A missing Fishbone and the pitfalls of marriage

By Michael Fox

One of the more encouraging trends in documentary these days is the eagerness of filmmakers to twist, shake, rattle and roll that most clichéd of genres, the rock doc. Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler’s portrait of the venerable Southern California punk-funk outfit Fishbone, Everyday Sunshine, aims to blend history, performance and character study into an acutely dramatic, if not radical, brew. "When you’re doing any sort of biography, it’s kind of difficult to veer too much off the path of the traditional music documentary," Metzler concedes. "That said, we’ve been focused on making this film not a VH-1 ‘Behind the Music’ doc but something along the lines of Crumb. A portrait of the artist with their own quirky sensibility."

Anderson introduced Metzler to Fishbone’s music, as well as the idea of making a movie about the band, and the San Francisco duo began filming two years ago. Anderson was the outreach coordinator for The Real Dirt on Farmer John, and Metzler was making the festival rounds with (Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea (co-directed with Jeff Springer, who’s editing Everyday Sunshine). They landed a wild catch in the Fishbone saga, even by rock’n‘roll standards.

"These young kids met up in junior high school, a product of this desegregation effort in L.A. in the late ’70s," Metzler explains. "Six young black kids from South Central bused out to the white Valley. When they were on the cusp of making it big, one of the kids left the band. They suspected he had joined a cult, so they kidnapped him and wanted to bring him in for a psychological examination. But they were faced with kidnapping charges." Fishbone was dropped by their record label, then had to weather a 1994 trial. "The thing that really drew me was outsiders that didn’t really fit in with their own community but also didn’t fit with the predominantly white music industry," Metzler declares.

An erstwhile buddy movie about the two remaining original members, lead singer Angelo Moore and bassist Norwood Fisher, the feature-length Everyday Sunshine:http://www.fishbonedocumentary.com/ (www.fishbonedocumentary.com) will arrive next spring with crossover dreams. "There’s a sizable Fishbone fan base out there, and we want them to be happy with the film," says Metzler. "But really, to make the best film, we can’t consider the fan base. We’re making the film for someone who’s never heard of Fishbone and never wanted to see a music doc ever in their lives—maybe never wanted to see a documentary in their lives. If we can get a poster or a trailer in front of them, they’ll be grabbed by the story of two guys and their struggle to make it."

The filmmakers have follow-up interviews left to shoot with a couple of musicians, even as they’ve made the transition to postproduction. Asked what he’s learned on this project, Metzler pauses for a second. "It kind of reinforces the sort of things we’ve already known, to protect your individuality. Keep on taking your own path in life instead of the paths society provides for you. Making documentaries isn’t fiscally prudent, but looking at Angelo and Norwood, you always figure a way to get it done. And the importance of building a fan base, whether you’re making music or films." More at www.tilapiafilm.com and www.myspace.com/fishbonedocumentary.

Wedding bell blues

Embarking on a documentary film as a kind of research project would seem to be a pretty innocent venture. Certainly, that’s how it appeared to Kate Schermerhorn. "What happened was I had just gotten married for the second time and I wanted to do a better job in my second marriage then I did on my first," she relates by phone from Washington state, where she was vacationing with her kids and her parents. "I thought a great way to do that was to talk to people who’d done it right and had made their marriages last longer than I had the first time around."

The genesis for the project was a series of still photographs that Schermerhorn had shot of couples married 50 years or more. She switched to film around four years ago, turning on her camera whenever she happened to meet a couple willing to be interviewed. After a couple years, and with her new betrothed joining her in making To Have and to Hold, Schermerhorn became more proactive and systematic about her shoots.

Then, incredibly, that relationship hit the rocks, inevitably shifting the focus of the documentary. "Now the collapse of the marriage has become part of the film," Schermerhorn confides, "and a vehicle for telling my story and how my thought process has changed throughout the making of the film. I’m using my story as an engine that’s driving the film at this point. It started as a search for the secret to a long-lasting marriage and shifted to ‘Why do we marry?’ What drives us to marry when we have only a 50 percent chance of success? What are we gaining from marriage, and particularly what are women gaining?"

This all sounds terribly heavy, no doubt, but talking with Schermerhorn is anything but. She laughs throughout our conversation, and promises that To Have and To Hold will be funny and idiosyncratic. "The irony [of the second marriage breaking up] is too ridiculous, so I do have to laugh at this point," she says. "But I’m not laughing at it all."

Schermerhorn, who won an Emmy for her doc debut, Seeking 1906, has 80 hours of footage in the can, including interviews with an Italian count and countess, a conservative nudist couple and Portuguese first cousins married (to each other) for 60 years. She also nabbed a Beverly Hills divorce lawyer, who "suggested that people not get married and just find someone they want to raise children with. Then raise them like divorced people do, living separately. So you’re starting the marriage the way 50 percent of couples will end up, but without the animosity." Schermerhorn chuckles. "It definitely gives you a sense of what he’s seen. He was one of the most cynical people I’ve interviewed."

The director brings a photographer’s eye to To Have and To Hold:http://www.lunaparkproductions.org/, (www.lunaparkproductions.org) which promises to be more eye-catching than the typical one-hour PBS doc. "When I compose the shots," she relates, "When Harry Met Sally is in my mind. Of course, those compositions were taken from Scenes from a Marriage." Yes, and we all know how happy Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson were in Bergman’s domestic epic.

Schermerhorn has a 25-minute cut, with a month of shooting and six weeks of editing ahead of her once she raises the funds. "I was hoping to have it for release on Valentine’s Day 2009," she says, her sense of irony intact.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, features, music, women filmmakers

08.26.2008