Hacker Cinema
The Last Waltz
1978 · Film · documentary · 117 min
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese's documentary intertwines footage from The Band's incredible farewell tour with probing backstage interviews and featured performances by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, and other rock legends.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
"The Band" had toured with Dylan, who raked in the bucks as a songwriter, then Dylan pretty much acted retired for quite a while.
So they worked on their own material, came out with records of their own, and kept going along. They really didn't get as much recognition until they appeared at Woodstock in 1969, then they were all over the radio with Santana and everybody else.
Their farewell "documentary" movie from the '70's was made by Scorsese and is quite legendary.
"The Last Waltz"
As the name implies, a certain amount of burnout is captured, but on the DVD everything about it is worth watching. Incredible guest performers, including Muddy Waters. The music/video is phenomenal.
There is one interview where it turns out that Hudson's old-fashioned parents would never have let him join a ragtag band of aspiring independent folk-rockers. He had to tell his mom & dad that the band was paying him to give them music lessons instead :)
> Not mentioning The Last Waltz is pretty unpardonable. But this IS a great movie, and so is that.
It's probably been 20 years since I've seen it, but isn't The Last Waltz a pretty straightforward recording of a concert? Stop Making Sense might seem like just a concert film, but I think the author's point is that it's quite unlike pretty much everything else in the category.
I saw David Byrne present Stop Making Sense at Metrograph here in NYC in 2017 and he gave a lot of insights on the making of it. One major one is that they filmed from a different camera angle on each of the three nights and put the concert together in post. So one night was from stage left, another night stage right, another straight on -- he didn't want you to see camera's in the background at all unless it was intentional (the article mentions it was filmed over three nights, but not this intentional framing).
He mentioned something about wanting the audience to see how the Talking Heads put together the band and a show over time, which is why he chose to build it up from that solo guitar moment up through Bernie Worrell (!) and the rest of the musicians walking on stage. He said he always had anxiety performing and would collapse back stage once it was over at first, but finally got comfortable with that front man role as time went on.
He also felt that Talking Heads were at the height of their powers (his words) and wanted to capture it, but couldn't get funding for a film and had to personally put up the money for it.
As for the "big suit", he said no one in the band knew it was happening and everyone sort of lost it when he walked on stage in it the first night.
Edit: One thing I forgot, Jonathan Demme gets mentioned all the time when talking about the film, but people forget that Jordan Cronenweth did the cinematography and had recently come off of doing Blade Runner.
>I'm exactly the opposite, I think they jumped the shark after this album .. ;)
I don't know about that, While Stop Making Sense was brilliant, Naked[0] is a pretty darn good album too. And their older stuff is somewhat hit or miss, e.g., More Songs About Buildings and Food[2] and Speaking in Tongues[3] had bright spots, but also some crappy songs too. But Fear of Music[1] is mostly spot on, IMHO.
I'm pretty excited about the re-release, as it's a fabulous album and an excellent movie (right up there with The Last Waltz[4] and other concert movies)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_(Talking_Heads_album)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_Music
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Songs_About_Buildings_and_Food
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_Tongues_(Talking_Heads_album)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Waltz
There was a documentary on the City of God DVD that was better than the film (and I thought it was an amazing film).
A few from Netflix that I could find that I rated:
Endless Summer
Death in Gaza
The Filth and the Fury
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Baseball
March of the Penguins
The Art of the Steal
Born Into Brothels
The Aristocrats
God Grew Tired of Us
The Fog of War
The Lost Wave
The Last Waltz
Festival Express