IR Interview: Susan Lacy & Jessica Levin For "Billy Joel - And So It Goes" [HBO] - Part I - video Dailymotion

The Inside Reel

Co Directors/Producers Susan Lacy & Jessica Levin talk to The Inside Reel about path, timing, understanding and structure in regards to their new 2-part HBO Documentary Film: “Billy Joel: And So It Goes” on HBO and HBO Max.

Transcript

00:00I think music saved my life.

00:13It gave me a resident live.

00:15I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life.

00:20Everything I've done and everything I've lived through

00:22has somehow found its way into my music.

00:26There's so much information, but with a person like this,

00:33a performer like this, the one thing that, just to start off with,

00:38I mean, for a man who's so based in perfection,

00:41there's so much imperfection, and that's what rivets you to him.

00:45You know, and I could see probably in the interview process

00:48there was that back and forth, you know, at that basis.

00:51Can you talk about looking at the man, but then looking at the artist

00:55and where do you have to find the in-between?

00:59Well, I think Billy's life and Billy's art are so connected

01:03because his music is so autobiographical

01:06that it is a kind of a roadmap of his life.

01:08They're kind of inseparable in a way,

01:11until he stops writing songs, and then it becomes a different story.

01:16It turns to classical music, turns his back on pop songs, pop writing.

01:19But, you know, it was a long interview process.

01:24I mean, did 10 interviews with him, and I think he,

01:28I asked him at the beginning if he had any, you know, sensitive areas.

01:32Not that I was necessarily not going to go there,

01:34but I wanted to know what they were, and he said,

01:36Susan, just tell the truth.

01:37And that really became the essence of the film,

01:43is Billy recognizing that this was a definitive piece.

01:47It wasn't probably going to ever be done again this way.

01:50He respected our work, our past work,

01:53knew that, you know, we're not gotcha filmmakers.

01:55Our goal is to try to understand, explore, and reveal the artist

02:00underneath the work that is the whole reason to make the film,

02:03because there's a body of work that's important enough to explore.

02:06Sometimes it's alien to me, this guy Billy Joel.

02:12I don't know who that is or what that is.

02:14Sing us a song, you're the piano man.

02:19I'm reminded of it when I go walk on the street.

02:21You've got us feeling all right.

02:25Oh, right, that guy.

02:29Back then, his whole life was the band.

02:33We just wanted to make as much noise as possible.

02:35I didn't know one person who liked what we were doing.

02:37I loved it.

02:38The thing more I'm getting to is that because, you know,

02:42he shows all his flaws,

02:43and I know even when he was initially doing that autobiography,

02:47you know, it's interesting to see what's revealed.

02:50And here it's so revealed.

02:52I mean, from Christy to, you know, his first wife, everything,

02:56you know, these are hard things to talk about, you know,

02:59and he talks about it.

03:00And I know many people have tried to get him to do this before.

03:04Was it just the right time in his life?

03:06How, you know.

03:07I think it was the right time in his life.

03:10And, you know, I actually had, saw the memoir, you know,

03:15which he, and in fact, the opening phrases in the film,

03:21when he's, apart from that story,

03:22he told me about the fishing boat and the house,

03:25which he told me the first time we met.

03:29And I really wanted to start the film with that.

03:31But the very first words we said,

03:33the most original thing I've done in life is screw up,

03:35is how he starts his memoir.

03:37And the very last words in the film are the last words from his memoir.

03:41I don't know why that's important to me.

03:43The fact that his work had resonance and,

03:45and it stood the test of time.

03:47He said, I don't know why that's important to me.

03:49It just is.

03:50That's how he ends the memoir.

03:52So, you know, he did, he did, didn't put that memoir out.

03:58I don't, I don't know all the reasons why he did.

04:00I think he gave the advance back.

04:02But he was in his turning 75 and felt that it was probably time.

04:09And we also knew the residency was going to end at some point.

04:12We didn't know it was going to end in the middle of making this film,

04:14but he probably knew that as well,

04:17and that he might be stepping back a bit.

04:20I wanted to put together a group of New York musicians.

04:23They were a bunch of hooligans from Long Island.

04:27My own history as a musician started with me hearing classical music.

04:32Uptown Girl.

04:35It could have been a Mozart piece.

04:38Are you the man singing Uptown Girl?

04:41That's me.

04:41Here I am dating this supermodel.

04:43Me?

04:44I'm from Hickstead.

04:44You feel the enormity of the situation grow.

04:49When I first heard Billy, it was like, wait a minute, who's this?

04:53Billy's melodies are better than mine.

04:55He had a great sense of drama.

04:57He had the magic.

04:59The process of Billy opening up, keep in mind,

05:02this is a guy who has been in the public eye for 50 years,

05:06and maybe hasn't always had the greatest relationship with the press.

05:11They've lived on his every move for the last 50 years.

05:15So you can understand that there's reasons he's always deflected with humor

05:20and self-deprecation and been very, you know,

05:23arm's length about answering personal questions.

05:26But a testament to Susan,

05:28they developed a relationship and a true trust throughout the process of the interviews.

05:33And I think at a certain point, he began to understand that this film was going to be a true

05:39look at a complete portrait of an artist and who he is so that his songs and his body of work

05:46could be illuminated in a way that they'd never been illuminated before.

05:50And once he began to understand that it was going to be a serious deep dive,

05:56he began to really trust Susan and where she was going.

05:59And he began to trust the fact that it needed to be done and that he needed to do this.

06:04And he learned a lot about himself in the process, I would say.

06:10I think it's fair to say, right, Susan?

06:12Well, he wrote me after he'd seen the film, which, by the way, he had no control over.

06:16He didn't see it until it was finished.

06:18Okay.

06:20Zero.

06:20It was independent of me.

06:22Wow.

06:22Yeah, yeah, yeah.

06:23Absolutely.

06:23He actually wrote to me after he'd seen it, and he said that he actually thanked me for

06:30so masterfully connecting the dots of his life and said, I now know why I did what I did.

06:36It was an epiphany for him.

06:38Wow.

06:38And so that just goes to show you, yeah, that he wasn't really...

06:41I don't want people to stand back and look at their own lives and somebody maybe...

06:46Street life serenader.

06:48He was a bridge and tunnel artist, you know, as I count myself as, you know.

06:55We stuck to a lot of where we came from and what we wrote about, but we wrote about it

07:00using slightly different tools, I would say.

07:03I'm obviously more identified with New Jersey, so I probably came more out of a folk, rock

07:09and roll background, you know.

07:11Billy's still more identified with New York.

07:14Having a scene, part one, a couple nights ago, and I just saw part two, you know, if

07:19the structure is so inherent, you know, the way it started and then flips back to the childhood

07:24so you see what builds and creates that with his mother, his father, and then when it goes

07:30into part two, obviously you ended at a very specific point with Elizabeth and how that

07:34turned out, but moving into...

07:36Because I didn't even get into his music until Innocent Man, and so it was all retroactive.

07:42Why did he write these songs?

07:44And just to see where he was.

07:46Could you talk about structure?

07:48Because you had this vast archive.

07:50Obviously, you know, even those videos Christy was taking are in the film, you know.

07:55I mean, could you talk about that?

07:56Because, and it's using alternative tape to use some of the music videos, but there's

08:00so much of this concert footage, like the one of him signing is so beautiful because

08:05it shows the beginning.

08:07The absolute beginning of that.

08:09Could you talk about that in structure?

08:10That had never been seen before, that signing footage.

08:14That was the first time.

08:16You know, the structure, I did an outline of this early on, and there's no way to get

08:21away from a certain amount of linear storytelling here because it's so autobiographical that

08:27it's just, you can't, but I didn't want it to be totally linear.

08:30So the decision to go back to the childhood and tell that story when he comes back to New

08:35York when he is coming home made sense to me.

08:39I wasn't sure it would work, but I think it kind of did work.

08:42Another thing that is not totally, that's chronologically not totally in order was after

08:49he does Nylon Curtain and he begins to look outside of his own life experience and writes about

08:55what's going on in the world.

08:56He writes about the closing of steel mills, the closing of the American dream.

09:03He writes about veterans coming back from Vietnam.

09:07And I took that moment to address the political studies.

09:13I didn't really want to be political, but something happened and I really couldn't turn

09:17away.

09:18And you see him go out on stage wearing a yellow star.

09:22And that took us back to the ancestor story in Nuremberg in the 30s, which is a totally

09:29new story to most people.

09:32Did you know about that?

09:33No, I'm sorry.

09:34I didn't.

09:35I knew I heard about his mom and I had heard there was certain things, but nothing with

09:40his father and nothing with like that whole thing about what Vienna is actually about.

09:44I'd heard things, but that's the whole thing.

09:46It's that a lot of these songs and how like just the way you are, you know, even, you know,

09:52the, what was it?

09:53You may be right.

09:54That's such, you know, it, it, it, it, it sort of, you wouldn't do it unless cause every,

10:00you know, you can extrapolate certain things.

10:02But the thing is, is that it's ultimately his journey.

10:05We're just there on the ride.

10:07Yeah.

10:07That makes sense.

10:10He had a little that Broadway and that's in Pan Alley, which is why Billy's melodies

10:14are better than mine.

10:17With Billy, he's able to walk in with a melody and make it sound like he just made it up on

10:23his way into the room.

10:25But I know he didn't.

10:28His melodies are unbelievably intricate.

10:31Kid, I don't know how he does it.

10:33I've always thought that was Billy's strong scene.

10:38No, because it's a real roadmap of his life, these songs.

10:41One of the ones that gets me is Stop in Nevada, you know, which, you know, you don't know

10:45if you just hear those lyrics and you don't know that story.

10:48And a lot of people don't know the Elizabeth story because she spent 40 years not talking

10:53about Billy Joel when she left, literally did not mention his name.

10:58And it took a lot to convince her to be in this film.

11:01And then we did four interviews.

11:02But when you hear that song and you realize what was going, what was happening in their

11:07relationship and that this going into the unknown and stuff and on the way into the

11:11unknown, not knowing where it's, it's also, it's all, it's just amazing how autobiographical

11:17it is.

11:18I didn't know that starting this, starting this project at all.

11:22So that was a real discovery.

11:23The fact that you got Elizabeth, it's just, it, because you'd heard all the, people have

11:29heard those stories, but hearing it from her words, you know, and Billy sort of, but, you

11:35know, chiming in on it, but hearing her perspective, I mean, it was an impossible situation.

11:39And then that whole thing, I wish there was footage from Carnegie Hall, you know, that's

11:43the only thing I got, like those photos are so electric that you just almost wish there

11:47was footage, but, you know, and you have to decide what's the best way to illustrate because

11:52the great thing is that you go through all the albums and you do these songs, even the

11:57deep tracks that maybe people don't know.

12:00It was so important for people who are such rich fans of his to know this.

12:05Could you talk about, cause you probably, there's so much more material, but you had to select

12:09the right material, even though it's a very large documentary, which I'm glad HBO gave you

12:14guys had the time to tell that story.

12:17Billy's catalog is enormous.

12:19Billy has 121 songs in his catalog.

12:21We used over 110 in the film.

12:25And we had a, Susan and I really had a mind meld about this very early in the process,

12:30which was, we wanted the entire film to be scored with Billy Joel music.

12:34And it is, there's every piece of music you hear other than Moonlight Sonata and Led Zeppelin

12:40is Billy.

12:41It's his classical music.

12:43It's his deep cuts.

12:44It's some instrumentals that we use that are based on his melodies.

12:49I think that we had actually composed based on his melodies.

12:53We wanted to use a certain melody for a particular emotional place, but we didn't have an instrumental

12:58version of it.

12:59We had, we had a couple of musicians create the instrumental versions for us.

13:03That wouldn't be like totally right on, like, you know, not spot on, kind of just vaguely out there.

13:09We did that with Vienna.

13:10There's three versions.

13:11So there's three, three variations of Vienna in the film.

13:15One is very Jewish sounding.

13:17One is very Viennese sounding.

13:18And one sort of became the father theme.

13:21I don't care what you say anymore.

13:23If there was a skeleton key to unlocking what's behind the songs.

13:28Go ahead with your own life.

13:30Leave me alone.

13:31It's my relationships with others.

13:34He cares about the human experience.

13:37He wrote songs that matter.

13:38He cares about the human experience.

IR Interview: Susan Lacy & Jessica Levin For "Billy Joel - And So It Goes" [HBO] - Part I

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