Interview: Margaret Brown

While others are checking out an imitation Johnny Cash, those who want the real thing will check out Townes Van Zandt in Be Here to Love Me the new documentary from director Margaret Brown. Here is music rebellion at its’ rawest. Townes Van Zandt was a man who threw everything away, including his family life, just to write and play his music across America. Here he is captured in a musically-driven documentary aimed to make a forgotten legend accessible to the public.

“There’s Heaven, then Purgatory, then Hell, then the Blues. I’m just trying to crawl my way up through the blues,” Townes once said.

The things he says are as honest as the music he writes. Townes’ was a heroin addicted, alcoholic, wandering spirit with a guitar and a lot of pain. He was rebel, an outcast, and a great songwriter. The home movies of Townes shows him at home with his gun and his girlfriend or with his guitar and his intoxicated friends. Intertwined with the archival footage are interviews with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Towne’s Van Zandt’s sister, his sons, his wives and his close friends. They all speak lovingly of him. Even his family spoke highly of him, though they were sometimes the ones he hurt the most. The home movies and the interviews give us a glimpse of his guarded private life and we see what inspired his music. This was a man who was out of touch with reality and lost in his own, so this glimpse will be greatly appreciated by his fans.

The music is at the forefront of this documentary. After the audience leaves the theatre they will have heard the best work by Townes. Songs like, “Waiting Around to Die” and “Black Crow Blues” are given new life behind the images they are played over and that is to the credit of Margaret Brown. Margaret Brown makes her directorial debut with this film. Here is my interview with her.

Margaret Brown: I made shorts and I produced a feature. I worked as Assistant Camera on documentaries. I worked for television as a segment producer. I worked in a little bit of everything. As an Undergrad, I studied poetry and film. For Grad school, I went to NYU.

JA: In school you were a cinematographer now you moved into directing, how did that transition come about?

MB: The thing about being a D.P. is it has to be everything you do. I think I am a visual person and I really enjoyed shooting. I grew up in the South and I’m a girl. I didn’t know how to fix cars or do anything with my hands and when I learned how to use a camera it was really great to know how to do something like that. I think that was the initial draw. Then, there was a moment when I had to make a choice to be a D.P. or be a director and I decided to go the director way.

JA: How did you get a commitment from Lee Daniel to be the cinematographer for this film?

MB: He really liked the project. He connected to it. Lee is a very principal person. I think if he could, he would shoot documentaries all day long. He did a lot for little money, but to be fair I also paid him as much as I could when I could.

JA: Why did you choose this to be your first film?

MB: I thought the story was really compelling and the music was so good. Everything sort of came together; I just knew it was the right story. No one had made a film about him. He is sort of this archetype of this musician that blows everything off to make music. It was a challenge to tell this story in a way that no one has told it before.

JA: Did you hear his music before getting into this film?

MB: Yes, my father is songwriter, so I grew up surrounded by music. And when I first heard Townes’ music, it really got me, and I said, “How did I miss this guy? When I started snooping around, every musician I knew, knew him and loved him but no one in the general public had any idea who he was, well besides Texas and in some foreign music pockets.

JA: What did you film and what was footage that you collected?

MB: Maybe a third of the film is archival footage. It was people’s home movies. We wanted to present a truthful portrait of Townes. All the interviews were filmed by us.

JA: Did you find everyone open to talk about Townes?

MB: It depends on the person. Its’ all about the relationship you have with the person. I wound up spending a lot of time with a lot of the people. I think they were able to trust me and give me something and they were comfortable giving it to me. People like Willie Nelson and Amy Lou Harris who we got a limited amount of time with, we had to hope for the best.

JA: How long was the post process for you?

MB: I had to raise money for it three or four times. I raised the money by writing about 40 grants. So, it is hard to say. It kept being broken up. We edited the spurt which really formed the film in maybe two or three months. I would say it was two years because I was working on this part-time.

JA: How did you get it to Palm Pictures
?

MB: They saw it at Toronto. We got into Toronto as a rough cut. There was a lot of interest in it. We didn’t expect that.

JA: Then maybe I should say why did you choose Palm Pictures?

MB: Palm does music documentaries. At the time, they had bought “Dig!.” Blackwell, who runs Palms Pictures, has music history and it just seemed like the right home for the film. Besides Palm had some interesting marketing ideas, using primarily the music.

JA: Did you model this after any music documentaries, or any documentary in general?

MB: I think music documentaries are boring in general. I like the Last Waltz, but this isn’t anything like that. I think I tried to stay as far behind the music as I could. The rise fall, rise again structure of documentaries wasn’t interesting to me. The structure of Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and how it was pieced together with fragments to make a whole I think is a good portrait of his work. I think, even though my film isn’t like that either, that was a film where I drew from.

JA: Do you have any plans to go into narrative filmmaking?

MB: Definitely. I thought this film was going to be partial narrative. It ended up not being that way. I have been so busy with this I haven’t had time to focus on a project like you need to. It’s been busy since Toronto.

JA: What’s next for you?

MB: I’m working on a documentary/narrative hybrid based in my home town in Alabama.

Margaret Brown’s Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt gets released (today) December 2nd in New York. Palm Pictures will release the film in other markets in the coming weeks. Check out the full screening schedule here or check out the trailer.