Heavy Years: 2000-2010 (Ernest Jenning) is the latest release from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Chicago singer/songwriter Chris Mills. The 14-track retrospective compiles songs from his last four albums, along with two new tracks recorded with DJ Oktopus (Dalek). Mills is currently on the road supporting Heavy Years, and he will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Mills: As someone who struggles with the creative process on an almost daily basis, movies about other artists and the challenges they face always fascinate me. My two favorites are Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (about the making of Apocalypse Now) and Burden Of Dreams (about Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo).
Culled from hours of audio and video footage collected by Eleanor Coppola, Hearts Of Darkness chronicles her husband’s trials as he desperately attempts to hold together one of the most expensive film productions of all time in the face of ever-mounting roadblocks and catastrophes. Martin Sheen’s major heart attack during filming, Marlon Brando’s complete disregard for the script, monsoons, government interference and Francis Ford Coppola’s own fear that he is creating a multi-million dollar piece of crap all play out in a story as compelling as Apocalypse Now itself.
In Burden Of Dreams, Herzog shares none of Coppola’s doubts, even though he faces as many challenges. In order to add realism to Fitzcarraldo, his film about a music lover’s mad quest to bring opera to the jungles of South America, Herzog insists on employing natives to pull a real-life, full-size steamship over the crest of an isolated mountain. Again, weather, terrain, dangerous locals and a mad star (the legendary Klaus Kinski) all conspire to undo Herzog’s grand design. But even when members of the crew die in on-set accidents, he remains undeterred. His vision is all that matters, and only its realization will be a fitting testament to the sacrifices it required.
Both films serve up wide-screen parallels for anyone’s creative process: the struggles, the self-doubt, the burning vision and the lengths that one will go to in order to realize their dreams. But as each so grippingly illustrates, there can be a fine line between artistic genius and chaotic madness.
Videos after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD1jkBL6NwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqjAnMn_RY
