![]() I guess they tried to rehabilitate his image because of some really bad scandal that he was involved in. We saw a movie about this kind of horrible guy named Hamsun, who at one point was a famous author in Norway. You know, I’m half Norwegian, so my wife always says that. A lot of people don’t really want to, don’t have sufficient leisure time to think about these things. What was it about the idea of ‘maimed happiness’ that attracted you?Ī: It’s something that if you think about it you know it’s kind of true. Q: Another thing that struck me in the film was both the song “Maimed Happiness” and your explanation of how that came from a line in a book by the philosopher William James. It’s something about the soulfulness of a voice and how it’s expressing, just for lack of a better term, the human condition. It doesn’t matter if it’s not in English even, you know. I’m very attracted to vocalists especially, but also instrumentalists, who just like touch me in some way. So I think the documentary kind of gives a hint of that kind of breadth of my interests in music. I mention a lot of different kinds of music. What else do you think the film might bring out that your fans are less familiar with?Ī: I don’t know. Q: Your love of Harry Smith’s American folk music anthologies was something I wasn’t entirely familiar with. We’re constantly evolving and constantly transcending one moment to the next moment yet including everything that we’ve ever been. You know it’s impossible for a person to leave a complete image of themselves anyway because there’s so much going on in our heads. ![]() You have to decide whether you’re going to wind up scorned or forgotten or leave an incomplete picture of yourself. Q: There’s a line in it that caught my attention where you say, ‘It’s best to leave an incomplete picture of yourself’ – why do you feel that way?Ī: Anyone who’s in the public, no matter how much of it or how small, would eventually wind up scorned. I said this is a good take on an aspect of my life. ![]() I only cringed two or three times, and usually that was just about a turn of phrase as opposed to something that I actually did. It was nice talking to her, because I was able to get a word in edgewise.Īnd this one, when I saw it I thought it’s kind of interesting to me. She just asked me questions and we had – I guess you could say it was a dialogue, but I guess maybe they edited it so that it was mainly me talking. And I usually just say no because every time – I’ve done one or two in the past – I saw myself I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, who is this guy and what’s he talking about?’Ī: Well, our daughter Leah was the inquisitor in those sections. Often, I’m asked to be in documentaries about certain aspects of show business. Why is that?Ī: I’ve said this many times. Q: I’ve seen you talk about your reluctance to appear in documentaries on punk or rock or New York City in the ’70s. But then I was persuaded to be whatever you want to call it, the subject – or the victim. Though we didn’t go into a theater because then COVID came. Q: What was it like for you to spend time in your past, singing songs from the New York Dolls, your solo career, from Buster?Ī: It was fun to do. Essentially, I think their idea was, ‘Let’s shoot the concert and then we’ll figure it out.’ I mean, there was no plan in the beginning. Then they got an archivist who was very good, I think, who started digging up stuff and – voila. I think they were still doing some Fran Lebowitz editing (for Scorsese’s 2021 docuseries “Pretend It’s a City”) as I recall. So they shot the concert and then they kind of fooled around with it for a little while. ![]() Q: Did it start as a concert film or was it always going to be a concert mixed with archival and interviews?Ī: This was like January of 2020 and you know the plague was about to break out. And my wife, Mara (Hennessey), she called Marty (Scorsese) and asked him to come and see it so he could kind of advise us about where to go with it.Īnd when he saw it, the same night, he said, ‘Oh, I want to shoot this.’ So to make a long story short, that’s how it came about.” We were looking for some off-Broadway kind of something. A: Well, we were doing this two-week run at the Carlyle, and we had – my wife and I – this novel idea of having Buster do Johansen as opposed to what Buster usually does, like a lot of curated covers, you might say.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |