco song ?Hate it Here? is in a scene, an actual scene where they?re talking about the song. And I didn?t know it was in there, so it was a little, it actually took me out of the movie a little bit which is kind of a drag. I was like ?Abbey Road???

But anyway, and then the song ?Summer Noon? is in the movie also, but it?s kind of on the radio in the background, and I think they wanted something that would be really contemporary when the movie came out. And so they asked me to write a song for the movie and I was working on ?Suikerae? so we sent them that. ?How about something like this?? Then they said ?great,? and they put it in the movie. And then for some reason it was disqualified for an Oscar though. So Maybe you could talk to somebody about that.

?Summer Noon? is basically cut and pasted like a Warhol, like Zerox. I thought, people do that with art, why don?t they do that with songs? I had a minute and a half long song, and I thought, why don?t I just put it on the record twice? Back to back.?

On Wilco?s breakthrough album ?Yankee Hotel Foxtrot?:

Milazzo: ?The first attempt at a release was at an interesting moment in history, because the first attempt at release was??

Tweedy: ??Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,? the original release date was September 11th, 2001. The artwork, the entire package, everything was done. And we were dropped so we lost that release date. Obviously, over time it?s weird that it?s become associated with that.

?The lyrics on the whole record were really meant to be?I was thinking a lot about America, and I really wanted to know what I thought of America. Having grown up being somewhat skeptical of America, growing up in a time where I was heavily influenced by punk rock as a young teenager. Very, I don?t know, not willing to submit to the party line of America. I don?t know, I just really, I think a lot of things, ?oh, there?s a cash machine, is that evil? Is a cash machine evil, or is it just blue and green. You know, what actually is the evil part of America? Because I really don?t think like anything I grew up seeing was particularly evil, but I also knew a lot of things weren?t right.

Anyway, lyrics aside, I don?t know how cinematic they might be, but the actual construction of that record, very very consciously constructed with the idea of cinematic pacing.

Milazzo: ?And the transitions, the lack of thereof??

Tweedy: ?Everything was recorded in a lot of different formats, and what we would end up doing is we would mix the first verse of a song and then completely wipe the board and everything completely clean, and start all over for the second verse. And then splice those two together. So we could never remix that record if we wanted to ? it doesn?t exist.

And one final thought from the evening:

Tweedy: ?It?s one of the weird things about rock music ? it?s a youth obsessed culture within a youth obsessed culture, and it?s disheartening sometimes when you start to become known as ?Dad Rock.? That doesn?t help.?

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, June 22nd, looks like another winner: Will Butler of Arcade Fire screens and discusses Terry Gilliam's 1996 sci-fi thriller TWELVE MONKEYS. Tickets are on sale now.

More later...

Neko Case & Mike Nesmith Talk REPO MAN For Film Acoustic: Part 2

This is part 2 as the conversation between Neko Case and Mike Nesmith at the Carolina Theatre in Durham following a screening of REPO MAN earlier this week was so enjoyably rich with insights that I wanted to give it more space (click here for Part 1). For the second installment of the new series, Film Acoustic, the acclaimed singer/songwriter Case had chosen the 1984 cult classic, being one of her all-time favorites, to screen, and invited its executive producer, Nesmith, who you also may know from a little band he was in called the Monkees, to discuss it and other related topics with her.

Here, Nesmith speaks about the Monkees' sole film project, the possibility of a REPO MAN sequel, and whether or not popular singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett had a cameo in the film.

Nesmith on HEAD, Bob Rafelson?s 1968 psychedelic masterpiece starring the Monkees: ?It?s actually a masterwork. And whose masterwork it is, is Jack Nicholson?s. When HEAD came about, it was, I don?t want to build too much ? take it on fact, that the movie Bob and Bert (Schneider) had decided to do, HEAD, as a kind of assisted suicide for the Monkees and they hired Jack to come in and help them. ?Cause they wanted to kill the monster. The monster had turned on them.

They had been praying for the little wooden boy to come to life and suddenly it did, and it scared the hell out of them so Geppetto was going to throw the marionette off the bridge. Well, okay off the air, but what do you do in that particular case with the music? What do you do with what that film is about to become? And Jack was able to bring the music into that film in such a way that it satisfied what everybody wanted out of that movie, that wanted anything out of the movie. And instead of killing the monster, it imprinted it forever on the history of film. And there it is, there it jolly well is.

Bob tells this story in the commentary of the movie?s Criterion release of HEAD where he says that Jack and him were sitting around loaded, and Bob gets dark and Jack said ?what?s going on?? ?I?m thinking about the blackest, darkest thing in the world.? And Jack said ?well, what would that be?? And Bob said ?Victor Mature?s hair.? And Jack said ?that?s it! The whole movie takes place in Victor Mature?s hair!? I thought Jack had one of the greatest dope riffs I ever heard!? But he took that and suddenly he made it all work around that music.?

Nesmith on his favorite line in REPO MAN: ??The life of REPO MAN is intense? is the fulcrum. That?s talking about intensity, it?s talking about what happens to you when you watch the movie ? it?s intense.?

On Alex Cox having the rights to the screenplay to REPO MAN: ?Now Alex has the right to make a sequel if he wants to.?

Milazzo: ?If he rang your phone and said ?hey, would you like to jump on this journey again with me??

Nesmith: ?No.? (audience laughs) I know, it sounded flip but no. It?s not because it was a bad experience because that?s not?I?m not sure that there is a sequel to REPO MAN. I think REPO MAN is a whole complete thing.?

Case: ?I?d be really sad if they made a sequel.?

Nesmith: ?Yeah, I?m kinda following you in on that. He wrote the sequel called ?Otto?s Hawaiian Holiday.? (audience laughs) Just as funny as you think it is.?

Questions from the audience Q & A:

Audience member: ?The last scene, or near the end, with the guy that says ?I love my job? and they bring out a book, I think I remember that being a copy of ?Dianetics? but I didn?t quite pick it up in the movie??

Nesmith: ?I?m so glad you asked me that, because it?s one of the funniest jokes in the movie and nobody sees it!?

Audience member: ?And I just watched BATTLEFIELD EARTH yesterday!? (laughter)

Nesmith: ?You see, and this is an example, like how we got the generic food, they?re not gonna let us use Dianetics!? So Alex calls it ?Diaretics?!

Another audience member: ?Jimmy Buffet is credited as one of the blond agents, which one is he??

Milazzo: ?Where?s Jimmy Buffett in this film??

Case: ?Did they make that up??

Nesmith: ?No, no ? Jimmy was there.? (audience laughs)

Case: ?You guys planted this stuff like they?re little landmines that are just gonna keep going off for years and years.

Nesmith: ?Nobody planned it. They just fell off the truck and landed some place.?

Case: ?Jimmy Buffet?s on the lot.? (laughter) ?Do we have a size 44 blazer? Show Mr. Buffett in.? (more laughter)

Nesmith: ?That?s exactly what it was. That very thing. He and I were sort of friends, and hanging out, and was ?what are you doing?? ?Shooting REPO MAN,? ?oh I want to come to the set.? Alex said ?do you want to be in the movie?? and handed him a blazer and a pair of sunglasses. And he is part of the team when they set the body on fire that?s on the park bench, he?s one of those guys and if you look at it ? he?s standing by the back of the van. That?s Jimmy.?

Nesmith on the legacy of REPO MAN: ?Alex and Peter were all frustrated by the way that movie got distributed, and what happened to it in the public?s mind. The fact that it has gotten some traction, and there are people who love it, and people who really get it, is nourishing. 

Case: ?And I?m thinking that it probably made more money than GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN that came out that same year.? (audience laughs)

Nesmith: ?Actually, that?s my favorite movie, GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN.? (more laughter)

Milazzo: ?Goes without saying.? (even more laughter)

The next Film Acoustic is a real doozy: Frank Black from the Pixies Presents Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, another favorite film of mine, on Thursday, March 19th. Tickets are on sale now.

More later...

The Pixies? Frank Black Blabs About BRAZIL For Film Acoustic

As I wrote in the Raleigh N & O, the third installment of the new series Film Acoustic was a real doozy: Frank Black of the iconic punk rock band the Pixies presenting Terry Gilliam's 1985 classic BRAZIL. The event went down last Thursday evening, March 19th, at the Carolina Theatre in Durham with a screening of the film, which I believe is the best film of the '80s, followed by a chat conducted by Modern School of Film founder and Duke graduate Robert Milazzo, a bit of audience Q & A, and solo acoustic performances of four songs (?Wave of Mutilation,? ?Monkey Gone To Heaven,? ?Los Angeles,? and ?All Around the World?).

Here are some highlights from the fine evening:

Milazzo's introduction: ?Terry Gilliam was asked ?what was your favorite review of BRAZIL?? from the critics because the critics loved this film. And he said ?it was from Salmon Rushdie. Salmon said ?we are all Brazilians. We are all strangers in a strange land.?? I offer you that bit of cultural anthropology because tonight?s guest studied for a moment or two cultural anthropology on his way to making music history. He told me last night though that the classes that he had the most fun were the cinema classes.

We?ll ask him if he feels that way in about an hour. Please welcome to the Modern School of Film, Professor Charles Thompson, everybody, Frank Black.?

(audience applause)

Frank Black: ?I should probably mention, I uh, made a bit of a popcorn mess by my seat.?

Milazzo: ?Really??

Black: ?I tried to get, I got, I threw half of it before it even started, but thank you for the popcorn. And uh, I didn?t know what to wear tonight ? ?cause my film professor Don Levine, who taught Avant Grade Film 302-B, used to always wear a black turtleneck, and a black jacket, black pants. And he had a black carrying bag also. And I didn?t have any turtlenecks. But uh, so I wore sweatpants because I wanted to be comfortable tonight, so uh, technically, these are pajamas actually. I wore my pajamas, and figured it was black, you know??

Miliazzo: ?The movie, as Jonathan Pryce says the movie is half real, half dreams, so its apropos that you would wear half real, half dreams?and clocks which I love, they tie the outfit together. Thank you man, thank you for being here.

Black: ?It?s hard to believe that the suits at Universal would?ve seen any cut of that film and said ?you know, we?ve got a couple of ideas we?d like to, uh?? (laughs) You know what I mean? It sort of seems like ?really?? How could you look at a single scene, you know, ?we like what you?re trying to do here but?? It?s sort of shocking but it?s not shocking, I don?t know. The artist is always right the tour manager told me and if, you know, you hire some guy to make a movie, the artist is all obviously making art. Just leave them alone, ?cause you don?t know and they do because they?re right.

Milazzo: ?When we invited you to screen whatever film you wanted to share, why did you pick BRAZIL??

Black: ?Well, it really is like a knee jerk kind of a choice ? I liked it! You know, when I first saw the movie, and I?ve seen it many times, and even though you could talk about this film and analyze it, intellectualize it, talk about it on a few different levels I suppose, basically I thought, I really liked it. I was really entertained by it, and I loved the film, all analysis aside. Every time I see it, I?m reminded of that. Now we can talk about it on other levels, but I liked it.?

Milazzo: ?When did you first see it? Did you see it in ?85??

Black: ?I saw it when it first came out, I didn?t know what cut it was. I don?t recall it having a completely hacked ending. I believe when it was shown on television, or something, they tried to end it on a happy note. Right? They escaped to the countryside, and lived happily ever after. There was some version of that I heard about, but I think when I saw it in theaters it had the more poignant ending.?

Milazzo: ?What were you doing in ?85??

Black: ?I was living in Boston, I had just dropped out of college, and I was starting a band with Kim Deal and Joey Santiago.?

Milazzo: ?That worked out.?

Black: ?Yeah, I was basically going to the movies. When I was in between jobs, I went to a lot of films. We rehearsed, we had our day jobs, but basically I went to the movies a lot. Sometimes we?d all go to the movies together as a band, ?cause it would be very important to me: ?you have to see this film that I?m really into!? You know, and I would drag them with me. They?d go along, and we had kind of a cinematic origin I suppose, you know, in at least that was what I was looking at more than music. Obviously, I loved Husker Du, and Peter, Paul and Mary, but, and I?d go see Husker Du when they came to town, but the art of film, also especially like this, you know, the way it?s supposed to be. We didn?t have computers or laptops or tablets or anything, and if you were a young broke musician you didn?t have TV or anything, so I?d go to the cinema a lot. And I always did then. As soon as I had enough money to go to the movies, I guess from my late teens or whatever, I went to the movies a lot.?

Milazzo: ?On a script level, Tom Stoppard wrote, and Gilliam credits him as giving the guts to the movie ? the Buttle/Tuttle, the bug falling into the thing ? and Charles McKeown, and just a bit of trivia, this is my back-up trivia question, he?s in LIFE OF BRIAN, he?s in the Biggus Dickus scene. The script of this is pretty sophisticated in a sense of how it balances politics, the politics of every day ? do you watch it on that level? Do you watch it on the sort of middle management, working in offices, I mean, it?s not been your life per say.?

Black: ?I mean, it echoes the past, it echoes the present, it amplifies the future. I mean, it?s so incredibly apropos to any conversation, whether it?s today or whether it was 1985 when they made it. Or, I imagine, in the future, where it will all make a lot of sense.?

Milazzo: ?Your son is right.?

Black: ?Without getting into any kind of specifics, you know, bombs, control, misidentification, homogenization, pasteurization, whatever, the machinery ? where does one begin? It?s all there.?

Milazzo: ?One of the cool things, and you said it so well, and it?s even a more intelligent perspective, this film does better watching it more times, maybe in a way, watching it again here ? the samurai is made out of computer parts. You can only watch it if you scrutinize the movie. This whole retro-fitting thing ? he admits he sort of got it from Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, but this retro-fitting was in.?

Black: ?The Samurai I find particularly beautiful. When he?s defeated the first time by Sam, and the flames from the escaping gas coming out of him, something about it is really beautiful and evil and industrial??

Milazzo: ?And analog! You know, it?s like the movie is homemade in a sense. When you see Ian Holm with his face and those arms??

On the cast:

Black: ?I love Ian Holm, his tension, his pretending his hand?s broken?the casting is so incredible in this film?Jim Broadbent as the plastic surgeon ?cut cut, snip snip,? with his hair and everything, just beautiful.?

Milazzo: ?We talked about the performances a lot yesterday ? Kim Griest who takes a bad rap in a way is perfect, I mean, the way the casting of that is perfect.?

Black: ?One of the things I really liked about it, it involves her character of course, is just the idea of love. There?s this old school romantic thing where he?s just obsessed with this person. And he?s searching for this person, because he loves them?and that?s it. It?s so romantic, and he?s this dorky nervous nellie guy with all this existential ennui and he doesn?t know what he wants ? ?I want her, I think!? And it reminds me of when I first had a romantic crush when I was young. 

You know, that?s what you would fantasize about, like the backdrop of this film it?s like it?s all gone wrong, the world?s gone wrong, and I wonder what would it be like if there was an apocalyptic war and the world as we know it is falling apart, ?I?ll go to her house, to her parent?s house and I?ll go get her!? And we?ll get on a train, or a horse (laughs). We?ll escape, we?ll get out to the countryside just like at the end there. I guess, again there, the influence of BLADE RUNNER, I don?t know. Finally escape the grimy dark urban kind of tubular life that they lived, and they finally make it out to the countryside of the green, there?s the English countryside, much like the end of BLADE RUNNER. Finally we get out of Los Angeles where we can breathe! (Takes a big breath)

On the ending:

Black: ?That?s the noir ending, you know it?s like ?nope!? It isn?t alright! Nope! Death! No, it?s over. The bad guys win. Of course, that?s the ending you want. That?s the ending that?s gonna ?cause people to talk about it. We don?t talk about happy endings because, we forget them.?

On ?Debaser,? which was inspired by Luis Bu?uel?s 1929 surreal silent film collaboration with Salvador Dali, UN CHIEN ANDALOU:

Milazzo: ?What was the line between watching the film, UN CHIEN ANDALOU, and writing ?Debaser,? putting it out into the world, what was the creative chronology??

Black: ?I don?t really know, but I think the way I used to write songs at that time was that I?d use language in a kind of jabberwocky kind of way. I would find syllables and combinations of consonants and vowels that I liked the sound of them. So maybe they?d form a word I was familiar with and maybe they didn?t, but it would begin to take form that way. And then maybe I could, it would ascend into an actual intelligible word, and then maybe that intelligible word might inform the rest of the text, or the lyric, you know? So, it wasn?t like I had the need to write a song that was basically the Cliff?s Notes, sort of a pop song Cliff?s Notes version of UN CHIEN ANDALOU. 

A song is such a shrunk down thing, there?s a universe of ideas but you?ve only got (sings out a bit of melody made up of nonsense sounds) ? that?s it! That?s all you?ve got, and so how are you gonna get all this information in? I just took some of the language from my interpretation of the film, and I just, I don?t want to say it?s a hack job! 

But I kind of used something that I liked, you know, it wasn?t like I was saying anything. Other than, to quote Serge Gainsbourg: ?I am a surrealist!? So it was my way of saying ?I am a surrealist too!? and ?I?m borrowing your movies for my song!? That?s a French accent, right??

On ?In Heaven,? a cover of a song from the ERASERHEAD soundtrack:

Milazzo: ?Another song, ?The Lady in The Radiator? song, ?In Heaven,? which is an ERASERHEAD draw. Talk about that, watching ERASERHEAD conjuring that song. Do you recall that process??

Black: ?You brought it up, that is was the theme song to David Lynch?s ERASERHEAD, it was written, the lyric is by David Lynch actually, but the music is by a guy named Peter Ivers, and, of course, when I was a teenager I saw the film and I liked it, and we were a band playing nightclubs, we were an artsy fartsy band, so we did our loud version of that kinda simple song, and I thought we were so cool, but I found out that every metropolis on the planet has a band that has that song in their repertoire so we weren?t the only ones.?

On the use of the Pixies' ?Where Is My Mind?? in David Fincher's 1999 cult classic FIGHT CLUB:

Black: ?It was nice that our song was in it, but I was kind of more caught up in my cinema experience so I think I was able to compartmentalize it. I didn?t jump up and go ?that?s me!? But I mean, you know, I got a grand out of it, but I was engaged in the film. When it happened it washed over me like everybody else. It?s a great moment in the film, because it?s a great moment in the film not because of the song. The song works, but I think a lot of songs could?ve worked in that same spot. But he picked the right kind of song, I suppose, for his montage.?

On being up for a role in Fincher's ZODIAC: 

Black: ?You know, uh, David Fincher was making the ZODIAC movie, and he wanted me to play the Zodiac killer, because I bore a certain physical resemblance.?

Milazzo: ?Wow! That?s cool, man.?

Black: ?And so he sent me part of the script and some other materials, you know so I could get all Robert De Niro and really get into my role ? it was a little freaky, but, you know, I bought some combat boots that the guy was fond of, and tried to, you know, I went to an acting coach, we talked for a few minutes. And they know I?m not an actor and they weren?t trying to put a lot of pressure on me, but I sat there with him and his producer, and I was literally like, you know, Don Knotts, I was just like (makes unintelligible speech) ? I was just reading off a page and I couldn?t even like, it was just so hard. It was so hard to act, to even just read, to put, to get any kind of connection to the drama, even in the most casual setting? ?It?s okay, it?s alright , Charles? I said, I literally couldn?t even talk. And they were ?Thank you very much,? and I never heard from them again.?

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, April 13th, looks pretty damn interesting too: Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers screens Sidney Lumet's 1976 classic NETWORK. Tickets are on sale now.

More later...

Wilco?s Jeff Tweedy Talks AMERICAN MOVIE For Film Acoustic

Last weekend, possibly my favorite installment so far of The Modern School of Film's series, Film Acoustic, went down in Durham: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco screened and discussed Chris Smith's 1999 cult favorite documentary AMERICAN MOVIE.

The film was well received by the audience at Fletcher Hall at the Carolina Theatre - many of whom had raised their hands when MSOF founder and moderator Robery Milazzo asked afterwards how many had never seen it before - and I enjoyed seeing it on the big screen for the first time, especially considering it was an original 35 mm print.

AMERICAN MOVIE focuses on aspiring Milwaukee filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempts to complete his short horror film COVEN, so that he can finance his dream project, an epic full-length feature named NORTHWESTERN.

Borchardt's sidekick, the lovably sclubby Mike Schank, who composed the music for movie, got a lot of laughs, but it was the director's Uncle Bill, who skeptically financed the project and is recruited to act, that most got the crowd rolling. 

After the screening ended, Milazzo relayed a message from Schank: ?Happy Memorial Day. Thank for showing the film and thank you, Jeff Tweedy.? Milliazzo then added, ?An hour later he texted me back and said ?Oh, if there are any hot girls in the audience that would like to call me, you c an give them my number.? And then he texted me a half an hour later ? ?Girls only though.?

Millazzo introduced Tweedy as ?former lead singer of Land Ho! And Black Shampoo,? and the Wilco singer came out to rousing applause. 

Tweedy discussed the film and several other subjects with Milazzo, including the Wilco rock doc I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, his contribution to the BOYHOOD soundtrack, and his mother's love of movies. Tweedy's 15-year old son Sam also came on stage for a brief bit and answered some questions.

But the best news for fans was that Tweedy had brought his guitar and performed solo acoustic versions of ?Less Than You Think,? ?I Am Trying To Break Your Heart? (see video below), ?The Losing End (When You?re On)? (Neil Young cover), ?One By One,? and ?You Are Not Alone.?

Here are some other highlights from the excellent evening:

On why he choose AMERICAN MOVIE:

Tweedy: ?One of the reasons that we wanted to watch this movie together is the idea that making things and immersing yourself in making things is an incredibly healthy and sustaining thing to do. I really have this fantasy that if everybody in the world were given the opportunity to make things, uh, it sounds pretty na?ve and simple saying it out loud, but I think the world would be a much better place. Everybody would be on the side of existence as opposed to destruction. Creation as opposed to destruction.

That?s the main focus in our house that it?s ?study hard, do good, try to be kind to people, and try to make stuff ? it makes you happy.??

?I see him (Borchardt) as a very optimistic and vocal person. He preaches it to everybody around him. To Bill, to everybody in the community, you know ?Do something! You gonna die and not do something? Do something!? 

I think people might, on one hand might be sort of cynical in indulging him, On the other hand I think that there?s a deep sense that they have to honor that. They have to honor that least there?s somebody in their midst that doesn?t feel like giving up.?

Milazzo: ?You guys are roughly the same age, you and Mark, I think there?s a year apart ? what separates you from Mark??

Tweedy: ?I ask myself that question all of the time. I think that anybody that has had any modicum of success whatsoever asks themselves that question periodically. ?Why me? Why not a lot of other people that have worked very very hard or our very talented people.?

On Sam Jones' 2002 documentary I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART:

Milazzo: ?Was it a big decision to kind of open yourself up that way??

Tweedy: ?No, I can honestly say it was a na?ve decision. I didn?t feel like Wilco had a persona worth any spending any amount of effort to prune or shape, I just didn?t think there was anything that could come from it that would be that, I don?t know. I felt that a lot of people who spend time on their personas, and their image, were people like Madonna, and I don?t know, maybe Bob Dylan, somebody like that, but it has never been a part of how I view what it is that I?m doing.

But I learned a lot - after the fact I realized that I would?ve never done that again. We basically just let him make the movie, and we didn?t have any say. Well, I mean, we probably could?ve pulled our songs from the movie, you know, so we could have some control if it was really really terrible, but we didn?t. We didn?t do anything. We just saw it when it was done, and said ?oh, that?s uncomfortable.? Imagine how very similar Mike and Mark might?ve felt if they went to a screening of this when it first came out.?

Milazzo: ?What did you learn about yourself though? You know, in the sense of watching the documentary of Wilco, did you ever have a moment ?oh, that?s my response? or ?that?s my process?? In a sense worrying that you don?t want to put yourself in that again, did you see yourself differently??

Tweedy: ?Yeah, there are?I haven?t seen it in a long time, but there were a lot of moments watching that movie, well, there were a lot of moments during the filming of that movie where, uh, the first time there was an observing ego in the room ? the camera??

Milazzo: ?Camera ? you do such a beautiful song called ?Kamera,? which speaks to that?

Tweedy: ?It just felt like, I don?t know if I?ve ever been able to put myself outside of myself enough to see what a camera might be seeing. And so there were a lot of moments during the process of making that record where I was like ?oh, no ? oh, no, that?s what the camera is seeing.? Obviously, this is not ? our relationship with Jay (Bennett) for example was made painfully obvious that there was a big problem in the way we were interacting, the way he was interacting with the band. And it?s really sad that it took a camera to do that or that we weren?t together enough, or grown up enough as people to see that without a camera.?

On Tweedy's mother, Jo Ann Tweedy, who passed in 2006:

Milazzo: ?One thing I thought was interesting about your cinema DNA is how it connects for your Mom, and Judy Garland of all people. Because when we asked about a movie I thought we?d be getting a Judy Garland film, not that that would?ve been wrong at the time. But what about when you were young and your Mom watching films with you or around you??

Tweedy: ?My mother was a night owl. She was a high school drop-out who had my sister when she was 16 years old, and I was born much much later than everyone else in my family. I?m 10 years younger than my youngest brother. And so by the time I came around, she had really given up on parenting. You know, there weren?t a lot of boundaries so I was up all night watching movies while my Mom fell asleep with cigarettes in her mouth. 

Yeah, right, it sounds like a terrible parenting thing ? it is. But my memory of it looking back is actually really warm. It?s a warm feeling. It?s actually one of the images that comes to mind when I miss my mother. But in St. Louis, the St. Louis TV stations had a movie program, or a late night movie called the ?Bijou Picture Show.? I think that?s kind of a Midwestern thing. There were a lot of Judy Garland movies that they would show, a lot of black and white, now it?s Turner Classic Movies ? it?s the same thing.?

Milazzo: ?If performance cures a sort of anxiety, what does writing cure for you??

Tweedy: ?Well, I think that, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Because I can?t help myself, we?re pretty philosophical in our house and we end up talking about a lot of things like this. I think the best that I can come up with, is that it?s like a really really healthy way of killing time for me. It?s actually, uh, I don?t know, I like not being there. I like to be gone, unburdened enough of having an ego. Which is like what happens when I get completely immersed in the process of making a song. Or making something ? it becomes, you become this thing ? it?s a maker.

But it?s not necessarily?in fact the more the ego gets involved, the more it suffers. It really suffers when you start to think ?well, are people gonna think I?m cool because this is so great?? Then you?re done. The song is done and you can?t return from that. You should put it away until some other time when you can get lost in it again. 

That?s why I said ?once a song is done, it?s on a record, or finished recording it, or finish writing it even, it?s already done all the good stuff that it was going to do for me. After that it?s all pain and suffering. Because even if people like it, it?s never enough. Or they see it somehow different, or they?re indifferent ? that?s the worst of all. ?

On his songs in BOOYHOOD:

Milazzo: ?BOYHOOD, the great Richard Linklater film, which to me was the best film of last year??

Tweedy: ?I think it should?ve been called ?Motherhood.? (Audience applauds) I think the most compelling character in the whole movie was Patricia Arquette. Beautiful.?

Milazzo: ?Speaking of beauty, one of your songs is in it. How did that come about? Could you demystify that process? What?s it like to hear your song in a really killer movie in a really killer moment??

Tweedy: ?Well, in that movie there?s a Wilco song ?Hate it Here? is in a scene, an actual scene where they?re talking about the song. And I didn?t know it was in there, so it was a little, it actually took me out of the movie a little bit which is kind of a drag. I was like ?Abbey Road???

But anyway, and then the song ?Summer Noon? is in the movie also, but it?s kind of on the radio in the background, and I think they wanted something that would be really contemporary when the movie came out. And so they asked me to write a song for the movie and I was working on ?Suikerae? so we sent them that. ?How about something like this?? Then they said ?great,? and they put it in the movie. And then for some reason it was disqualified for an Oscar though. So Maybe you could talk to somebody about that.

?Summer Noon? is basically cut and pasted like a Warhol, like Zerox. I thought, people do that with art, why don?t they do that with songs? I had a minute and a half long song, and I thought, why don?t I just put it on the record twice? Back to back.?

On Wilco?s breakthrough album ?Yankee Hotel Foxtrot?:

Milazzo: ?The first attempt at a release was at an interesting moment in history, because the first attempt at release was??

Tweedy: ??Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,? the original release date was September 11th, 2001. The artwork, the entire package, everything was done. And we were dropped so we lost that release date. Obviously, over time it?s weird that it?s become associated with that.

?The lyrics on the whole record were really meant to be?I was thinking a lot about America, and I really wanted to know what I thought of America. Having grown up being somewhat skeptical of America, growing up in a time where I was heavily influenced by punk rock as a young teenager. Very, I don?t know, not willing to submit to the party line of America. I don?t know, I just really, I think a lot of things, ?oh, there?s a cash machine, is that evil? Is a cash machine evil, or is it just blue and green. You know, what actually is the evil part of America? Because I really don?t think like anything I grew up seeing was particularly evil, but I also knew a lot of things weren?t right.

Anyway, lyrics aside, I don?t know how cinematic they might be, but the actual construction of that record, very very consciously constructed with the idea of cinematic pacing.

Milazzo: ?And the transitions, the lack of thereof??

Tweedy: ?Everything was recorded in a lot of different formats, and what we would end up doing is we would mix the first verse of a song and then completely wipe the board and everything completely clean, and start all over for the second verse. And then splice those two together. So we could never remix that record if we wanted to ? it doesn?t exist.

And one final thought from the evening:

Tweedy: ?It?s one of the weird things about rock music ? it?s a youth obsessed culture within a youth obsessed culture, and it?s disheartening sometimes when you start to become known as ?Dad Rock.? That doesn?t help.?

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, June 22nd, looks like another winner: Will Butler of Arcade Fire screens and discusses Terry Gilliam's 1996 sci-fi thriller TWELVE MONKEYS. Tickets are on sale now.

More later...