Scott Walker - 30 Century Man
[2006]
Synopsis
Many music documentaries are made by fans of the artists. But it is rare when a director-fan can make a film that embodies the essence of his subject, where the cinematic elements mesh with the musician's individual character and style. Director Stephen Kijak returns to Tribeca Film Festival after his crowd-pleaser doc Cinemania (Tribeca Film Festival 2003) with a truly distinguished ode to musician Scott Walker. If you aren't familiar with Walker, you will be with those he has influenced-David Bowie (also Executive Producer), Johnny Marr, Damon Albarn, Brian Eno, Radiohead and more-all of whom are featured in the film. American-born Walker moved to London in 1965 and became part of the highly successful pop band The Walker Brothers ("The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"), who rivaled the Beatles in popularity. But only two years later Walker embarked on a solo career. It is his 1969 song "The Old Man's Back Again" that hooked Kijak on Walker's genius-his singular compositions and poetic lyrics. Instead of continuing his pop-stardom trajectory, Walker essentially became a recluse, releasing an album every decade or so, and shying away from the limelight and letting his work represent him. The fact that the filmmakers gained access for an interview with the idiosyncratic artist is a coup in itself, but Kijak and company also had the amazing chance to document the making of Walker's latest opus "The Drift"-a record exemplifying his eccentric arrangements and production, including a percussion beat created on a halved pig carcass. Incorporating exquisite sequences involving animation and dance, Scott Walker -30 Century Man is-like its subject-unique, captivating and an example of creative work that speaks for itself.
---David KwokAbout The Director(s)
STEPHEN KIJAK, an American filmmaker, wrote, directed and produced the feature film Never Met Picasso (1996) which won awards for both Best Screenplay and Best Actor at the 1997 Outfest film festival. His next feature, Cinemania (2002), which he codirected and coproduced with Anglea Christlieb, is a documentary about five obsessive New York City film buffs. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man had its world premiere on October 31, 2006 at the 50th London Film Festival. Kijak has directed episodes of the Bravo original series Queer Eye.
Director Statement
How does one make a film about a man described as an enigma, a recluse, a genius and one that is still alive and spends more time out of the public eye than any working musician today? And what do you do when the subject is so much more human, humorous and humble than the towering myth suggests?
Scott Walker's "The Old Mans Back Again (dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)" was recorded in 1969. That song flicked a switch in my brain one late-afternoon in San Francisco, 1991. The bass. The VOICE. But the real charge, the real jolt, aside from The Greatest Male Voice on Record, is the lyric. Are the lyrics. Archangels, aging transvestites, revolutionaries, desperate spinsters, rain on train windows, ragged soldiers and plastic palace people; the well is very deep and I fell right in.
Inspiration. Yes, I first fell for Walker's surreal and epically-orchestrated '60s pop, feeling an affinity with this American with a European imagination, being a bit of a Brit-centric music snob myself, but what is most fascinating, what is most inspiring is the journey he went on and the place he arrived at.
Dont look back. Dylan might have said it but Scott Walker lived it. There isnt a better role model out there for following your own voice, vision, artistic instincts, dreams, nightmares.
Art is not easy. Scott Walker's decade-long hauls between albums now demonstrate that, but the life-lessons for any creative person contained between the grooves on his finely crafted (analogue) albums, is well worth the wait, is worth the time it takes to come to grips with the sounds this man is now making at age 63.
So. Create a dense and abstract meditation on his current opus,The Drift Could have done. Had it in mind to really riff on the music, get very loose, minimal, elliptical. However. There is a story there. The story of a journey; of a man and a songwriter. People like stories. So why not try to tell one! The plan was to try and shine a black-light on the enigma not to penetrate it, but to respect it, and to let the music tell its own story.
And then there's Scott. Sitting on a sofa at his managers office kindly offering a few anecdotes and meditations, a few clues and confessions. A great storyteller. A more than great songwriter. A consummate artist and the reason Ive kept at this film for the last four or five years. Inspiring.
