Last night I watched 30 Century Man, a documentary with Scott Walker as the central figure.
First, some background – I had the Walker Brothers’ 45 “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” when it was a hit, so I had at least a passing familiarity with Scott Walker for years. That passing familiarity changed in 1988, when Lane Steinberg mentioned him in conversation as a “must hear” and then sent me a cassette compilation with songs from Walkers’ first 4 solo albums. The first time I heard it I have to say that I didn’t get it, but I kept trying (Lane is never wrong) and slowly became blown away. Of course I then set about getting my hands on anything I could by the guy. When I heard that this movie existed and that Scott Walker had allowed himself to be interviewed and filmed in the studio I was pretty excited, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to actually see it.
Taken as a “Making of The Drift” documentary this film is wonderful – any glimpse into the working habits of a musician who cares deeply about his/her work is worth watching, especially when the artist is as unique as Scott Walker. Seeing old clips of the Walker Brothers is neat, and listening to Brian Eno talk about anything (why do I get the feeling that he has lots of cats?) is pure gold. What is truly amazing about this movie though, is that after 90 minutes we actually know less about the guy than we do at the beginning. Here’s an artist that dropped off the face of the earth after becoming a top 10 pop star and at the end of this movie we don’t know why, we don’t know what he’s been doing all that time and we learn nothing about his personal life. What’s more, what we DO find out is that the somewhat self-involved young man that sang hits has become an apparently well-adjusted 65-year-old that just happens to produce aural nightmares. No Syd-Brian-Roky thing going on here… he’s a thoughtful and generous interviewee (as long as the subject matter is his music) and seems as normal as can be.
On a superficial level the interviews with others seem to be dead ends that provide no insight at all. Some listen to music they worked on with Scott Walker and act as though they had never heard it before, or say “I don’t know anything about him, but boy he’s good.” David Bowie claims to have gone out with a girl that had previously gone out with Scott Walker, and interviewee Scott shoulders the blame for his career path – he works very slowly. That’s it – that’s all we get.
If you dig into these interviews a little deeper though, you begin to understand that a certain lack of comprehension and connection (in both directions) is probably something that Walker has had to deal with his whole life. Somewhere in the film Scott says something like “Words come out of silence”, and I guess there’s your movie in a nutshell: information we never get (the silence) is actually what this documentary is built on. Like Scott Walker’s lyrics, I have no idea what the words of this film (and there are a lot of them) are supposed to tell me, but I’ll be thinking about them for a long time.
Alison’s Take:
In one part of the interview Walker recalls someone saying that what he does can’t be called songs and then goes on to say “Well, they seem like songs to me.” My wife (Alison) is pretty sure that’s the key to this film.
Alison’s long review of 30 Century Man:
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Don’t be fooled into thinking that Scott Walker is a regular guy with genius tendencies. Scott Walker may very well be a genius, but he is decidedly NOT a regular guy, and he can only hear himself, his words and what he creates – not a bad thing, just something to be aware of in case you want to have lunch with him (and I do).
Alison’s shorter (and funnier) review of 30 Century Man:
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Scott Walker… he doesn’t listen, but boy he’s good.
Scott Walker: 30th Century Man
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Never wrong? I remember boldly predicting the Mets would take the Yanks in the 2000 World Series. You just looked at me, smiled, and said, “We’ll, I don’t know about that.”
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