Clichés are usually met with indifferent acceptance. As good as the cult classic film ‘Almost Famous’ is, it’s not that taxing to understand that bands take drugs and fight. A band’s lifespan, we are left to presume, is punctuated with considered break-ups because of ‘musical differences’, addiction, internal hatred, or if they’re brazenly honest, irrelevance.
It’s no wonder then that directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace were artistically entranced with the idea that James Murphy, who led LCD Soundsystem to unfaltering acclaim, would call it quits for rather more mundane reasons. “With LCD it was almost kind of the opposite cliché of bands. They were deciding very, very calmly just to stop,” says Southern. “That was really interesting to us”. We interviewed the directing duo about what inspired them to make the documentary, ‘Shut Up and Play the Hits’ and what they were trying to capture.
Their other major work is ‘No Distance Left To Run’, which documented Blur’s 2009 reunion. When compared to ‘Shut Up and Play the Hits’, a 48 hour documentation of LCD’s Madison Square Garden slot and the day after, it seems they have an affinity with figures that contradict the archetypal ‘rockstar’ and are imbedded in generational memory. Damon Albarn’s retiring Brit-pop front to Liam Gallagher’s northern abrasion: what James Murphy’s bashful noughties dance disposition is to bands that want to make it, and stay made: As Lovelace says, “James described the band as a group of substitute teachers, we always kind of liked the idea that here’s a band that shouldn’t really be playing at Madison Square Garden”.
At the time of the concert, Murphy was 42 and greying. Not plucky, not in possession of the unashamed divine swagger of the Madison Square ‘types’. The concert had not even been in the initial mock up of the film, “there were a few iterations of what the project might be at first” says Dylan, “We it was always in terms of what it wouldn’t be…I think 3 months after first meeting James he got in touch and said ‘we’re gonna play this show’. It seemed like the perfect opportunity”.
The film is centred on but not limited to the concert. Shut Up and Play the Hits is a window into James Murphy’s psyche, though it is a foggy one. The question of what possesses a man to relinquish his gains is never quite answered. This serves to make the film elusive in parts…even anti-cliché. Dylan says, “we thought that with this film there’s no reason that you’d have to know that James was born in New Jersey and that he met the rest of the band at this point. It’s more about experiencing two days, two incredible days in the life of this guy”.
Take the opening scene: it’s the day after the biggest and last gig as LCD Soundystem and he wakes up with a guttural yawn, reluctantly divorces from his bed, then makes cup of coffee and takes his dog for a piss; it’s magnanimously mundane. So the interview with critic Chuck Klosterman was important in affirming the filmmaker’s deliberate juxtaposition of the concert and the physical and emotional hangover following, asking Murphy ‘When you start a band, do you imagine how it will end?’ Southern states, “[the interview] was shot before the concert so he could talk about how he imagined it would feel when he quit”.
The film has a human touch, probably helped by diversity of the production team. Lovelace points out, “we got cinematographers who didn’t necessarily come from the background of filming shows.” Dylan adds, “we had Yorick Le Seax who shot ‘I Am Love’ and he shoots of lot of arthouse films. We were lucky enough to have Spike Jonze shoot one of the cameras. He just had an amazing ability to find people; that just kind of that really gave the film something else”.
Speaking to Lovelace and Southern, you get the sense that ‘Shut Up and Play the Hits’ is more than just about doing just that. It’s really about the emotional peaks and troughs within one man’s 48 hours and for that reason it’s not just for die hard LCD Soundsystem fans.
“I think the music’s so infectious and the performance is so amazing… it never quite answers all the questions as to why James stopped the band but I think it leaves understanding what it must feel like to make a decision like that and how it feels when the dust settles and you realise right, I’m in the next phase of my life”.
Words by Michelle Kambasha
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Shut Up and Play the Hits in cinemas from September 4th
DVD and exclusive items on preorder
www.shutupandplaythehits.com
