Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review of the Pixies doco that played SXSW called LoudQUIETLoud. We got a review sent in from a man by the name of Josh Frank, who is a Pixies fantatic. He authored an upcoming book on the band and wrote in a heartfelt and passionate review very much in the vein of AICN reviewing, especially Harry's early reviews. Tons of personal info in there, but beneath it all, this is a geek geeking out. Enjoy!!!
To Harry and the gang. Frequent reader, first time reviewer. I felt it very fitting to write a review “Harry Style” for this, and to turn it in to “Ain’t it cool” since the personal touch reviewing works perfect for this particular review. You see I just saw the SXSW premiere of “LoudQUIETloud.” It is a Doc about the Pixies and ya see, I spent the last 4 years of my life and the better half of my late twenties and early thirties writing a book about the birth, life and death of this band. The book, “Fool The World, The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies,” will be published by St. Martin’s Press on March 21.
Two years before there was any hint of a reunion, two years before every teenager and post teenager were back in Pixie mania, I was running around the world interviewing every person that ever had anything to do with Boston, The Pixies, and the early alt rock scene in the sleepy west of the woody east.
See I was going to write a musical about my favorite musician Frank Black, his solo career and his life with the Pixies. The amount of material I collected was so overwhelming and usable that I switched gears as the musical waited silently in development and started compiling the book.
Four years ago I thought it was important to tell their story, so I have been. It was even more fitting that upon returning from the screening tonight I find in my mailbox an advance copy of the book I wrote.
So I was quite nervous walking into the movie theatre that seats 450 people, meeting the two guys who made the movie, and seeing the excitement of the audience (something a book writer never gets to see, you write alone, it comes out, people buy it from the internet or at bookstores from people at cash registers and the best you get is to pat yourself on the back and buy yourself a shot and say hooray for me and my book). Movies are magic, movies are fanfair, it’s like acting, or putting on a play, you can’t do it without an audience. Lucky bastards. So I was trying to stay calm and realize the difference in mediums and not be jealous or freaked out or even worse, afraid that my four years of work would be meaningless because the movie is really good. Oh and by the way, it is really good.
So I popped three Excedrin, two benedril, and a half a zanex and asked my dad to come along for moral support. He spent the better half of his line waiting time going up to every perplexed indie rocker kid waiting in line and handed post cards out for the book to about half of the 400 people there. I was embarrassed as hell but hey, it’s dad, he’s my best friend, and as always my biggest fan. (I pretended I didn’t know him.)
Galkin and Cantor the filmmakers come up and introduced the film. Galkin actually picked me out of the crowd before the film (he had googled me, his explanation for knowing what I look like) and introduced himself, this made me feel great. We were not competing, we were peers. Great. Peers. Maybe I didn’t need the zanex after all.
He then proceeds to announce that there are some Pixies in the audience. My father reaches into his pocket on cue and pulls out another half a zanex before I could even ask for one, what can I say the man has my back. You see I had not spoken to them since they reunited. I had this luck of getting face time with them a year before any new things happened. I got such a close look at their childhoods, life during the initial run, but most thrilling, regular life after the initial run. My book is about this life. So to the movie.
The movie is about the reunion. That is what it is about. And to get down to brass tax, it is a very good piece of rock art. It is a slice of real rock life. The truth if I may be so bold, the truth about how unglamorous it can be, and how that doesn’t matter in the least. We love them, we love their music and the rest of it, as my father always says about my relationships with women “it is, what it is.”
Journalists have ALWAYS tried to over glamorize this band, I wrote the book in oral history format to show that you don’t need glamour to have true drama, true rock n roll, the truth WILL set you free. This film is a cathartic front row seat into the truth about these four people. It is revealing, it is at times very sad, and at times very funny. It is a simple film, elegant in its simplicity. It doesn’t try to do too much, and almost does too little because you want more. But in the end, in theatre, in film, in literature, a writer or director should always leave you wanting more, and you do.
This film is specific, it is focused and it is tight. Is it going to tell you why this band is the greatest band? No, is it going to tell you why these people work well together? GOD no, is it going to tell you how money, success and talent make you happy? No, because they don’t, they never do.
It shows you many many things, the most important of which are these: that there are two filmmakers here with a very honest story to tell, and a year in the life revisiting 4 people who changed all of ours in one way or another, who have since changed in many ways in their own right, and stayed the same in many ways. But in the end that same distance between them, rifts, and rivalries are probably what makes them rock together so hard.
When I was first interviewing them 4 years ago, I was struck by how it seemed that if they met for the first time now after all this time they would respect each other as individuals and care about each other.
That does come across in the film, they do care about each other, but like a brother or sister who you love dearly because you have been so close and so full of love, hate, anger, madness for so long that you don’t have much to talk about, you don’t even necessarily enjoy their company, but you love them, and you can do one thing with them, if they are real blood, you can do things like family reunions, talking about your parents, complaining about parents, and chastising bad habits. If they are not your not blood, and you know some songs, all’s you can do is play them. And they did, and Cantor and Galkin captured that, and they captured it well. Bravo.
I got home and my author copy of the book was there. I opened it up to the first page where Chas Banks their European road manager gives the Forward. My eyes fell upon his last words “life to the pixies.” He was reflecting on his read of the book, it is the story of their life and the lives of everyone that grew up with them around them, before them and after them. My book “Fool The World” covers their first life.
LoudQuietLoud Covers their second life and Galkin and Cantor captures this second coming. The film’s power, sadness, redemption, and rawness, reveals the final truth that rock stars grow up, that they can grow up, and that we should let them grow up. It might not be as slick as the magazines would have you believe, but it’s the truth and that’s what rock n roll is supposed to be about. Galkin and Cantor have brought us one step closer to accepting that.
We are lucky the Pixies let us in to this personal, human story. So I close with this thought. The main question at the screening talk after the film was “will the pixies record another album?” I think this is missing the point and the point of the film. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what the Pixies can do for you, ask what you can do for the Pixies.”
Josh Frank- 2006
www.fooltheworldbook.com
