[cross-posted on A Life's Work blog]
I’ve been thinking about two documentaries: Scott Walker: 30th Century Man and Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell. I loved Wild Combination and was luke-warm about 30th Century Man and there are numerous reasons why I responded the way I did to both, but as I think on the films it occurs to me that those involved with the Scott Walker film didn’t get close to him, while those involved with Wild Combination let us get very close to Russell. The titles, both referencing a song by the artist, should be a tip off: Is Scott Walker from the future and therefore unknowable to us 21st Century folks? Apparently so. “Wild Combination” is much more suggestive of what we’ll see: Russell the avant-garde composer and the producer of disco hits, the musician who lived and worked in New York City’s obscure bohemia but wanted to be as famous as Mick Jagger, the shy and awkward man who was uncomfortable in his skin but was forceful and uncompromising in his art.
Neither Walker’s nor Russell’s “serious” work is very accessible, but in understanding an artist, we better understand his or her work. So it is that Walker and his work remain an enigma, where as Russell and his work seems warmer, more human.
I think about these films a lot in relation to my documentary, A Life’s Work. In presskits and grant proposals I’m very quick to say “the film is not series of biographies,” and yet without some personal detail and history, we don’t know who these people are, why they do what they do, and why we should care about them. It’s a lesson I keep reminding myself. Scott Walker, I hardly know you and I’m okay with that. Arthur Russell, I wish we could spend more time together.
Below are the trailers for both films.
You! Yeah, you! Have you seen these films? What do you think?