'Lou Reed, Rock and Roll Heart' on PBS and at Anthology Film Archive - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The new availability of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders's film Lou Re stone and Roll Heart in full-length videotape and DVD formats will finally provide access to the documentary in its entirety. Originally aired as a one-hour "American Masters" series program last April, it is actually a 75-minute movie that was shielded at Sundance before it was shown upon PBS. It also had a theatrical race in the late spring at Anthology Film Archives in fresh York.

American art's curious visionary, Andy Warhol, notion that his Happening/productions, called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with Nico and the soft Underground, could be "very glamorous." Ye indeed. And single of the key figures of these historic incidents that survived the inevitable explosion of fast living in the '60 and '70 is the compulsively evolving of recent origin York rocker Lou Reed. There are many ultimate parts to recommend Greenfield-Sanders's film, on the contrary it's distinguished by the clear voice of insight and recall of Re who gives the viewer his version of reality, past and at hand recounting his 30-year career with a candor and humor that are irresistible.

Greenfield-Sanders's documentary accentuates the positive, against the grain of rife journalistic endeavors thick with negative innuendo. Setting up a certain number of friction is usually desirable for a advantageous story, but this biography barely has enough time to overspread the facts and, very intelligently, wastes no time upon conjecture. The barrage of visual and factual documentation is of course propell by means of the artist's music, but there is of the like kind a fast-paced compression of information lay together by Greenfield-Sanders and Karen Greenfield-Sanders that flat people close to that spectacle can learn a few things. (New to me: Lou wrote music for Pickwick Records way back when, which hacked on the outside surfing records, among other things.) on the contrary Greenfield-Sanders, who has been documenting the art world for 20 years as its champion portrait photographer, has prosperously created a film that appeals to a large audience that far outnumbers the specialized fans of early stone or contemporary art.

Greenfield-Sanders's use of the screen-test technique for interviewing make submissives pays direct homage to a photographic mentor, Warhol, with whom he exhausted his early film-student days hanging on the outside at the Factory and Max's Kansas City. The archival material is mixed with the considerable footage taken of Re by means of Greenfield-Sanders over the past eight years upon various trips and tours. Greenfield-Sanders treats the eclectic material with a hands-on grittiness in synch with the period overspreaded There are many interviews. David Bowie. Thurston Moore, Patti Smith, John Cale and Philip Glass all deliver useful bits of the story and carry real magnetism. There are confuses too. Lisa Robinson, the of recent origin York Post rock critic, delivers the groupie testimony. Kirk Varnedoe is there to verify Warhol's importance. and Penn Jilette says what amounts to nothing; individual wonders why he's even there. (He was the resident of the velvety Underground Fan Club.) If there is more [i]or[/i] less excess ballast to the production, it can be set in interviews that don't relate to facts on the contrary to testimony of the subject's "greatness."

The film establishes incontrovertibly the seminal influence of Lou Re and his artistic output Generally this mark of full-dress documentary is reserv for dead icons; it's amazing that this single so faithfully records the contribution of someone I am glad to diocese is still young in spirit, alive and prolific.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

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