Interview: Margaret Brown (Be Here to Love Me)

So here we are again (see Justin’s first interview with Margaret here), speaking about Van Zandt and the documentary about his tattered and self destructive life: Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt. With a second viewing, there is no doubt that the story of this film will resonate because the music grabs you, the home footage brings you in closer and the interviews make you understand what it was like to be right there standing next to him.

Not only will many people discover Townes for the first time, through this film, but they will also discover Margaret Brown. Any other director could have easily made an exploitive piece, but luckily this was lovingly brought together by a director that found her own rebellious voice through the telling of
Townes’story. I sat down with her for a follow up interview to talk about the release of the DVD by Palm Pictures – a distribution label known for their quality transfers and many extras.

Justin Ambrosino: Did you feel the spirit of Townes with you as you toured the festivals and screenings with the film?
Margaret Brown: I hope so. It was really interesting to see it play at
Buenos Aires as opposed to Rotterdam where people take Townes super seriously. There were people in the audience arguing with me that I got
my facts wrong. No one really laughed at any of the screenings there.
This movie is supposed to be funny too. It’s not all history book facts. Every screening people responded differently and people were looser at other places. I enjoyed noting the differences.

JA: With the release of the DVD, is this the last legs of your journey with this film?
MB: In away it is, but so many other countries are looking to see how it does in the US before they make decisions on how they are going to market it. Even though it has been acquired by other territories, it has only been released by one other country theatrically. So, we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll have to go to some other countries, but yes, it is the last leg of it in the United States which is where I live so, for me, it is the end of a long journey.

JA: Did you want to make any changes before it went to DVD?
MB: No, it is what it is. When I finished editing it, I kind of knew it was done. It felt right because it’s not like a chronological film, so it’s really a balancing act. I felt like it was teetering in the balance, so I didn’t want to mess with it too much.

JA: There are extras interviews on the DVD, why did you choose to leave them out of the final cut of the film?
MB: A lot of them are extreme stories and tall tales. There was a cut of the film, after maybe 4 months of editing, that I felt like it was a stream of all crazy stories that you might hear about around a bon fire drinking beer than it would be right for a film. I felt like became what was the next crazy thing he did. It just wouldn’t have been the right arc of the story. But I also knew that people would want to hear these stories so I put them on the DVD so people could hear them. And there is some great stuff that sure didn’t make it in.

JA: Everyone seemed to enjoy talking about Townes and there were good stories to be told, in those terms would you say that it was easy documentary to make?
MB: People definitely love to talk about Townes but there’s a flip side to that. People don’t want to talk about the negative stuff as much.
They just want to talk about the funny stuff. But there is getting the stories and also structuring the film. They are usually both hard, but I do think maybe it was easier for me because he was character in life and he was aware of himself as character and he was mythologizing himself as he was living. So that made it easier for me. If someone is that charismatic it’s a visible thing; it’s already inherently cinematic.

JA: You had mentioned in the commentary about wanting this film to be a documentary/narrative film and that’s why you shot the first sequence in film the way you did, when did that idea veer towards documentary?
MB: I guess because I felt like I could make a documentary. There is so much missed in Townes’ story anyway that I felt like a documentary could really embrace that spirit without some kind of reenactment. I also found that the people who populated the movie were so much more interesting than anything that I could make up. So I felt like I didn’t need to go that way with it.

JA: Did Palm Pictures ask you to do the commentary or is that something you wanted to do?
MB: Palm Pictures set up the DVD and they were the ones who asked me to do the commentary.

JA: How was doing that?
MB: It was hard because I don’t like to explain the movie, so I was like, “Oh no, I really don’t want to do this.” I want people to interpret the movie however they want to. I don’t want to tell anyone what to think in any way. I’m sure some of the insights are interesting to people, but I don’t know about it. There are a few movies that I watched because I wanted to know how the filmmaker does things and more often than not it is just some crazy conversation and I like those kinds of commentary the best anyway.

JA: Did you record the commentary more than once?
MB: No it was straight through. I think there were a few things that were changed but I never went back again. It was all three of us in a room together, you really can’t go back. It’s like everyone’s time.

JA: Were there more performances that you wanted to put on the DVD?
MB: Yeah. It was basically limited by the amount that was able to spend licensing it. So maybe on some other versions, like in Germany or other countries, will put different songs on it but it was really just about money. There were other performances available its just that was all we could afford.

JA: How much time did you spend on the DVD extras?
MB: I think it was three weeks of editing stuff together. We had to go through the whole project and resuscitate stuff. It was a lot of work.
Then apart from that I had to re-master other things. Do the commentary. Then I had to approve of everything, 8 million times, at every stage which was pretty harrowing.

JA: What did you learn from your experiences making Be Here to Love Me that you are going to bring into your next project?
MB: Just to watch how a people are. I got to interview a lot of people and that teaches you about communicating, watching and listening to people. It teaches you, in certain situations, how to be quieter.

JA: At this point have you ever thought about writing a narrative film about Townes?
MB: People have approached me about that, but I don’t know. It might be a fun exercise, but I think someone else should do that.

JA: Do you have to wait until all of this is finished to start working on your next project?
MB: I actually already started on a new project. I just got back from a
two week trip to Alabama to start work on a new project. I’m just at the research phase. I went down there for Mardi Gras, not in New Orleans but in Mobile, which has it’s own Mardi Gras with it’s own set of traditions.

JA: Is this a documentary?
MB: I think it’s a narrative. I think it’s hard to say whether it’s a documentary or a narrative yet. I think stories tell you what form they need or hopefully they do. And you pick up on it and then you write. So far though, I think the best way to tell this story is with a narrative.

JA: Can you explain what the project is about?
MB: I’m really not sure. It’s kind of a ghost story about the Deep South. How it has changed but it hasn’t really changed. It’s a about
Mardi Gras and the spirit of Carnival and how that trickled across race in the South.

JA: Is Lee Daniel [cinematographer on Be Here to Love Me] attached the project?
MB: If he’ll have me.

JA: What do you think about the waves of all these new music docs?
There was a wave when mine was released too. At South by southwest there was so many and at 24 Beats too. That’s the festival mine was in. I haven’t seen a lot of them. The only ones I’ve seen is the Flaming Lips doc (The Fearless Freaks) which is real good and I’ve seen the Daniel Johnston one (The Devil and Daniel Johnston) which is good as well. I think that’s about to come out. It’s real different then my film, but I liked it a lot.

JA: Do you think that wave is going to end?
MB: Who knows? I think if there are good films, people will go. I think it’s really fascinating to watch a good documentary. When you go to a film festival (and I’ve been to a few this year) you will find out that
1 out of 10 of the narratives are good, and 6 of out 10 of the documentaries are good. I don’t know why that is but it definitely seems to be true. So I think people are kind of just figuring that out.

JA: Do you have any favorite docs in the past year?
MB: I really liked Occupation Dreamland. We saw that at Rotterdam, Lee and I. I just remembered saying where did this come from. I’m not sure that many people got to see it. I think because it got released with a wave of other rock films that I don’t think are good.

JA: Did you start Rake Films before making BHTLM and do you plan on keeping it for your next film?
MB: We started the company for the film. I’m not sure about keeping it though. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t know, I like the name and all. I just feel like it’s this male word “a wild young man”. I feel like why it can’t also mean a woman too. Why do men get all the fun?

Margaret Brown’s Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt gets released (today) March 14th on DVD by Palm Pictures

Check out the official website here.