Reed, Schnabel Talk Berlin, Bizarre Similes Ensue

"The whole thing was brewing since he made that record in 1973," said director Julian Schnabel of Lou Reed's Berlin at the Conversations in Cinema talk following Sunday night's premiere. "Nineteen seventy-three," Reed interjected in disbelief. Thirty-five years after the chilly commercial and critical reception it received on its release, Reed's masterwork—filmed with an artist's eye by Schnabel during its first-ever complete live performance—was greeted by a sold-out crowd at the Directors Guild Theater with enthusiastic acclamation. "A lot of this audience wasn't born when Berlin came out," moderator Lisa Robinson of Vanity Fair acknowledged. And it made sense that Schnabel was the one to bring it to them. "Julian knew the record better than me," said Reed. "He could recite the thing."

After he was finally talked into staging Berlin for a film, Reed said he called up Schnabel, his friend of 20 years, to direct it. Schnabel was in France at the time, shooting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but he agreed to design the set for the show. "I was in love with it when I was in the warehouse and saw the set," Reed said. "I said, 'You can stop. You can go back to France.' But [Julian] said, 'How can I do the sets and not direct it?'"

Schnabel designed and shot the concert (at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn), and he commissioned his daughter Lola to direct footage of actress Emmanuelle Seigner as Berlin's lead character, Caroline. He also incorporated surreal images of floating furniture created by his brother-in-law, artist Alejandro Garmendia. "It reminded me of the stuff we did with Warhol," Reed said of the overall film.

"It's not really a concert film," Reed said. Indeed, Lou Reed's Berlin plays out like a narrative, not surprising given the love Reed expressed for acting and reciting monologues. The interactions between Reed and the other musicians (especially Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, who sings with the chorus and duets with Reed on a haunting encore of The Velvet Undergound's "Candy Says") create a palpable drama onstage that is hard to put into words. Schnabel tried. "I thought it was like watching Chris Walken perform open-heart surgery on himself," he said to a wave of confused chuckles from both the audience and Reed.

"Is that good?" Reed asked.