Trevor Hogg chats with Emmy Award-winner Susan Lacy about the origins of American Masters and her latest documentary chronicling the life and times of David Geffen...
I’m the creator of the
PBS TV series American Masters and it
has been on the air for 27 years now,” states Susan Lacy who was in Los Angeles
attending the celebrity studded premiere of her latest documentary Inventing David Geffen (2012). “We’re approaching our 200th
documentary. The thing that separates my
series from much of the other work in this area is I don’t do it unless I know
I can get access to the material that is going to make the film sing so to
speak. That’s no small feat because
every element in this documentary, from the music you hear to the photographs
and the headlines you see to any archival clips whether its movies or stock
footage, costs [money].” When asked what
makes music mogul David Geffen an ‘American Master,’ Lacy laughs, “I had gotten to know him when I made a film
on Joni Mitchell. I interviewed him and
then again when I did a film on The Byrds and the history of Atlantic
Records. I always found David to be
remarkably and refreshingly candid, and funny.
Someone said, ‘He is also the person who discovered Laura Nyro.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ I knew about the whole Asylum [Records] era
because that’s what I grew up with.
Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell are two of the greatest songwriters of my
growing up years. I thought what an amazing ear he has had because Laura Nyro
wasn’t everybody’s taste. I started
looking into his story and realized David was one of the few I knew of who had
succeeded in all three fields in the entertainment business: music, theatre,
and film; he has an interesting story and is a really interesting person.”
“I was worried because
there is little film on David himself,” admits Susan Lacy who had to devise a
creative solution. “I would fill in with
animation and of course there is an incredible cast of characters. David has
touched a vast array of people and many of them are in the film so that was
what carried the day. I had to have
access to the music, DreamWorks, Geffen movies, none of which are owned by
Geffen anymore, and to all of these people.
It was film with an unusually long creative time. I started this about four years ago. I stopped [for a year] and made the film on
John Lennon for his 70th birthday. Because
I run the whole series I can take the time.
In this case it took a long time to get certain people’s schedules [to
work]. It took two years to get Neil
Young’s schedule but the film would be poorer without him. It was important for him to be in the film so
I was happy that I had the luxury of being able to wait until he could do the
interview.” Along with Young, who was
once sued by David Geffen for making music uncharacteristic of him, a key
figure needed for the documentary was the title character. “I don’t think quite honestly that David
realized he would have to do interviews which is hysterically funny. David said,
‘You did Leonard Bernstein and didn’t have him to do interviews.’ I said, ‘Well, he isn’t alive anymore. But I
also had a thousand hours of Leonard Bernstein on film and don’t have that on
you. I can’t make this film without
doing these long interviews with you.’ He agreed.” The press shy Geffen speaks with a surprising
frankness. “David can’t help himself; he
is a candid person and direct. When he is asked a question David gives an
honest answer but is not used to that.
David doesn’t like to talk about himself; the biggest issue was him
getting bored with his own story. We
would have to do it in increments. Do
other things and come back to it because he is antsy and can’t sit for
long. It was an interesting process of
getting him comfortable with me, the interview process, and going into areas
that he probably only talked about with his therapist.”
“It was fully explored,”
remarks Susan Lacy when the issue of David Geffen having a legendary volatile
temper is mentioned. “It isn’t just
Jackson Browne. Everybody talks about
it.” On whether Geffen has mellowed with
age, the Emmy Award-winner believes, “I think he has. I also think he is not in business anymore. David was a great dealmaker who got what he
wanted and did what he had to do to get things to turn out the way he wanted
them to. Neil Young says, ‘David was a
performance artist. The art of the deal
was his stage.’ He wanted to create the
impression that people should be afraid of him.
Cher says in the film, ‘It is probably better to have people be afraid
of you than to know your soft underbelly.’ David is an
interesting mixture of an ambitious man who could get what he wanted and he is
also a vulnerable and kind person.” Lacy
notes, “Steven Spielberg says in the film, ‘He goes to the barbed wire for
you.’ David is a loyal friend. He is
exactly the person we would like to be.
You treat him well. He treats you
well. It is very direct with him. David has an honest affect on people. David was probably not more ruthless than a
lot of other people; he is more direct about it. David was also young. David was the same age of the artists he was
representing. He wore jeans and
T-shirts, and looked like them. In some
ways he was an easy target. If you’re
older you can get away but the fact that David was ambitious, got what he
wanted, and didn’t let barriers stop him, people talked so much about
that. It had something to do with the
fact he was young and rash.”
“The idea is that I
wanted to immediately visually establish that there is this guy whose reach was
so broad and the things that he touched,” explains Susan Lacy when discussing
the visual collage at the beginning of Inventing
David Geffen. “It is a symbolic
opening graphic and effective.” Lacy was
amused by suggestion that some of the animated sequences resemble a cross
between Monty Python and Peter Gabriel’s
music video for Sledgehammer. “That is probably true of some it. They are all a bit different. My favourite one is the phone conversation
between Clive Davis and David; I don’t think either one of them knew it was
being taped. We go under every rock when
we’re making these films to find stuff.
We had tracked down a number of journalists who had covered David and
aspects of his career. I cannot remember
the name of this particular journalist but he had written a lot about David in
that whole era. We found out that he had
passed on and his family went through all of his papers and things in
Texas. We went there and found an audio
tape with this phone conversation which is so funny and revealing. We heard David negotiate. They were talking about putting The Byrds
together again. He’s talking to Clive
Davis because some of The Byrds were on Columbia and Clive is like, ‘We’ve had The Byrds for all of these years.’ And David says, ‘Yeah, but you’ve only got
one Byrd. I’ve got four.’ I love that animation. Things like that I had to come up with
stylistic solutions because I hardly had any film on David.”
“There were five areas of
influence to be covered,” states Susan Lacy.
“When making a film about Joni Mitchell there is a long career but there
is a real arc and it is all of her work.
It is all of her writing. David
had to deal with three different record companies, his own Geffen company,
Geffen movies, DreamWorks, and political influence. It was a huge story. Structurally it was a challenge. They are all
challenges in one way or the other.
There isn’t any blueprint for any of these films. They’re all different. They’re all carefully crafted. We solve each one’s problems differently.”
Inventing
David Geffen screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I do a television series so unlike an
individual filmmaker who makes a film and spends years on the festival circuit
before it goes on television I do have a schedule I have to meet. When I can make that work I’m delighted when
I can and sometimes I can’t. I can have
a perfectly wonderful film and have to go on the air and missed all of the
major festivals dates or otherwise I would have to hold it for a year or
something like that. We’ve been doing
this for years. We even had films that had a theatrical release. That is
something in retrospect I wish I had done with this film because people love it
and it is an entertaining film. It may
have found an audience theatrically. I
didn’t think so initially but I probably couldn’t have afforded it. To clear all of that music; there are a 114
music cues in this film and that’s unusual for any documentary even on a
performer.”
“I’m very worried about
it because there was a time when the DVD market was strong that we could count
on that for revenue and that is pretty much gone,’ observes Susan Lacy who is
concerned about the prospects for documentary filmmaking. “We can get smaller advances now but not like
we used to be able to. In terms of the
credit films I make which are cultural documentaries there are almost no slots
left for them in the world of television market. There are so few but they are all hour shows
which are in terrible time periods. All
of the big major arts series that used to be on the BBC and ITV in London are
all gone. There is a little remnant left but they are few and they have no
money. It will have to rely on in the
future a great deal more on philanthropy. The NEA [National Endowment for the
Arts] used to be a major funder of
American
Masters, which is probably the major television cultural documentary series
that exists, has dropped their funding drastically in favour of the Internet
implying that there is not even an audience for long form anymore. We have to find some new paradigm quickly to
protect the future of documentaries.” As
to what led her to come up with the concept for
American Masters, the American Studies major remarks, “The
relationship between a person’s life and what they put out in the world that
literally changes the world are fascinating stories; I’ve always been
interested in them. I read biographies
when I was a kid. When I went to work in
public television 33 years ago I was involved in arts programming and we were
doing operas, ballets, theatre, and plays; there was a place for that but I
noticed there was no place for this kind of documentary. It didn’t exist and therefore it was hard to
get this project off the ground. The
first thing I wanted to do was to make a place in the schedule for it, that’s
what I did and have been producing them ever since.”
“Whenever you start any
of these films you don’t exactly know what form it is going to take because
they are not cookie cutter films,” observes Susan Lacy. “Their structure and form is dictated by the
subject to some degree. If you’re making
a film about Lou Reed it is going to be a gritty downtown black and white
feeling to it. Making a film about
Leonard Bernstein, which I did, it is a magisterial feeling. They are all different stylistically and
that comes out of the material. I don’t
think I knew in the beginning how incredibly entertaining and funny this film
was going to be. But a lot of it does
have to do with how we chose to edit the film.
It is purposely music driven. Not
all of them are of course. We’re just
finishing a film on Philip Roth. It’s an
entirely different film but it is a perfect film for Philip Roth.” In regards to producing
Inventing David Geffen, Lacy declares, “It is a vast subject matter
with a subject who is renascent in many ways.”
The Los Angeles screening featured major Hollywood figures such as
Warren Beatty (
Reds), Bruce
Springsteen, and Tom Hanks (
Cloud Atlas)
amongst the audience members. “Every
place you looked there was somebody.
Coppola. Oh, my God! Francis Ford Coppola [
Apocalypse Now] was watching my documentary! I was in heaven. It got an incredible response. I don’t think with maybe the exception of our
Bob Dylan documentary [
No Direction Home]
that there has been a film that as wide a group of people have been interested
in as
Inventing David Geffen. That seems surprising to me because we’ve
made films on some pretty major and important people but they are more
niche. People are interested in this
film because there is some aspect or another of David’s life that reaches a lot
of different people. There is The Asylum
Period or the Geffen Records Period or the DreamWorks Period or David
influencing the election of Barack Obama [not this one but the last one], and the
fact that he is a mysterious billionaire who has stayed out of the press. The interest in this film has been phenomenal.”
Photo credits: Joel Bernstein, Henry Diltz, Rahoul Ghose, and Graham Nash.
The television premiere of Inventing David Geffen airs Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).
Many thanks to Susan Lacy for taking the time for this interview and make sure to visit the official website for American Masters.
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