Director hopes to mine magic of veteran rocker's art in 'Gold'

Jonathan Demme is best known as a narrative filmmaker whose "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) won five Academy Awards, including best director. But Demme is also an impassioned documentarian and an inventive director of performance films, which he views as a form of creative collaboration.

Among them: Talking Heads' jubilant "Stop Making Sense" (1984); "Swimming to Cambodia" (1987), focusing on Spalding Gray's hypnotic monologue about his experiences in Southeast Asia; and "Storefront Hitchcock" (1998), featuring British singer-songwriter Robin Hitchcock alone in a New York City storefront, armed only with his guitar and surreal wit.

Ken Regan (enlarge photo) Director Jonathan Demme on location with Neil Young in 'Neil Young: Heart of Gold.' Movie review

The director's latest concert film project is "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," documenting two nights of performances in Nashville last summer, during which Young debuted songs from his newest album, "Prairie Wind," at one of country music's most venerated shrines, the Ryman Auditorium.

A longtime fan of the singer-songwriter, Demme admits "Rust Never Sleeps" (1979), a concert film starring and directed by Young, was what he and David Byrne had in mind when they made "Stop Making Sense."

"We just prayed we'd be as good as 'Rust Never Sleeps,' " Demme says in a recent interview.

Q: Do you remember hearing your first Neil Young song?

A: I had just come up to New York in the late '60s, and I was in somebody's apartment with some other people, and we had gotten in a really good mood and turned on Buffalo Springfield, and everyone was lying down, their eyes closed, letting the music happen. I remember thinking that [Young's] "Broken Arrow" and "Hello Mr. Soul" were two of the most extraordinary songs I had heard in my life. At that point, I didn't extrapolate that it was Neil Young.

Later, I heard the band broke up — a tragedy. And then [Young's] solo album came out. I was living in London by then and went down to One Stop Records, bought it, put it on the turntable, and that was it. I found my buddy.

Q: Young recorded a song for the soundtrack to your movie "Philadelphia," and you did a 25-minute videocassette from his album "Sleeps With Angels." How was this different?

A: This time, we were creative partners. We talked, he sent me the new songs, and I fell madly in love with them, and we talked about how a film might evolve from this suite of songs. This led to the idea of shooting the film at the Ryman in Nashville and how to honor the country music that means so much to him.

And I thought that was a great opportunity for me as a filmmaker, because it is fresh terrain. We've seen dozens of great electric guitar rock documentaries, but I don't think we've seen that many acoustic ones.

Q: What is your attraction in working with performers?

A: One, maybe it's the ardent filmmaker who has also got a lazy streak. Seeing a [distinctive] performance ... and realizing that there are no script worries here. There are no casting worries here. I know this performance is great. I am convinced that with the enhancements of close-ups and beautiful photography that we can make a cinematic experience that is, in its own way, every bit as rich as it was for me as a fan to sit and see it live.

There's also a bit of an egotistical thing, too. Because it is slightly bold to try and make a performance film that is, at the end of the day, worth making to the extent that it functions as a proper film.

Q: Why don't you ever show the audience?

A: That goes right back to "Stop Making Sense," where I did film the audience, and then in the cutting room it seemed absurd to be cutting to the audience and distracting the viewer from the musical world that was happening onstage. It's an intrusion, and I think it's a slight affront to the movie viewer.

Q: What was it like to film Young at the Ryman?

A: If the songs hadn't been so fabulous, it would have been a whole other evening. Neil had never, ever sung those songs before an audience in his whole life.

Maybe you need to consider the "Prairie Wind" songs as his most personal songs because they are the most recent ones he's written. He's singing them in the Ryman, and the people out there had never heard these songs before.

So it makes you think about when the Beethovens and Mozarts were around, and no one got to hear their new stuff until the premiere. And they were either blown away or they stormed out. So it had that kind of extraordinary, unique crackle to it.