<\/p>\n
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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n DOCUMENTARY: You grew up a Robert Christgau fan. How does that turn into directing a documentary about him?<\/strong><\/p>\n MATTY WISHNOW:\u00a0<\/strong>I was writing a book about startups,\u00a0<\/span>Listening for Growth<\/em>, and there was a chapter about the faculty of listening. I started asking myself,\u00a0<\/span>Who are the world\u2019s greatest listeners?\u00a0<\/em>After getting lost in that question for a week, I was like,\u00a0<\/span>I actually know who the world\u2019s greatest listener is because I\u2019ve been reading his stuff since I was a tween<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That revelation didn\u2019t 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, \u201cWhat if I told you the person who\u2019s 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\u2019t fully been told?\u201d Ben said, \u201cLet me reach out to my friend, who I think might know more about this than I do.\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n The more I spoke to the guys, the more they were like, \u201cMatty, you should direct.\u201d 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\u2019s shoulders, I would be okay.<\/span><\/p>\n D: Christgau has a reputation for being intimidating. How did you sell him on the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n MW:\u00a0<\/strong>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<\/span>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n 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, \u201cBob\u2019s warm, but never fuzzy\u201d\u2014I found Bob to be occasionally quite fuzzy. He\u2019s fuzziest when Carola is into something. It didn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s a legendary editor, didn\u2019t try editing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.documentary.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. \u00a0 DOCUMENTARY: You grew up a Robert Christgau fan. 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