Launch
April 14, 1999
Robyn On Film
by Dave DiMartino
This quirky and inspired Pop artist has entertained audiences for decades with his melodic and harmonious music, not to mention his off-the-wall banter about rubber babes, men with lightbulb heads, and life inside the veins of "Her Majesty, The Queen". British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock has long performed in "obscurity" (at least by music industry standards), but he's built a loyal and devoted underground following through the course of countless albums and tours -- a following that eagerly awaits his new album, due later this year.
Recently noted filmmaker Jonathan (Silence Of The Lambs) Demme turned his lens on this talented performer for the concert film Storefront Hitchcock. Demme, the eye behind music films about the Talking Heads and Neil Young, shot Hitchcock's chatty performance in a New York City store window, perfectly transposing the intimacy of a live Hitchcock gig against the impersonal bustle of the world's most fascinating concrete jungle. The transcript below is the full conversation between Launch executive editor Dave DiMartino, Hitchcock, and Demme in the wake of the film's completion. Video excerpts and a live acoustic version of Hitchcock's typically bizarre tune "The Cheese Alarm" appear in Issue No. 23 of the Launch CD-ROM.
Robyn, how did you get together with Jonathan Demme and decide to make a concert film?
Hitchcock: Well, it wasn't really apparent that he wanted to make a movie to begin with. Basically, we were in a dressing room in a little club near where he lives, and he just came up through a trap door. And this was great! All I sensed was that he wanted to shoot a live video, and then we thought, "Well, let's do four songs." Then, someone said we could do a half-hour, since the camera will be set up. Then it was an hour. Jonathan, himself, called me on his way to the dentist, and said, "It's a movie. Full-length, man." It just expanded gradually.
That's cool.
Hitchcock: Yeah. I thought the initial idea of him filming one song live was great because he always records live, no lip-synch. None of this, sort of, jumpy editing to keep people's attention by destroying it. It's nice and old-fashioned. He holds the camera here...and then goes somewhere else. You know, it's illegal to actually train the camera on any one subject for more than seven seconds in any current American movie or video today. If you watch Frasier, you'll notice that he's hopping around all over the place. And that's a pretty sassy piece of work.
What was it about Robyn that compelled you to embark on this film, Jonathan?
Demme: I became a big fan of the what they called "New Wave" music that was coming out of England in the late-'70s, early-'80s. Robyn stood out as one of the most imaginative, exciting artists to come out of that movement. Years later, when I saw him playing at the club he mentioned, I had one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. I thought, "My God, this performance: the songs, plus the stories he tells in between...this could make a movie!"
As a director, you've made other music and concert films with Talking Heads, Neil Young. How did this experience compare?
Demme: What I enjoyed about it on the challenge level was I'd worked with bands before in Stop Making Sense and the Neil Young long-form called Complex Sessions, and I'd also done a film with Spalding Gray who only speaks -- alone -- for an hour-and-a-half, and I thought, "Here's a chance to do something different, it's not a band playing, it's one man playing and singing -- and he also talks a lot." A lot of people talked when My Dinner With Andre came out as though it was amazing that two people talking could keep your interest for two hours, and it did. This was such an earth-shattering concept. So I liked the idea of boiling it down to one person -- Robyn -- onscreen. "Let's see if that works."
Robyn, when you look back on your career trajectory, is this the place you expected to find yourself at this time in your life? Making movies with an acclaimed director like Jonathan Demme?
Hitchcock: I've just carried on doing this, really. When you decide you want to do something when you're young, you're not very well informed. The world is full of people who are sitting around telling others about what they could have done once or what they should be doing. It's rather like when someone hands you a packet of seeds, and you don't know what the seeds are for, but you go and plant them. Maybe you'll get a tomato plant, maybe you'll get a Mexican devil bush with little skunk skulls that go "Eeeeh!" at you. You don't know what's going to come. Jonathan talks about listening to music when he was a kid and watching films and not knowing he was going to do that when he grew up. I remember sitting around listening to LPs since I was 15. 30 years later, I've become one of those people I wanted to be. I wanted to be one of those cult figures with nice LPs, and lo and behold, I have. So I've been incredibly successful.
So, Jonathan, you didn't know you'd be a film director?
Demme: Not really. But like so many people of my generation and subsequent generations, I've been a movie freak since I was six or seven years old. Since the first time I saw the television. Same with music. I can remember standing in front of the radio when Nat King Cole's song finished and Bill Haley came on. It never occurred to me that I'd be working in these things. To work on a film that addresses music entirely is very special, it's very heady for me. I do try to cram as much music as I can into all the films I do. The creative potential for the marriage of music and cinematic images is literally inexhaustible.
So, Robyn. How did you feel the first time you saw yourself on the silver screen?
Hitchcock: That was a shock because my guitar was eight feet wide and there were points where my head was 15 feet across. But that's pretty good for a boy, that's what he wants to see: huge head, huge weapon. No, apparently I was speechless for two hours after seeing the movie. I hear that a lot of actors who see themselves in movies go see it three times. Like Jack Nicholson. The first time he sees himself, they give him a Camel Light and a cold compress and put him out in his trailer. The second time, he's more in control and they just give him a light rubber mallet. The third time, he's fine and he comes out doing his Jack grin. If he's going to do that, picture the scene with me!
You joke, but you've got to admit, it's a nice-looking film and it must be satisfying to have this cinematic record of your work now.
Hitchcock: Yes, and in that sense, it's really a flattering portrait. Jonathan shot a very well-lit me who'd been on a diet for a few weeks and I was looking really good. I hope people reach for this film in 100 years' time whenever everything's digitally encoded in their thumbnails. I hope they frequently select it. Rock music is not temporary anymore. It's classic. Chuck Berry and The Beatles and the glorious history of Rock 'n' Roll will be retold until our race stubs itself out like a cigarette. It's just going to go on.
Jonathan, tell me how you conceptualized the film. It's called Storefront Hitchcock, and you shot Robyn literally performing in a storefront window. Why does the film look the way it does and what informed your directorial vision?
Demme: I felt that, "Okay, great, I do believe that Robyn -- his music, his playing, his palaver--can make a fully riveting, wonderful, enjoyable movie, but what else are we going to look at? How can we create a setting that will keep the eye interested in a way that an eye needs to be interested when it's staring at a movie screen for an hour-and-a-half?" I was reminded of a fantastic experimental theater group in NYC in the late-'70s/early-'80s called "Squat". They were from Holland and they would perform in a storefront situation with a drape concealing the street. Every now and then the drape would open, a vehicle would drive up, someone would come in, grab one of the players, and drive away into NYC traffic. And it was all part of the play and it was magnificent!
So you were trying to recreate that magic?
Demme: I thought, "Let's put Robyn in a window and let blase NYC walk by. Not distracting, but interesting. But how can we modify the look, the lighting, so the picture changes through time?" We got into this idea of working with candles, naked lightbulbs, mirror balls...I'm thrilled with how it worked out. Our cameraman and production designer came up with simple, beautiful ways to photograph music.
How many performances did you shoot?
Demme: We shot essentially four performances.
How do you believe you get people excited to sit in a movie theater and watch a concert on film?
Demme: I sort of feel like if there's an artist or an actor, group, musical entity that lends itself -- both through the quality of its playing (the compositions), and the personality they project (the way they look) -- to film, you have to forget everything else that's going on and just focus on the best cinematic way to make it look. As long as people keep getting inspired by the music, you'll have inspired films about music.
Now that you've been captured on film, Robyn, do you have any feelings about which is the more worthy medium? Music or movies?
Hitchcock: I think records are going to last as long as films. Both are going to become interchangeable anyway. Pretty soon it will be illegal to make a record unless it's also a film and you will only be able to hear music by switching on your television. Maybe in 100 years' time people will say, "Tell me again. What's the distinction between records and films? Aren't they the same thing?" And in schools they'll have to teach that Casablanca was originally a movie and Humphrey Bogart wasn't an eraser -- he was actually an actor -- and that sort of thing.
A lot of musicians hate making music videos, but you seem to have really enjoyed the making of this film.
Hitchcock: Well, it was great, because when you do music videos you always have to lip-synch and there's a big area of unreality in that. This was as natural as it could be, given the fact that we had four cameras, had to do four identical shows, starting at 11 in the morning and the audience was sober and nobody was smoking (and stuff). We just tried to get the best of both worlds: the technical correctness of making a video with the spontaneity of having a live show. It was just a live show. It was pretty good, actually. I had a trailer and there was some sushi in it (and stuff like that).
Do you think the movie -- and Jonathan's reputation as a film director -- will bring your music to a new audience?
Hitchcock: You know, in the music industry it's quite easy to get ghetto-ized. People think they've made their minds up about your stuff, and that probably will stay forever until those people dissolve, or at least their minds do. This might reach people who aren't prejudiced, they don't see me as quote Robyn Hitchcock unquote -- good or bad. It's like having a name...you know people by their names. But maybe you'd give them a better chance without that. You just see them packaged as that, but what they really are is a series of impulses fighting for supremacy, and maybe we'd feel more compassionate toward each other if we didn't have names. Obviously, it'd be difficult to buy their records if you walked into a store and you couldn't actually say you wanted Madonna's album, but you had to define her. It would take hours. Prince has made a step in that direction by erasing his name and replacing it with a symbol. So we all know of the struggles within Prince.
How do you feel about new technology, Robyn? You make mention of artificial intelligence in the film. Tell me your theories on what the digital revolution has done to the world.
Hitchcock: I don't know because I didn't even know what analog was. I only like old machines because they're obsolete. I haven't a clue as to how they work, either. I have an analog reel-to-reel tape recorder, but it weighs as much as a phone booth and I hardly ever use it. Pretty much, what we might be reaching now is a phase where humanity is in a position to extinguish itself. To erase itself. As we get ever closer to destroying ourselves, we're also getting ever closer to replacing ourselves with artificial intelligence. I have this sublime (or horrible) feeling that just as we become extinct, we will have actually created the thinking, feeling, imaginative, emotional, sentient robot. And that maybe that's what we were. Maybe all that stuff is true. Maybe god is real and he or she was dying and had to replace him or herself. And god was, kind of, a moody, curmudgeonly, difficult person -- god made man in his own image -- so just before god was carted off to the loony bin, he left the world with this little creature he built -- mankind -- and maybe we're about to do the same thing. So I feel the race is driven toward creating artificial intelligence because we're so close to perishing. But, ironically, in 2,000 years' time, visitors from the planet Krang won't be able to tell the difference because we'll have built these creatures that are capable of genocide and The Brady Bunch and all the other things our fair species has wrought.
Speaking of things our fair species has wrought...what's next for you?
Hitchcock: I always wanted to do a version of the Nativity story using fruit and vegetables. So you've got an eggplant and a yam moving along a table and they want to give birth to a tiny zucchini... Actually, I'm finishing a novel and I've been painting again, as well. Now it's just a matter of getting everything in order. Establishing the flight pattern and moving on.
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