Ed Lachman Pt. 1: 'Songs for Drella'
The revered director and cinematographer on how being tested by Lou Reed led to the 1990 concert film's singular style.
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by Dan Arnés
The phrase "needs no introduction" has rarely been more apt than for acclaimed director of photography and director Ed Lachman. Renowned for his cinematography work with world-class filmmakers like Todd Haynes, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Stephen Soderbergh, Todd Solondz, and Pablo Larraín, Lachman's distinctly diverse career spans narrative, documentary, and concert films, showcasing his ability to adapt his always unclassifiable, always elegant style to fit each project's vision. Ahead of Saturday’s Metrograph screening of his 1990 concert film Songs for Drella, which he directed and shot, Lachman reflects on the intimate project that captures Lou Reed and John Cale's tribute to their late Velvet Underground manager Andy Warhol, whose nickname "Drella," a fitting portmanteau of “Cinderella” and “Dracula,” provides the film its appropriately evocative title. The starkly minimalist film, marked by its raw and intimate approach, exemplifies Lachman’s talent for merging musical and visual storytelling, creating an immersive experience that transcends mere documentation.
In Part 1 of our wide-ranging conversation, we delve into the origin and making of Songs for Drella, Lachman’s experiences working with Lou Reed and John Cale, and the ability of images, much like music, to express what can’t be stated in words. I spoke to Lachman as he was preparing for the release of Maria, another music film about singer Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie and the follow up to Pablo Larrain’s El Conde, for which he received his third Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, as well as an upcoming lifetime achievement award from acclaimed cinematography festival CAMERAIMAGE.
Dan Arnés: Thanks again for doing this. This is a big thrill. I've been a big fan of your work in various capacities for a while.
Ed Lachman: Yeah, my pleasure. I could tell you how I came to this project. That’s usually an opener. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] That's a classic opener. I would love that.
Then I’ll shut up. [Laughs.] Basically, I did a video for Red, Hot, and Blue. It was an AIDs benefit film… they reached out to different artists and directors, like David Byrne, [who] did the one on himself, Jonathan Demme, U2, Wim Wenders, Neil Jordan, etc. I was going to do one with Derek Jarman and Annie Lennox, but [Jarman] was too sick. He was dying of AIDs, actually. So when I met with him, he was very generous. And he said to me, “Why don't you [direct]?”
I got a lot of notice from that. And because of that, Channel 4 came to me through one of their suppliers. And they asked me if I would document this performance — Lou Reed and John Cale had come together like 20 years from when the [The Velvet Underground] broke up. Lou fired John, but whatever. So they had done a performance at Saint Anne's Church, and that was the evolution of it. And from there, they went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. So I met with John and Lou, and I didn't say anything to Lou, but I had done a video with Lou where he was totally kind of out of it, and he came up to me. He didn't know me from Adam, and he kicked the tripod, and I was, like, in shock. I was holding the camera, and he said, “Do it like Andy [Warhol].” So when we first met, in a joking way, I said, “Do you remember ever doing a video for Berlin and you kicked the tripod?” And he goes, “I don't remember much from back then,” and smiles. So that was that. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] Sick.
[Laughs.] So that was my introduction. Then the next words that came out of his mouth were, “I don't want any fucking cameras between me and the audience. So you figure it out.” So I went home that night. I go, “How am I going to shoot this performance without cameras?” So I went back to him the next day and I said, “Look, could I shoot like two days of your rehearsals and I'll shoot one night of the performance, but the cameras will all be off the stage?” You know, you shoot with long lenses so they won't interfere with the experience. He said, “People pay to see me. I don't want to interfere with that experience.”
So it allowed me to have much more intimacy and change things between the songs that I would never be able to do if I were shooting a concert. It's in this void, you know, which is kind of this stripped-down look that is perfect for their music, and it’s homage to Andy; it was kind of like a confessional and a dirge. It was three years after [Andy] died. I realized the intimacy I could have with the camera while I was operating. It allowed me to do something that I've never been able to do in a performance, which is [to] be in sync with the rhythm of the music by moving the camera [according] to the performance, where I could really be close [to] their emotions.
Had you designed a lot of the shots and figured out the general logistics of how you were going to shoot it before you saw the performance? Or were you kind of figuring it out on the fly?
Well, I went and saw the performances for a couple days, and then I would set up the dolly. I would have hand signals with the dolly grip, and I would move in and out to the emotion of how I felt the performance. That's what I always wanted to do. I'd done it on a zoom, but I'd never been able to do it on a dolly. A Prairie Home Companion I did with a crane — where the crane's moving it up. But that was more of a narrative, structured story. I'd never done it in a concert. What it afforded me is that the person viewing this performance was the audience. In other words, I didn't need to document an audience having this experience, which I’ve done a lot [laughs]. The audience is you at home. And so then throughout there would be this subjective point of view to the storytelling in the music and the images.
That comes across completely. It has a wild quality of you being right there and they are literally performing just for you.
And to each other. That was the other interesting thing that I never fathomed — that it would reveal something about their own relationships and personalities.
That's my favorite part actually. It is wild to see their looks to each other. [There’s] so many levels of feeling. So many unsaid things. In the little glances, you can kind of see the entire history.
As cinematographers, a lot of times we're not in total control of our images because our images ultimately are controlled in the editing room. You create the concept with the director, but you don't have total control. Here, I was in control of the editing, and I worked with this wonderful documentary editor, Jay Freud, and he was able to maintain the authenticity of the shot. So there were long extended takes in the performance and it wasn't like, I have to make it exciting for the audience. We're looking at this film now, 30 years later, and people still respond to it. I didn't try to recreate the movement of the album — of the music — through the editing. I wanted the editing to maintain how the camera was experiencing it.
This is one of the only documented reunions of Lou and John after such a long period of time. Did you have any strange sense shooting the interviews with John in The Velvet Underground doc you also worked on that I was part of this. A chapter of their story?
Oh, I don't get into [that]. John was happy that I was doing Todd's piece. And I had run into Lou a number of times in New York at an Austrian restaurant he used to like. And he was always friendly. He was the kind of personality that always had to test you, you know? So his test was telling me, “I don't want a fucking camera between me and the audience.” And when I came back with a solution, he was open to it. And I think after that, he trusted me. And I was always very supportive of what they were. We would [just] do two or three takes. I was always very conciliatory to their needs. The greatest compliment I was ever given was, his wife, Laurie Anderson, was so complimentary of what she saw [Songs for Drella] at the New York Film Festival [at] an open-air screening, and she was said, “Lou would have appreciated that.”
Do you think there's anything specifically about images and cinematography that informs your approach to music oriented stuff?
I believe in images more than some directors I've worked with to communicate an idea. In a strange way, images are like music. It's a non-verbal form of communication. And certain directors come out of writing, so they think it has to be said. For me, it has to be shown. In Say Amen, Somebody, there's a scene where [Thomas] Dorsey walks out the back of his house, and he's kind of talking to the birds [laughs]. And in one cut, [director George T. Nierenberg], who I love, had taken [the scene] out, and I said, “George, I'll never talk to you again. I can't explain what that is, but it is so beautiful that he’s communicating to nature in his own world,” because by that time he was a little senile, and [I said], ”You have to leave that in,” and he did. It's images like that.
I mean, in all fairness, Todd Haynes looks for those things. Actually, there are things that are mistakes, but Todd sees it somehow as being parallel to the thematics of the idea of the story. There's a scene [in Carol] in the tunnel, between Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, where they're going out to her house in New Jersey. And in the book, it says that if the tunnel caved in, this would be the moment that our love would be forever. How do you translate that in images? But we missed the focus. The focus was coming in on Kate, and he used that part of the shot.
Anyway, I'm always preparing to allow those things to happen. That's what I love about film over digital. With digital, you know right away if you got it. In film, there's always a bit of a mystery of what's happening at that moment in time.
Tomorrow, stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview, in which Lachman discusses his career beyond Drella, including his musical approach to cinematography, his experience working with Robert Altman and David Byrne, and the drawbacks of digital.
Dan Arnés is a filmmaker, editor, and composer in NYC.
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