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May 03, 2006

The Pixies Have Left the Building: 'loudQUIETloud' Makes NYC Debut

True story: While waiting to get into last night's New York premiere of Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin's Pixies documentary loudQUIETloud, my mind wandered to a practical place where I tried to guess how the filmmakers would plunge into their subject. Despite the success of the band's 2004 reunion tour--chronicled in quotidian detail by Cantor and Galkin (right)--the Pixies have more and more of a cult following every day, and I figured that Kurt Cobain's semi-famous quote about Nirvana aspiring to "rip off the Pixies" would make a good epigram, one that immediately establishes the subjects' magnitude for the general public. Then I thought, "No--that would be way, way too obvious," knowing such instincts are why I would make an average (at best) filmmaker myself.

Alas, loudQUIETloud does start with Cobain's quote, the first of many predictable if diverting fragments comprised in this half-concert film/half-tour record. Having caught one of the dodgy "warm-up" shows that preceded the Pixies' more burnished European and North American odysseys, I was prepared for the portrait of a genuinely great band basically going through the motions. And for all the unpretentious identity the film works to confirm, it indeed finishes the demystification job the Pixies undertook when they reconvened for the 2004 Coachella Music Festival. As charmed as one might be by the band's overwhelming normalness--camera crews catch bassist Kim Deal embroidering, while leader Charles Thompson (a k a Black Francis, a k a Frank Black) spends days off on family jaunts to cornfields and aquariums--nothing is more normal than the quartet needing to make a few bucks, brushing off its own legend and going back on the road as though commuting to a day job.

Certainly, nobody could begrudge them that, but such pragmatism does not jell with loudQUIETloud's canonizing tone. Cantor and Galkin follow their epigram with a shot of stage doors, behind which the thrum of an adoring crowd establishes the Pixies' contemporary appeal. Later sequences involve Deal's interludes with smitten fans (and the eerie comedown of realizing the scale of some fans' obsessions), and the fawning of one A-list music journalist after another burdens Thompson. Drummer David Lovering basks in a redemptive spotlight even as he flirts with drugged-out self-destruction, while guitarist Joey Santiago stays above it all, corresponding with his family via iChat while trying to complete a soundtrack assignment. One gets the feeling that the band's off-stage routine is supposed to provide sort of an inglorious counterpoint (their earliest rehearsals require Deal to consult her iPod for the bass part to "Hey"), but I felt as though the directors' love for their subjects overruled the more obvious reality that one of rock's most influential ensembles is totally boring--just like the rest of us.

"We definitely had days where all four Pixies were in their hotel rooms and not coming out," Cantor told the audience in a Q&A following the screening, which was also attended by Lovering and Santiago. " 'What should we do?' Meanwhile, we're spending our own money for travel and crew, and that was adding up. One day Matt had the wherewithal to go to the venue in Chicago where they were about to play that night and there was that girl Carla sitting outside 12 hours before the show started. He shot with her for a day."

Cinematographers Jonathan Furmanski and Paul Dokuchitz had slightly more dramatic recollections from the shoot. "As we went thorugh the months and months of filming, the trust level--which was two-directional--went a lot higher," Furmanski said. "There were times we gave them cameras, to just have them shoot themselves. And there is the moment when Charles pushes a camera down, so they definitely got sick of it at times, but no one ever expressed anything like 'Get out of my face.' I never had that experience."

"Well," Dokuchitz said, "Kim had a problem where if she was was playing her bass and we were standing right down there in her eyeline with her (instrument), she literally would go to the edge of the stage and say, 'Get the f--- out of there.' And I was like, 'Oh, cool, I just got yelled at by Kim Deal.' But Charles came to Iceland and there's this place called Blue Lagoon, which is like these hot springs. We had all gone, and when he got there a few days later, we told him, 'We're going to go to the Blue Lagoon.' And he said, 'Yeah, I'm gonna go.' And we said, 'We're gonna go with you!' He jumps in a van and ran off really fast--he didn't want any cameras around because you're in your swim trunks."

Eventually, the obese Thompson's exhibitionist side does peek out, most notably in a sequence during which he wedges into his tour-bus bunk and recites self-help bromides like, "I am a good person. ... I am cute." The performance footage is anything but earth-shattering; "Gouge Away" and the classic show-stopper "Vamos" reveal flashes of invigoration, while Lovering's meltdown on "Something Against You" fuels six or seven minutes of moderate drama. And although loudQUIETloud's structure bears uncanny similarities to Matthew Buzzell's far superior Luna documentary Tell Me Do You Love Me (down to the minutiae of a band reading its own press and the mini-existential crises that somehow occur between every tour stop), Cantor and Galkin's work reflects the Pixies' inconsistencies the way Buzzell's film reflects Luna's flickering, world-weary character.

I do not doubt loudQUIETloud has a long life ahead of it on DVD, and the doc's glimpse at the Pixies is quite rewarding in a where-are-they-now sort of sense. But like any reintroduction to loves lost and found, loudQUIETloud harvests success only in making the good old days that much better. You know what is coming today, so be warned: It can cost you your memories.

Posted by stvanairsdale at May 3, 2006 11:38 AM

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Posted by: The Velvet Tard at June 12, 2006 07:11 AM