Interview: 'Moonage Daydream' director Brett Morgen

Brett Morgen has made films on such household names as Robert Evans (The Kid Stays in the Picture), Kurt Cobain (Montage of Heck), the Rolling Stones (Crossfire Hurricane), and Jane Goodall (Jane), as well as the day O.J. Simpson went on the lam (June 17th, 1994). But they all felt like preamble to his masterpiece, Moonage Daydream.

One of the best reviewed movies of 2022, Morgen’s portrait of David Bowie pushes the limits of documentary filmmaking, refusing to succumb to nonfiction filmmaking tropes over its thrilling 2.5 hours, casting a spell over viewers to the extent that another hour could have elapsed without complaint.

On the eve of his latest film hitting HBO Max, Morgen spoke with Asheville Movies about his year of globe-trekking, eschewing talking heads whenever possible, and why he might be done with filmmaking as we know it.

Edwin Arnaudin: I’m in Asheville, North Carolina. Do you have any history with our city?

Brett Morgen: I don't think so.

EA: Its film scene is coming back. North Carolina used to be a lot better with tax incentives, but with the changes in the legislature, they've not been so good.

BM: I had a production that was supposed to shoot in North Carolina that got canceled by Netflix a couple years ago because of when the state passed those bills.

EA: Damn.

Well, it was really fun following your awards season travels on Twitter and rooting for Moonage Daydream along the way. What are some of your favorite memories from those months?

BM: You know, we premiered the film at Cannes almost a year ago — last May. And the experience of watching this film with audiences around the world has been unbelievably gratifying. I just got back from Japan, which was the last territory we opened. I think I sat through eight or nine screenings. It's particularly fascinating to see how different cultures respond to the movie. It's been a really exciting film to participate in.

EA: And it was also exciting hearing the news that this film got selected for the Criterion Collection, so congrats on that. How does that come to be? Did did they just call you or email you and say, “Hey, we picked you”? Or did they take another route to notify you?

BM: No, it was just Neon had called me up and let me know. Which, obviously, as a filmmaker, it’s huge. I’m super excited.

EA: How far along are you in that process? Is that pretty much wrapped up or are there still a lot of steps left to go?

BM: No, and you just reminded me that I have to deliver a ton of stuff today. I just recorded my commentary this week.

EA: Going into that process, what expectations did you have of working with Criterion and how is that compared with the actual experience?

BM: Well, for the most part, I'm just sort of helping deliver some elements to them. So it hasn't really occupied much bandwidth.

EA: Yeah, I know sometimes there's a lot of overseeing of the transfer and whatnot and recording new bonus features, so I didn't know if that was happening.

BM: That’s more with an older film. you know what I mean? We just finished the film. It doesn't need to be remastered. It was finished remastered.

EA: So, one thing that I love about Moonage Daydream, June 17th, and a lot of your other films is the lack of talking head interviews. But then Montage of Heck has some phenomenal one-on-ones with Krist [Novoselic] and Courtney [Love]. How did you decide to take the approach that you did with each of those films?

Krist Novoselic in Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

BM: So, going back to The Kid Stays in the Picture, my goals have always been to create cinematic experiences, and talking heads to me aren't generally that moving. They present information. And and in historical pieces, they often…and this was my thought going into The Kid Stays in the Picture, I want the audience to experience Bob's life in the present tense. And if I cut to Bob on camera, it becomes a mortality play about a guy looking back and it's no longer active.

And also in terms of real estate, when you use a talking head, there's one part of the frame — the mouth — and you’re wasting the rest of the space. I’d rather just be inside the film than step outside of it. So, this was going to be my sort of dictate for my whole career.

And so when I did June 17th for ESPN, I got a call from them. It was season one of 30 for 30 and submitted the film, and a few weeks before the air day, someone from ESPN called me up and said, “Hey, we need you to go do interviews for the film.” And I was like, “Look, that's great. If you guys want to do that, you can have the film back. No worries. Do whatever you want to do with it, but I'm out.” And they were like, “What?” And I was like, “Yeah. That’s not what this is. The only reason this film exists is it's this exercise in immersive filmmaking.” And eventually they came on board and everything was great.

When I got to Montage of Heck, I entered it thinking that there would be no interviews and it would just be Kurt providing narration. It would be Kurt's life as filtered through his art. And as I started to go through the material, I realized I didn't have the context I needed — that Kurt did not provide, in his narration, the context that I would need to really understand Kurt. And so therefore, I needed to bring in some other input.

And with that particular film being my first time I was introducing talking heads, I wanted to find a way to make that part of the cinematic language of the film. So, all of the locations for the interviews were created for that film so I can have control over the lighting and various other elements. And I shot all the interviews so that it would look, when the film unfolded, that they were all going from day in to night. And the effect is that they're just sitting there for hours and hours as the sun sets, and they're just sitting there talking and it's got this intimate vibe.

But that was all fake. When it was nighttime, it was actually daytime outside. And most of the daytime stuff I shot at night, just by the way that things went. So, it was all designed to kind of have that vibe, which was heavily inspired by the movie Lenny. I didn't come up with this idea. I borrowed it from Lenny, my favorite film, where the interviews look like they go day in to night, and people are sitting there.

And they only have three talking heads in Lenny. Of course, it's a fiction film, but it was the mom, the girlfriend, and the business manager. And that also weighed heavily with me on Montage because I was like, “I just want the primal relationships.” And in fact, the reason Dave Grohl wasn't in the film was that would just be doubling up on Krist Novoselic, because Krist was the bandmate who was there from the beginning.

The Jane film, I also did an interview and stole/borrowed my technique from Montage and did her day in to night. Obviously, I was not going to interview David Bowie, and I never felt I needed any other context or grounding. David had given me everything I needed. I was never at a loss for context that I was going to present.

EA: And now that you've made films on Bowie, Kurt Cobain, and the Rolling Stones, what do you see as the connective tissues between those three larger than life musical acts?

BM: Well, while there's certain similarities between Kurt and Bowie related to art and creativity, they couldn't be more different in how they approach life. In many ways, Moonage and Montage are two sides of the same coin. One is about light, one is about dark. One is about someone who appreciated every second they were on this Earth, and one is about someone who every moment was kind of painful.

But our line is that both David and Kurt had an innate need to create. This wasn't a choice, it wasn't a job — it was something that they had to do. They needed an outlet and it didn't matter if it was this or a guitar or a Super 8 camera. And both of them dabbled in many different art forms. So, I think in that sense, they're similar.

The Stones are a corporation. I think the Stones are a great rock band. I think David Bowie is a great artist — a once in a lifetime, once in a generation. I love the Stones, but it's corporate rock. And I don't feel that they challenge themselves creatively. I don't think that's part of their M.O. I mean, they're a blues man. You know, it's same fucking chords, so it's not what they're about. They're entertainers. Bowie, on the other hand, except for ’84-87, only did something to scratch a creative itch, and he didn't care if he was going to alienate his audience or lose them in the process. I think Kurt, if he had lived, would've probably approached things in a similar light. But the Stones are not part of that conversation.

EA: Well, in closing, what's your next project? Is there another larger than life figure or are you wanting to go more salt of the earth after this?

BM: No. I'm no longer interested in narrative as we've come to think of it. And so I'm not sure I'll be working within the four walls of a cinema anymore. I'm trying to figure out…I know what is drawing me, and when I'm presented with, “Would you like to do a film on ___?” I cringe. The biographical documentary genre is pretty worn out at this point. And there's a need for it. It's necessary — it’s as necessary as Wikipedia. And for the most part, that's what biographical documentaries are: they're visual Wikipedia entries.

And most individuals don't offer that many…you know, you can't do a Moonage Daydream with every individual. There are very few people who could sustain a 2.5-hour movie in which they really don't talk about facts or information or dates. Bowie is riffing on his creative process, but in his case, his philosophy towards life and his philosophy towards art are so synchronized that when he is talking about one, he is talking about the other.

And so you do end up getting to know David Bowie or “Bowie” without any talking heads and without David presenting facts. That's really interesting to me. I don't think that's sustainable, again, with most subjects. But for me personally, I don't think it's possible for me to do “and then, and then, and then…”

So, I'm interested in movement and in light, and I like to feel sound and I like to be surprised. And I work in this space because I like the connectivity. I like communicating on this sort of scale. You had asked me about award season, which is hard for me to separate from the general release. But the last 11 months, I've probably felt more connected to the world than I have at any other point in my life because I felt that this work, which was created to be challenging for the audience, was received in such a favorable light in the way that I was really hoping. Not that it would be well received, but that people would be open to this kind of new direction in storytelling.

And that was totally exhilarating — completely unexpected. I did not arrive at Cannes thinking that we were going to be well reviewed. I mean, we ended up leaving Cannes as one of the five best reviewed films at the festival. At that festival, that would've never have occurred to me. I figured there would be at least 25-50% of the audience who watched the film in utter frustration, waiting for it to start. Like, “When are we going hear about Lou Reed and Iggy Pop?” And if you enter the film with that mindset, it's a fucking disaster.

The first time we screened the film for the press, there were three critics in the room. I'm in LA, it's in New York, and I'm waiting — like, “What's the vibe? What's the vibe?” And David Rooney from the Hollywood Reporter is in the room. And, I mean, David, I have a poll quote from him on the Jane poster, I recently realized. David approached the film with the documentary lens thinking, “Where's the information? Where are the interviews?” and was bored or whatever he was. It must have been an unbelievably frustrating experience for him.

There was [Corey Seymour] from Vogue there, who wrote, “35 seconds into the film, I grabbed the side of my chair and never let go.” His response was, “This is the greatest portrait of an artist I've ever seen. This isn't about Bowie — it is Bowie.” He got the film I was making.

So there's three people at the first viewing of the film, and nobody has heard me talk about it. There's no context. It's totally naked. So, yeah, there's a 33% chance that someone's going to react the way that Rooney did. And so I was sort of buckled up, like, “OK, I expected this.”

That was the worst review we ever got. And I think that between the trailer and the marketing — being able to set it up in the press for three or four months before the film opened, people came to it with the right lens. I think the trailer was really helpful in cueing people up that it wasn't going to be rote. And, of course, by design — the first seven minutes, I'm trying to create a covenant with the viewer about how information is going to be disseminated and how to manage expectations.

One of the reasons the [Friedrich] Nietzsche quote opens the film — that was a late addition, and it speaks to what we're talking about. I needed to establish…I didn't trust at that point the film would reset expectations early enough on, but I felt that with a Nietzsche quote, that if you open a movie — a “documentary” about David Bowie — and it begins with this sort of search for God and questions about 20th century philosophy, you're not going to hear about Iggy Pop. It's just not that type of movie. It's going to be a more philosophical film. There's no dates — it's not that thing.

So I think that all those factors contributed to the fact that, when the film did eventually come out in September, it blew my mind that people, opening weekend, weren't complaining. From Hong Kong to, you know, Kansas, for the most part, it was this huge outpouring of love for David and the film. And my wife and I read everything that we could get our eyes on with our jaws dropped. We did not, for one second, expect audiences to go on this journey.

Moonage Daydream is currently available on HBO Max. Criterion Collection Blu-ray release date TBD.

(Photos: HBO)