I spoke with Wishnow after SXSW to discuss why his film is a love story and what the future holds for the profession Christgau spent his life pursuing. This conversation has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.
DOCUMENTARY: You grew up a Robert Christgau fan. How does that turn into directing a documentary about him?
MATTY WISHNOW: I was writing a book about startups, Listening for Growth, and there was a chapter about the faculty of listening. I started asking myself, Who are the world’s greatest listeners? After getting lost in that question for a week, I was like, I actually know who the world’s greatest listener is because I’ve been reading his stuff since I was a tween.
That revelation didn’t inspire me to go make a movie. But it did inspire me to talk to my friend, Ben Wu, who is a documentary filmmaker, and say, “What if I told you the person who’s listened to more music than any person to ever walk the face of the earth is still doing it and that his story really hasn’t fully been told?” Ben said, “Let me reach out to my friend, who I think might know more about this than I do.” And this is where the crazy serendipity happens: Ben ended up being my coproducer and D.P., and his friend is a guy named Paul Lovelace. Paul, who’s my editor and coproducer, interned for Bob, and he also made his college NYU thesis film on Bob, which meant that we had dozens and dozens of hours of archival footage sitting on three-quarter-inch tapes in a house somewhere.
The more I spoke to the guys, the more they were like, “Matty, you should direct.” I had very little interest in [directing], except that I was so interested in the story. I figured if I could stand on Ben and Paul’s shoulders, I would be okay.
D: Christgau has a reputation for being intimidating. How did you sell him on the film?
MW: I held him in extremely high regard, but I was aware that he was known as being thorny or difficult. But my 25 years as an entrepreneur were helpful in this case because negotiation, empathy, and deal-making are part of that job.
Now, 80-year-old Bob is not ready to go to battle in the same way that 35-year-old Bob was. Greg Tate in the movie says, “Bob’s warm, but never fuzzy”—I found Bob to be occasionally quite fuzzy. He’s fuzziest when Carola is into something. It didn’t take me long to figure out that while this movie might be interesting to Bob, it was very attractive to Carola. She really wants Bob’s legacy to be properly accounted for. And they adore Paul, so being able to make my case to Carola reduced almost all of my anxiety within 20 minutes of meeting them. They never questioned my lack of bona fides. Bob, who’s a legendary editor, didn’t try editing.
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