Chords for RetroBites: The Last Waltz | CBC

_ _ I don't think we knew it was gonna be history but it did seem like something
that as it progressed it was hard just to let go to just to think this thing
was gonna happen without any kind of documentation at all.
_ It felt like we
needed to do something about it [Eb] I mean it started out that we were gonna do _
just the simplest thing we were gonna do a little 16 millimeter thing just to get
it on film so you know someday we could [E] look at her we could do and it just it
_ snowballed you know and when I got up enough nerve to ask [Eb] Martin Scorsese to
become involved with it then we crossed over the line between _ _ amateur time and
real filmmaker time.
Could you concentrate it on a music on it as a
musical event knowing that the elaborate _ _ preparations had been taken to record it
on 35 millimeter film in a way never been done before.
[Ebm] _ _ I guess I have to ask
you that as a musician [Gm] Robbie [Ebm] if it affected your playing your whole
approach to the evening.
No it didn't because Marty had figured it out in such
a way that that the cameras did not become an imposition on the [D] audience or
the people that were performing [Ebm] because you have one of those big panavision
cameras come zooming [E] by you you forget who you [Eb] are.
Martin you have made such
films as Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, many award-winning other
documentaries and so forth.
You had literally one chance at this it was one
concert you couldn't redo it you couldn't retake it you couldn't make it
like an ordinary movie right it was a single event why would you want to take
that on when you've dealt with the movie technique which is take after take after
take.
Well I just finished [Ebm] shooting New York New York I shot that for 22 weeks
and I couldn't stop I [Cm] just wanted to shoot more whatever whatever you know
and Jonathan Taplin who produced Mean Streets [Eb] _ _ introduced Robbie to me and said
[Eb] there's gonna be a lot of people at the concert and the band I thought was
important to as a group and a figure in music to [Cm] record their last concert and I
figured at least to be reportage you know if anything and [Eb] then when we saw
the results we decided to shoot in 35 millimeter and I placed the camera in
seven 35mm cameras.
Seven?
Yeah seven and we had a lot of guest
operators like Laszlo Kovacs, [Ebm] Wilma Zygmunt, people like that who came in for
one day for the concert [Eb] and Bobby Byrd and people are now DPs, directors of
photography and we saw that somehow the 35mm brought out the
expressions of the band the people on the stage I decided not to shoot
audience either because we've seen so many concert films we see audience no
audience.
We do see the audience in their point of view from Robbie's
point of view from behind [Ab] whatever this sort of thing and [F] somehow we felt that
when we saw the rushes we realized we had a little more than we thought we got
you know and we're gonna get and then it's kind of snowballed [Eb] into a
situation where I shot another whole week of three songs.
One called The Weight
another song called Evangeline, called The Last Waltz, Last Waltz Suite.
I did that
at MGM Studios _ and those were done like a feature literally like a feature film
that's after the film was sold to United Arts.
That took [Cm] three days to shoot the
weight alone one song with the staple singers and two days for Evangeline one
day for Last Waltz Suite which the ends the film and [E] also then four days
documentary and so it took a while to shoot the whole picture [Eb] and put it
together becomes like a not like a _ recording of a concert but like a
kind of a strange oratorio or something it goes on and on and the music [G] it kind of
one song leads to another which leads to an emotion emotionally one verse
emotionally see and it talks about the different influences of music [Eb] and how
it all blends together and how it their music influenced by _ _ _ it you know
and that sort of thing.
[G] How would you communicate between seven all-star
cameramen when there is a concert going on that is not a string
quartet?
It was three weeks three weeks before right after shooting New York
New York there was [Ebm] three weeks I had and Robbie gave me all the lyrics of the
songs and gave me the actual lineup of the seven-hour concert _ [Eb] and in one column
he had who was [Cm] singing what part then he had the lyrics another column he had
what instruments were important and there's a column for lighting and a
column for a camera so I fill in those two [Eb] I worked on lighting we're done the
sets with Boris Levin we do with New York New York and West Side Story and
Sound of Music and and Mike Chapman helping with some of the lighting and [F] I
did the camera positions too so cameramen basically memorized their
positions and whenever they run out of film they sort of [Eb] run back to the script
which was about [Ab] 200 pages _ [E] and run back and say I'm supposed to be on leave on
here on drums okay you know and also I had a had a intercom which was hard to
use because you're right on the stage you know and it's [Eb] lasting and all you
hear is a you know somebody yelling you're off the line which means who's
off the line?
What camera?
Who's covering whom?
It was [G] chaos.
But we had the
script though we could always refer back to that script see and I [Eb] don't believe
any other concert film was scripted.
You wouldn't repeat yourself would you?
This having been done would you now want to do anything else musically?
_ Sure sure I mean I don't I mean I don't know in terms of it's really the matter
of the music I mean the band was the most most important to me you see and
Neil Young and Van Morrison and [Ebm] Dylan and [G] Muddy Waters and people like that
Eric Clapton, Johnny Mitchell.
There's all very important people to me I use
Eric Clapton's music and Mean Streets and I use it so it's a very they all
connect it all means a lot [Bb] great deal to me
_ [N] _ _