Tyler Measom’s Takin’ Care of Business is about Randy Bachman’s lost vintage Gretsch guitar.TIFF
The Toronto International Film Festival is among the best annual movie happenings in the world. As a music festival, it’s not bad either.
As in previous years, music documentaries are front and centre in 2024. Thom Zimny’s Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, Mike Downie’s The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s Elton John: Never Too Late, and Cosima Spender’s Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe have already made their world premieres here.
And there are still debuts yet to come this week, including John Maggio’s Paul Anka: His Way, Erin Lee Carr’s Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara and Tyler Measom’s Takin’ Care of Business (about Randy Bachman’s lost vintage Gretsch guitar).
On the feature side, eight-time Grammy award winner Anderson .Paak makes his directorial debut with the coming-of-age feature, K-Pops. One of the buzziest music films at TIFF is Better Man, Michael Gracey’s spectacle musical about British pop superstar Robbie Williams (who is convincingly portrayed as a CGI monkey).
I haven’t seen them all, but the ones I have caught – Road Diary, No Dress Rehearsal, Never Too Late and Takin’ Care of Business – have been uniformly inspired and strong. Better Man is simply brilliant – all soul, story and special effects.
In a film world where there seems to be more music docs than ever, TIFF programmers regularly pick the best of the lot, staying clear of the ones that are more formulaic and promotional than artistic. Seemingly ordered up by record labels, the products are more music video and electronic press kit than true films.
“I think sometimes labels put too much constraint on a documentarian,” Takin’ Care of Business director Tyler Measom said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
“But I would dare say any of the filmmakers you talk to at TIFF didn’t feel any pressure by either the artist or the labels or management to tell the story outside of the way they wanted to tell it. And perhaps that’s why these docs are playing at one of the most renowned film festivals in the world.”
Of course, there is another reason: Screening the films is an easy way to get more stars to the festival. So far, there have been red carpet sightings of the Bruce Springsteen (a repeat TIFF visitor), Andrea Bocelli, .Paak and Elton John. The surviving members of the Tragically Hip took part in a public sing-along on the street after the premiere screening of No Dress Rehearsal. Robbie Williams and Bachman are in town.
TIFF has a long history with music royalty. One of my favourite moments came in 2011, when Neil Young and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder attended the premiere of Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young Journeys at Princess of Wales Theatre. Vedder skipped out early, as he had a concert to do at Scotiabank Arena. The previous night, Young had joined Pearl Jam for his song Rockin’ in the Free World.
Celebrity pizzazz or not, the music films at TIFF I’ve seen stand on their own merit. And the seemingly insatiable interest in rock docs in particular isn’t hard to understand.
“There’s a certain generation that loves to watch documentaries about the songs of their youth,” Measom explained. “Moreover, musicians live fascinating lives. They do interesting things – they create fantastic works of art from nothing but thin air.”
Measom’s documentary tells the story of Bachman’s relationship with his 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model guitar. He wrote some of the best known songs by the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive on that orange electric instrument before it was stolen in 1976. The film suggests the guitar is “magical,” and that, without it, Bachman lost his mojo (and nearly his life!).
At the onstage Q&A for Road Diary at Roy Thomson Hall on Sunday night, Springsteen suggested the documentary about his current world tour “showed how the sausage is made.” Therein lies the appeal of the rock doc genre. In Takin’ Care of Business, for example, the origin of the Guess Who’s breakthrough 1970 hit American Woman is explored.
“That’s an anthem that has lasted for decades, and it’s essentially a song that came from nothing,” Measom said. “I mean, if someone doesn’t want to watch how that came about, then I don’t think I want to get a beer with that person.”
Takin’ Care of Business screens Sept. 12 (at Roy Thomson Hall) and Sept. 13 (TIFF Lightbox).