with Fort Worth friends 128
3.5. The new buildings of downtown Fort Worth loom behind young Ornette Coleman in his neighborhood 139
3.6. Intermittent reharmonization of Coleman and his music across two different spaces and times 140
3.7. Two cutaway shots of places during the opening movement of Skies of America 140
4.1. Transcription of “Pimpf,” the leitmotif of the film 168
4.2. Harmonic transformations represented on a matrix and transformational network 177
4.3. Basic harmonic transformations represented on a Tonnetz map 178
4.4. Tonnetz map analysis and transformational loop for “The Things You Said” 179
4.5. Scale-degree analysis of “The Things You Said” 179
4.6. Vocal line, keyboard melody, and visual sequence for “The Things You Said” 180
4.7. Longer keyboard melody for “The Things You Said” 180
4.8. Cathartic scream POV sequence 182
4.9. Rhythm of visual cuts to the repetitive climax of “People Are People” 185
4.10. Colotomic rhythmic structure of “Stripped” 187
4.11. Tonnetz map analysis for “Stripped” 187
4.12. Tonnetz map analysis for “Behind the Wheel” 193
4.13. Transformational network loop for “Behind the Wheel” 193
4.14. Gahan silhouetted at the end of “Everything Counts” 195
5.1. Cover of Instrument DVD with all collaborators’ handwriting 218
5.2. Crowd portraits 241
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ideas become a book when those ideas seed discussions that then feed the work of writing and revising. I am grateful to all the people who sustained years of deep thinking, rigorous discussions, and hard work.
First of all, this book would not be what it is without the willingness of the directors and musicians to discuss the films that they’ve seen countless times, to shift their own perspectives on their films, and to put up with exploratory conversations and follow up correspondence. For example, Albert Maysles came to Washington, DC, and later invited me to his home in Harlem. His wife, Gillian Walker, made minestrone soup as we continued our discussion into the evening. During our last interview, days before he passed away, Al’s family invited me into their home to be with the family and insisted that I stay until he was well enough to speak. His daughter Sarah Maysles graciously waited with me, every bit as engaging as her father. Interviewing him at the end of his life gave me more than information about film—it revealed to me how a commitment to curiosity and love could bridge a career and a family. Jill Godmilow also invited me to her home after her visit to Washington. We sat at her kitchen table discussing a film that is nearly as old as I am. In addition, Godmilow gave me detailed and thoughtful advice on my own film and has made me more critical of film as a political and cultural practice. Jem Cohen came to campus for a residency and later welcomed me into his home in New York. Our conversation drifted from the kitchen table to his studio, examining films frame by frame. I am also grateful to Ian Mac-Kaye and Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, who encouraged discussion about how they collaborated with Cohen and appeared in Instrument. D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus invited me to their office for a long discussion and later came to DC to do a master class at Georgetown University.
The late Shirley Clarke has a voice in this book thanks to all those who have kept her work alive. Kathlin Hoffman Gray and Shirley’s daughter, Wendy, entertained long phone conversations and follow up over e-mails to help with their perspectives on Clarke’s film. Dennis Doros of Milestone Film & Video helped me locate Shirley Clarke’s materials and Mary K. Huelsbeck of the University of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research was immensely helpful at identifying and making available documents that led to the central ideas for the chapter on Clarke’s film. There was more material than I could examine alone. Thanks to Julian Lynch and Steve Laronga’s work transcribing Clarke’s production audio, I was able to find the perspective that framed my approach to Clarke’s inscrutable film and to pull Clarke’s voice into the chapter. Conversations with Marc Cooper and Lauren Rabinovitz were pivotal to my understanding of Clarke and her relationship to the production of her final film.
Universities incubate scholarship. Maria Snyder and the Graduate Division at Georgetown University have been generous in providing me writing and research support. Dean Chester Gillis encouraged me to both make films and write as I developed my scholarship. Carole Sargent’s writing groups gave me a place to discuss the writing and the process of writing. I am grateful for the unique departmental intersection between Georgetown’s Music Department and the Film and Media Studies Department. Dean Bernie Cook, leading the latter department, has been an ally, making a case for film as a form of scholarship during lunch discussions and presentations of films. Interdisciplinary works come out of interdisciplinary communities. My colleagues Anna Celenza, Anthony DelDonna, and David Molk gave me incredibly useful feedback to draft chapters. Their command of currents in musicology and music theory was an important resource, granting me a solid sounding board as I ventured outside of ethnomusicological topics.
My teaching experience has provided insight for developing this book. The many semesters of my seminar/workshop “The Music Documentary” at Georgetown University have given me a forum for developing ideas, testing out films, and taking risks at interpretations. The framework for the class came from my work with Marina Goldovskaya at UCLA. She modeled an approach to teaching documentary film and worked with me on a related doctoral examination. I am indebted to all my music documentary students—too many to name—who challenged themselves to think about music by reading ever-shifting film studies literature and by taking their own risks by making their own smart films. Students have also been invaluable as a forum in which I tested new arguments. That forum branched out to embrace many important filmmakers. Guests to class included those featured here in the book. Albert Maysles, Jill God milow, D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Jem Cohen traveled to campus and took student questions seriously—bringing their deep experience to our forum, as well as demonstrating their own continued practices of inquiry and human connection. The dialogue provided me ways of thinking that I could not have developed on my own. Other guest filmmakers also visited throughout the years to keep up a rigorous and illuminating discussion about merging theory and practice. I am grateful to Brendan Canty, Christoph Green, James June Schneider, Abby Moser, Jim Saah, and Jeff Krulik for taking the time and demonstrating interest, showing their work (finished and unfinished), and engaging us thoughtfully. A second volume could contain these discussions. A body of student films has developed in the wake of these discussions and engagements with daring and intelligent cinema.
There are hundreds of hours of work given to this book that are not mine. My research assistants provided invaluable support throughout the process. Allie Prescott, Rose Hayden, Dominique Rouge, and Viktoriya Kuz transcribed interviews and read through drafts of chapters. Ashwin Wadekar assembled the filmography appendix. Most of all, Sam Wolter worked with me for two years, doing everything from finding out economic data to counting the number of frames in certain sequences. Sam read multiple drafts, insisted that sections be intelligible, and most of all, provided an important weekly check-in as I progressed
