Someone Should be Filming This

View as slideshow

I drove by it twice before I saw the gate. It’s easy to miss if you don’t know where you’re going. From the street it doesn’t look like much, but past the gate and heading up the driveway, you get a better look at the grandeur of the place. The palatial Mediterranean villa is rumored to have been built by Edward VIII, occupied by Errol Flynn, and contains an underground passage built by Harry Houdini. It’s also said to be haunted by a man who was pushed from the balcony during a lovers quarrel.
The mansion’s current owner, music producer Rick Rubin,
rents the place out for use as a recording studio and filming location. The Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded their “Blood Sugar Sex Magic” album here. They shot a documentary of the process called, “Funky Monks.” I saw it when I was in high school and I watched it again online after my first trip to the house. Then I watched a bunch of John Frusciante interview clips from when he was really messed up on heroin – he looks like a singing scarecrow.
The first thing I notice walking up the stairs are the two DFA banners hanging Nuremburg style on either side of the front door. The next thing I see is James Murphy dressed in all white. He gives me a big bear hug and cracks my back. That’s always been his move. – I can’t even begin to count many times he’s cracked my back. I get the grand tour and he shows me the pool with pride. New Yorkers are always huge suckers for a pool. The man has a grand piano and a white bear skin rug in his bedroom, a waterfall outside his window. Actually, it’s not so much a bedroom as a wing of the house. This place is impressive to say the least but it’s also got a run down, abused, rock vibe. It could use a deep cleaning and a fresh coat of paint. I don’t think spirits haunt it so much as the funk of those here before us.
For the next three months, James, his engineers, their live-in chef, and a cast of rotating extras will live and work in this house, creating the third LCD Soundsystem record. They all wear white and drive around in a white mini-van. It’s probably because we’re in Laurel Canyon but there is an undeniable Mansonian vibe…minus the crazy part…and with better
music. Someone should be filming this. I got to meet DA Pennebaker
once. He was speaking and sharing films in a class I was taking. I shook his hand and told him I was a huge fan and that was pretty much it. If you’re not familiar with Pennebaker his 1967 Bob Dylan tour film, “Don’t Look Back”, is tied with the Maysels Brother’s 1970 Rolling Stones tour film, “Gimme Shelter” for best rock documentaries ever. You should see both if you haven’t.
A year after I met Pennebaker, I met James Murphy. We were working in the same building. I was editing a documentary film and he was producing a record. We became friends when I gushed all over him that the Evergreen album was, “like, my favorite
record.”
A decade and a half later we are in the same city again. I’m pretty sure that James agreed to let me be in the room and film because I lit the studio. How can you argue with diffused overhead lighting that makes everyone look fabulous? “Someone needs to film this,” I tell him, “We have to make a documentary.” He says, “We should make something like ‘Holy Mountain,’” referring to Alejandro
Jodorowsky’s 1973 freak out of a film. Although not exactly what I was thinking, I chirp, “Yeah man, that’s awesome,” and go right on filming my documentary.
Documentary is about patience. You wait for something interesting to happen. You wait for the shot. You shoot a full day and wind up with five minutes of usable footage. There are certain moments you know are brilliant when you’re shooting but most often
you have no idea what you’ve got until you start editing and sift through it all. Most of the footage ends up being really boring crap but that’s ok…you’re looking for small bits of magic. It’s when you put those moments together in context that you hopefully find a film. I’ll let you know how it works out for me.

www.davidbaum.net

Clips from the film in progress are up on http://lcdsoundsystem.com/main/
and can be seen on lcd’s youtube site: www.youtube.com/user/lcdsoundsystem