At the beginning of the '70s, everything was possible.
— Morgan Neville
A lot of backup singers are really shy and don't want their life documented. They're not pining to be celebrity. They've had a front-row look at celebrity for a long time, and most people find out it's not for them.
I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
Watching somebody sing reveals a lot about character.
Non-fiction or documentaries can tell any kind of a story because they don't have to adhere to the rules of what's possible. When you're making something up, you have to say, 'Well, this is what would happen here,' but in reality, stuff happens that seems impossible.
I love documentaries. I love the format. I've been doing them for a long time.
If you're making a film about a band or a songwriter or whomever, there's a publisher, there's a record label, and there are people who are vested interests in that film. But with back-up singers, because they did stuff for everybody, there's no one party that has any vested interest in seeing the story told.
We had an incredible experience on '20 Feet.'
'The Sound of Silk' will serve as a lens for larger questions about cultural identity in a global society and the potential for individuals to act as catalysts for change.
When you come from a place and an identity, you can feel constricted and have to get away. But then you realise how much a part of you it is.
The first night I met Yo-Yo Ma, I found him the most charming person I had ever met, and I was willing to follow him with the camera anywhere.
Docs, in general, are made in the edit bay, archival docs even more so.
When you come to documentaries, the stakes are too low for it to be cutthroat. You're all doing it for the right reasons.
Vidal was a novelist, an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and many other things. Buckley started a magazine, hosted a TV show, lead a political movement, and was a master debater. They were multihyphenates in a way that you rarely see anymore.
I feel like - like Netflix is great if you've got a project ready to launch itself into the world rapidly.
Music, like film, is an incredible tool for creating empathy.
Culture in general is important, and people's identify is tied up in it. It's how we connect with others.
I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.
To be a backup singer, you have to walk into any situation and just be perfect from the first take to the 50th take.
I wish I didn't care about what people thought as much as Keith Richards doesn't care.
How often do we make films just celebrating people that do a good job, work altruistically, and are in it just for the sake of the love and not the business?
The problem with a lot of narrative films is that they're not real enough.
I love Memphis, and just being there affects one's outlook.
I could really sink my teeth into a David Bowie documentary.
Everything about Hank Williams interests me. His music, his life. His death. His impact.
Space is something which makes us question our role here on Earth. It brings out the best of our hopes and dreams.
I would argue that the culture is not the frosting on the cake: the culture is the plate the cake sits on.
I feel like I'm in a privileged position where I get to meet people and talk to them about the most important things in their lives. I appreciate that trust they're putting in me.
I feel like there's a lot of sympathy and camaraderie among documentary filmmakers.
I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell, and it's actually been really nice.
I knew who Buckley and Vidal were growing up, being a political junkie.
I'd worked on music docs for years. It felt like writing a novel. By the time I got to Keith Richards, it felt like making a sketch.
The easiest way to subjugate a people is to erase a culture. I've seen it in war zones.
By the rules of debate, if you lose your cool, you've lost the game.
Harmony singing isn't meant to be done alone.
You make documentaries because you love doing it; it's the only sane reason to make documentaries.
If I told my 14-year-old self that I'd be hanging out with Keith Richards talking about records, my head would've exploded.
The best music films are not about music... Music is just the language we're speaking to tell a story about culture.
I've produced two docs for Cameron Crowe, and I've always loved him as a filmmaker.
I always like learning the small details about a subject.
You tend to put your rock stars on pedestals - they seem like they've been there for time immemorial. But you realize that the rock stars have their own rock stars. They were fans and kids once, too.
Like the ancient Silk Road itself, 'The Sound of Silk' will make the foreign familiar while challenging long-held notions of identity and our place in the world.
Being a backup singer means being able to sing on a dime. Music is oozing out of their every pore.
I think, in the West, we often discount the arts as nice but not that important. Certainly in America when we cut funding for schools, the arts are the first programs to go. But the arts built the things we need more than anything else: collaboration and co-operation and creativity.
We saw The Who on New Year's Eve in 1975.
If you're not doing it for the right reasons, then you'd be dumb to be making documentaries.
Sometimes we have our perfect foils, or you can call them their bete noir: the person who brings out both the best and the worst in you because you disagree with them so completely. Yet, you understand and respect them enough to give it your all.
As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.
There are a handful of music docs I'd love to do, including David Bowie.
There's no cultural revolution by mistake.
