Denver Rocky Mountain News
May 23, 1997
A New Hitchcock Film
Director Jonathan Demme Committing Singer-Songwriter's Live Act To Celluloid
by Michael Mehle
Robyn Hitchcock will join some select company this winter when Jonathan Demme releases a concert film about the enigmatic Englishman.
Demme doesn't point his cameras at just any artist: past subjects have included the Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense, Bruce Springsteen in "Blood Brothers", and Neil Young and Crazy Horse in The Complex Sessions. But if you're wondering what the Hitchcock film will be like, best not ask the musician himself.
Here's his version of the film's beginning: "I wake up one morning in a railway station in South London and I realize that I need to get down to the coast," he begins over the phone from London.
The passenger cars are full of mannequins, Hitchcock's story goes, but he finally finds an empty carriage at the back. Soon he realizes the entire station is rolling back in time.
"The train comes to rest in 1916," he says, "and the dummies in the rest of the train come to life, and they're waving white feathers at me and saying, 'Don't you know there's a war going on?' Then I'm knocked unconscious by a sea of feathers."
The story waxes on for five minutes and includes an appearance by Cary Grant, who offers a glass of ginger beer. It's a convoluted and highly entertaining tale, and it's a complete fabrication that will never make the big screen.
Demme's work with Hitchcock is a straight concert film, of course. But that's far too literal for the singer-songwriter, who has spent his career dealing in a more imaginary and colorful side of art. The story he's just told is how he imagines his concerts sound.
"I can say I'm standing there with a guitar and there are lights and cameras, but that's not as interesting," says the singer, who plays at the Fox Theatre on Tuesday. "My stuff isn't about any literal truth."
Need another example? Ask Hitchcock how he hooked up with Demme.
"He popped out of a trap door in a dressing room in New York wearing a devil mask, and he handed me his card and said, 'Do you want to make a movie?' And then he vanished," Hitchcock says. "But I was still holding the card."
The film represents a remarkable turn in the career of a musician who has been the quintessential cult artist. Hitchcock's poetry and Byrds-like Folk Pop has always attracted a faithful, but not large, following. Bouncing from The Soft Boys to solo artist to The Egyptians to a solo artist again, he has remained a critics' favorite, without much commercial compensation. Making a movie with Demme "has been great," Hitchcock says. "It's very flattering.
"I'm not a wide-screen artist. I was always an admirer of The Psychedelic Furs, but I thought they were like a billboard, and I was like a little etching. You have to get up-close to see what it is.
"To me, a real record is where the singer is right close up to your ear. You have the singer's attention, and the singer has yours. It is an intimate thing."
Hitchcock says he has learned over the years not to weigh his music down with too much production. "My music doesn't respond with the sheen of production," he says. "When I coat them with that, people turn away."
He began work on his latest release, last summer's Moss Elixir, without a label, a producer, or a band. Eight of the album's 12 songs feature just Hitchcock, or the singer and one other musician. He describes the songs as serene, although he was surprised to hear he hadn't written anything in the key of E.
"I have always relied on a few songs in E," he says. "They break the ice. They're up-tempo, flagship songs that come crashing through. Since Moss Elixir, I've written hundreds of songs in E. I've got nothing but things in E."
As for his live show, Hitchcock warns that it's a lot like the story he made up about his movie.
"If you go to see Beck, you're going to get Beck-ed. If you go to see Hitchcock, you're going to get Hitchcock-ed," he said. "If you go to see the Spice Girls, well, then that's your fault."
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