A Sonic Journey Into Daniel Lanois' Lair

09/07/07 6:00pm

by David McPherson (CHARTattack)

Ten-time Grammy Award winner Daniel Lanois makes his first foray into moviemaking with the world premiere of his feature-length picture, Here Is What Is, at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend.

"We had a very simple strategy, which was to include whatever happened through the course of the year," Lanois explains. "We didn't really go after anything that wasn't already happening, which is a continuation of the title of the film — Here Is What Is, which is a Jamaican proverb that simply means, 'Look at what is in front of you and make something of it.'

"It started out quite innocently here in Toronto. I had a few of my heroes here with me — Brian Blade and Garth Hudson, then we went to Los Angeles, then Shreveport, Louisiana, then Dublin, Ireland with Sinead O'Connor, and then Fez, Morocco with U2. That was the full year. We just remained true to those geographical locations. We didn't follow a chronology necessarily, but we didn't step outside of that other than some antique footage just to reference the past."

Some of that antique footage includes a haunting version of Aaron Neville singing Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side" and a great studio duet between Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson.

Here Is What Is was filmed and directed by Lanois, Adam Vollick and Adam Samuels. It's a sonic, psychedelic journey, and a poignant portrait of a passionate genius at work. Lanois invites viewers into his studio to peer over his shoulder, showing the magic of the recording process as it happens. Through interviews with the likes of his peer and mentor Brian Eno, Lanois explains how he stumbled into being a record producer, his musical influences and some of his memorable moments.

"It's a great honour and something different for me," he says of his film debut. "It's an opportunity to operate with a new medium, but really it's not that different.

"I've been told by some of my friends that they believe the film is like one of my albums, or some of the albums I've produced. It has that same feeling about it, where you are taken on a dynamic journey and it's filled with different offerings along the way."

Lanois is pleased with his film and, while he admits he doesn't know what the future holds in terms of this new medium, he says there's enough material to release a bunch of outtakes.

"I'm hoping the film will be purchased by distributors and the whole DVD thing will take care of itself. I may make outtakes available on my website, which would be fun because there are lots of interviews that didn't make the film."

Once the premiere is done and the hype of the film festival is over, Lanois hopes to do something unique to further promote it.

"A film like this should be released in one city at a time and not an across-the-board release," he says. "If the film distributor agrees, then I would turn up at each one of those towns and do the premiere, do a show and celebrate the fact that we are in that city — invite journalists to celebrate with us and make it more of a scene, so you are not just sending a film to a town and hoping that it sticks to the wall."

Here Is What Is premieres on Sunday at Toronto's Winter Garden Theatre, with repeat showings on Sept. 11 at 3:15 p.m. at the Scotiabank Theatre and Sept. 14 at 11:15 p.m. at the Varsity.