October 24, 2002|The kind of interview that They Might be Giants (hereafter TMBG) might appreciate, my chat with filmmaker A.J. Schnack was short, sweet, and to the point. In town for the 25th Denver International Film Festival with his film Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a pop journalist-laden look at the phenomena of geek rockers TMBG, I shared a large sofa with the nebbishy Mr. Schnack and asked what moved him to make a feature-length documentary on his favourite band.
A.J. SCHNACK: I first started to listen to them in college when I became aware of them as one of the really great, interesting college alternative bands. Them, and The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, and then I got to know one of the guys in band through work and stopped thinking of them in the band kind of way. Suddenly the band just became something that this friend of mine did. But I saw a show of theirs when I was thinking about what kind of project I wanted to do, and I was shocked to see that the audience was young–that they'd kept this really young, hip fanbase.
FILM FREAK CENTRAL: While losing their older fanbase?
Well, I don't know about that, but there's definitely something that really appeals to a certain age group and sensibility. They talk about these terribly, dark things in a really upbeat way and they don't deal in the traditional love story kind of garbage.
Is that the same audience that comes to your film?
It's hard to say. The first night here, yeah, it looked like all fans but by the second night it was a lot of people who were just looking for an interesting film probably after their first choice had sold out. So that's nice, I like it when it's a mix. I tried to speak to neophytes as much as the fans–to balance the length of the performance pieces so that the fans felt like they got enough music while not boring non-fans to tears. We have two full-length songs in the middle of the piece, and then it ends with two full-length songs and so I hope that this doesn't bore people too much.
Did you take a cue from any classic music documentaries? Something like a Gimme Shelter or something that captured a period and a movement?
Yeah, I tried to arrange a stabbing but I couldn't pull it off. (laughter) I hear the Hell's Angels are all mellow now, though. My idea was that I'd sample all sorts of different documentary style–we'd do a little Ken Burns, y'know, a little performance–all different styles.
You have a degree in journalism.
Right. I actually started in filmmaking with a narrative short and thought that I'd make narrative features, but the documentary format is a really good fit, obviously, with my training. I'd been traveling with my short and saw a lot of them…
What was your short about?
It was about partner-swapping in the desert–sort of a Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice called Might as Well Be Swing.
A riff on that Sinatra album?
(laughs) right.
How'd you get in contact with people like Sarah Vowell and Dave Eggars to do your piece?
They were just fans, people like Harry Shearer, Frank Black, Janeane Garofalo, Josh Kornbluth–I love reading them and listening to them, and knowing that all of them shared this love of TMBG was really a wonderful thing. The hardest thing about making a documentary is the editing and no more so for me than on this piece–I mean there was so much great stuff from all these brilliant, funny people. The temptation was just to include it all.
Did you also look for people who didn't like TMBG?
No–I approached it like an attorney making a closing argument: here's my thesis and I'm going to try to back it up so it's up to the audience to decide "I agree" or "You're laying it on a little thick." For me, personally, though, I didn't really care–I had my point of view. What I appreciated about finishing the documentary was providing this idea about TMBG that what they're about is this ongoing musical experiment. They want to be "the other band," they don't wanna be anyone's favourite, red-hot rabid band–they wanna be on the fringe. There are people though, of course, who really identify with them and idealize them and I wanted to mention that with some humour–more humour than creepiness, I hope–but not dwell on it. That's not what the guys are all about.
