Our favourite part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) each year is the Music On Film program.
It is a chance to catch the latest music documentaries, and there’s few joys quite like taking a comfy seat for an enlightening and absorbing screening with, typically, a kick-arse soundtrack.
This year was no exception. And now the popcorn’s packed away, here is our take on the latest music cinema treats that hopefully soon show in places that are not Melbourne.
Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt (Director Tom Stern)
Prior to this wildly entertaining doco, the extent of my Butthole Surfers knowledge was a pre-teen obsession with their 1996 chart-topper Pepper. But that unlikely hit, and its tragic inspirations, is only the tip of a truly freaky iceberg.
Chronicling their rise from the 1980s art-punk underground to becoming influential 1990s alt-rock heroes, the Texan group’s career is a strong contender for one of the most unhinged in music. That is largely thanks to the chaotic antics of frontman Gibby Haynes, the whiskey-and-LSD-fuelled jester of his own irreverent court.
There’s a 10-minute sequence that involves stalking R.E.M., the band’s 7th (!) bass player on stage with a sousaphone, and a nude stage invasion of a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds set — conveyed with animation, archival footage, and puppetry. And that is one of the tamer stretches.
A parade of pop culture icons line up to declare their shock and awe: Dave Grohl, Flea, Flaming Lips, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Eric Andre, and Dean Ween, proclaiming them “the most psychedelic band ever”.
We get a taste of that experience through a 3D recreation of the Surfers at their performance art peak, complete with flaming drum cymbals, projections of penis reconstruction surgery and a naked go-go dancer.
Five years in the making, director Tom Stern brings hilariously timed editing and the same uninhibited energy of the band, cramming every minute with fascinating details, whether it is the abused nipples of Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones or a celebrity drug clique involving Johnny Depp.
But there is also genuine affection for Stern’s subjects. Guitarist and co-founder Paul Leary’s complex relationship with Haynes is the heart of the film, which also digs into Gibby’s traumatic childhood, his proximity to the deaths of River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain, and an emotional epilogue honouring dual drummers King Coffey and Teresa Taylor.
Here is hoping this must-see rockumentary gets a wider release, and — like the equally magnetic The Sparks Brothers — prompts a much-needed wider re-appraisal for an underrated act.
Pavements (Director: Alex Ross Perry)
Beginning with juxtaposing footage of the titular indie rockers’ 2010s break-up and 2022 reunion shows, Pavements is a film that actively subverts convention. Fittingly, indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry’s movie embodies, rather than attempts to explain, what made this inscrutable, influential band special.
It is actually several films running simultaneously. Firstly, a talking-head doco loosely tracing the band’s history, including a museum exhibition opening coinciding with the group’s recent comeback.
Then there’s the staging of a real-life jukebox musical, which filters the group’s Gen X anthems through “the most sincere art form possible [to] see what happens.”
Plus, a counterfeit biopic titled Range Life and led by Stranger Things star Joe Keery, skewering Hollywood dramatisations as he goes full method actor, preparing for the role of Pavement’s contrarian frontman Stephen Malkmus.
If that sounds like a lot to juggle, it is. And to truly appreciate it all requires a working knowledge of a group that comedian Tim Heidecker hails as the “slacker Rolling Stones”.
Then again, seeking to bury the band’s legacy beneath messy layers of artifice and irony is precisely the kind of homage Malkmus and co would approve of. The film captures his ambivalent relationship with traditional success, which often led to self-sabotage but also a “money-can’t-buy” influence and critical adoration.
“You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life,” seems to be the Malkmus lyric that Pavements, the movie, takes as central inspiration, producing an experience that — like the band’s best songs — is a mix of thorny wit, left-of-centre innovation, and subversive artistic intent.
Things We Said Today (Director: Andrei Ujica)
The Beatles do not really need yet another doco treatment, do they?
Their many, many stories have been endlessly dissected on screen. And after Ron Howard’s comprehensive Eight Days A Week, anything else taking on the Fab Four’s fleeting touring years seems utterly redundant.
However, despite being centred around The Beatles’ 1965 concert at New York City’s Shea Stadium, Things We Said Today does offer a refreshing perspective on an overly familiar topic.
Romanian writer-director Andrei Ujica immerses us in what it must have been like to be amid the contagious electricity of the Big Apple just before Beatlemania hit. Through an experimental blend of journalling voiceover, hand-drawn animation and archival footage, we get a poetic love letter to the city and a landmark cultural shift.
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As such, The Beatles is something of a red herring. None of their songs feature on the soundtrack. Instead we get hits of the 1960s blaring from car radios and street corners. Nor do we get the central Shea Stadium show. Wisely, Ujica knows fans have seen that performance plenty times before elsewhere.
Instead, there are extended detours tying together other zeitgeist-shaping events. Namely, the Watts riots over civil rights on the other side of the US coast and the 1965 World’s Fair — a cultural celebration of achievements present and predicted — taking place a few blocks away from The Beatles’ concert.
Together, it makes for an impressionistic if sometimes unevenly paced viewing experience. Kudos where it is due for not simply rolling out another hagiographical opportunity for McCartney and his famous friends to wax nostalgic.
Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man (Director: Andrew Farrell)
This adaptation of Jimmy Barnes’ best-selling memoir of the same name picks up where the previous book-and-doco pairing, Working Class Boy, left off.
Things start strong, charting Cold Chisel’s creative and commercial peak with plenty of terrific footage — including the band smashing up the set of the 1980 TV Week Rock Music Awards.
The film then motors into the next chapter, with Barnesy in the studio recording his debut solo album and touring regional pubs less than six months after Chisel had called it quits. He learns from previous misfires to crack the US market and delivers his enduring smash hit, ‘Working Class Man‘.
“If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be a mechanic,” the frontman declares between defending his blue-collar spirit against critics pointing out the hypocrisy of a man taking a news helicopter home to his multi-million-dollar Southern Highlands property.
However, as is common to so many rock’n’roll arcs, darkness stirred behind the success. “Working hard, drinking harder,” Barnes also espouses. “And I was the poster boy.”
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No amount of chart-topping milestones or self-destructive alcohol abuse could stave off the damage of an abusive childhood and feelings of impostor syndrome, in what Barnes calls the “longest public suicide in Australian music.”
The candid revelations that defined his memoir hit all the harder in transition from page to big screen, particularly as Barnes starkly recounts his attempted suicide in an Auckland hotel room.
As in the barnstorming singer’s personal life, the formative relationship with his wife, Jane, provides a calming, crucial presence in the film.
Family is a central theme, too, with vintage footage of the young Barnes children on tour along with insights from grown-up offspring Mahalia Barnes and David Campbell.
Another highlight is stripped-back versions of classics like ‘Khe Sanh’ filmed in the Barnes living room.
As such, several chart-topping albums do not get as much screen time as, say, kids’ pop project, The Tin Lids (the original nepo babies). The final stretch also includes a plug for granddaughter Ruby’s budding musical career, singing Flame Trees over the credits.
But even this brand of self-promotion feels hard-earned. Consider it justified rewards reaped from a survivor who admirably transformed his own mental health struggles into a platform for other men to speak out.
The result is a moving tell-all from a genuine Australian music icon who, it must be said, is still looking and sounding great.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.abc.net.au ’
