00:00Hi and welcome into EOM Presents. I'm Thomas Manning, senior interviewer for Elements of Madness.
00:05And today I'm really delighted to be sharing with you my recent conversation with co-director
00:09David Tedeschi and producer Margaret Boddy to talk about their film One Night Only Personality
00:15Crisis, a portrait of New York musician David Johansson aka Buster Poindexter. And this
00:22documentary was also co-directed by Martin Scorsese. So it was really an honor to be able
00:26to speak with David and Margaret about their collaborations on this film and the evolution
00:31of this project that began back in January 2020, shortly before COVID-19 became such a massive
00:38issue and how this project has evolved over the years and finally coming to fruition here.
00:44Thank you so much for watching and listening. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Once again,
00:48talking to David Tedeschi and Margaret Boddy about One Night Only Personality Crisis. Hope you enjoyed.
00:53Hey, David and Margaret. I'm Thomas Manning. Thank you so much for taking the time for this.
00:57Hi there.
00:58Hey, Thomas.
01:00Well, I'm really honored to be speaking with you and I'll get right into it. David, I'll start with you.
01:05So for the majority of your career, you've worked primarily as an editor across various projects.
01:11And obviously for this documentary, in addition to editing, you co-directed along with Martin Scorsese,
01:16which you also did for the documentary, The 50-Year Argument, a few years ago. So what are some of
01:22those specific elements in a story like personality crisis that click things into place and have you
01:27decide to take on directorial duties on top of editing?
01:32Every film is a unique situation. We went, Marty and I, a bunch of people, went to Cafe Carlisle one night
01:42to see David perform and it was so fantastic that we thought we got to do something with
01:50it. So there was an impulse to document the show that we saw because it made such an impression
01:56on us. And that's where it started. And of course, the challenge is to capture the feeling
02:04of that initial performance in a movie.
02:11Excellent. And Margaret, I know the concert portion of this documentary was filmed in January of 2020,
02:18right before COVID shut the entire world down, basically. So for you as the producer of this
02:24documentary, can you describe some of the unique challenges you've encountered over the past few
02:29years in terms of the uncertainty of the industry and how that manifested with this project specifically?
02:35Yeah. Well, we were, in retrospect, we felt very fortunate to have made the decision to shoot in
02:44January, which was really based on Martin Scorsese's schedule. He was supposed to start a big feature,
02:50Killers of the Flower Moon, that he's just releasing soon. But he was supposed to start shooting that in
02:55March of 2020. So we were a little bit like, we wanted to shoot it in the fall of 2019. And those
03:03dates kind of got, you know, bounced around. And so when everything shut down, in addition to it being
03:11an incredibly sad time and a tragic time, once we were able to kind of regroup and figure out a way
03:19forward, we realized that we had this opportunity to spend some time with the concert footage and for
03:27David and Marty to go through it and try to build the story elements that were mainly an archive and
03:33an interview footage around that concert, because I think they always knew that they didn't want to
03:40make just a kind of, you know, a documentary, an archival documentary about who, you know, David
03:45Johansson's career and life. This was really a film that was celebrating this kind of, you know,
03:53incredible, intimate performance. And then everything from that performance informed what
04:00archive and interview material would be utilized.
04:06Yeah. And speaking of the interviews, I'll send this question out to both of you.
04:10I thought it was really fascinating to have David Johansson's stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey,
04:15conduct the interviews for the documentary. So what were the conversations like leading up to
04:20that decision? And from each of your perspectives, how do you feel that that was significant in
04:25constructing this portrait of a David Johansson? And David, you can take this one first, if you'd like.
04:31Sure. We had a lot of questions. I think a lot of questions are self-evident.
04:37But we didn't know, you know, at the beginning, we're like, do we need interviews?
04:42And the thing about Leah doing the interviews is there's a familiarity and intimacy, just like at
04:52the Cafe Carlisle. And there's a feeling between the two of them that's so natural that it really
05:01helped us move the story forward. They don't, to me at least, they don't feel like formal interviews.
05:06They feel like hanging out in the backyard or sitting in the living room with David, which
05:10is essentially what it is. It's also David feeling free to, you know, he says at one point
05:18about visiting the Chelsea Hotel and Harry Smith, meeting elders that he could learn from.
05:26And I felt a little like that between him and Leah, that he's sharing wisdom.
05:35And Margaret, is there anything you'd like to add from your viewpoint on that?
05:40Yeah. I mean, it was, again, you know, invention is the mother of necessity or necessity is the
05:47mother of invention. Sorry. But, you know, we had this kind of challenge where, you know,
05:55they were isolating, Mara and David Johanson were isolating at their home. And Leah was really the
06:04only person that they were seeing. And she would quarantine and then go to them. And so we were
06:11kind of, as the months went by, we were like, we're not going to really be able to get a crew
06:15in there. And so this was knowing that Leah is an artist, performer, and filmmaker in her own right,
06:23you know, Marty and David and I were, you know, discussing how to do this. And Marty was like,
06:29just get, just let her, send her in, like, get her to film it. And so we would do these Zooms where,
06:34you know, Leah and Marty and David and I were, she, you know, Marty was just telling her, like,
06:42you know, how, you know, what kind of approach. And if he doesn't want to answer something,
06:47don't make him answer it. Just let him be, you know, who he is. And he gave her a lot of,
06:53I think, latitude and freedom to do it the way that she, you know, intuitively felt it should be
07:00done. And I think that comes through in the interviews. And I just said, it's remarkable.
07:06I've never seen an interview before where one person lit it, set up a camera, and then records
07:15the sound. And the fact that she did all of that gave us the intimacy I was talking about,
07:22because it's just the two of them in the room. There's nobody else. And she figured out all the
07:25places she wanted to shoot them to. So there's like, you know, there's the armchair, there's the
07:30garden, there's the, you know, table in front of the window. So yeah, and she would send, you know,
07:36you know, just shots of her setup. And Marty and David would look at them. And, you know, it was a
07:42really, you know, again, just being in the moment that we were in, it was, it was the only way we could
07:50see, you know, getting capturing that footage. Wow, that's, that's amazing. Thank you so much
07:56for sharing that. And this last question, I'll send out to both of you as well. It kind of has
08:01to do with a few months ago, there was a q&a panel at the New York Film Festival after screening this
08:07film. And I believe both of you were on this panel. And during the conversation, Martin said
08:12something to the effect of music is the purest form of art. You don't need anything for it. It's just
08:18the human body and the voice. And he also mentioned that that's why he's been drawn back
08:23to these music documentaries that the three of you have collaborated on. So I wanted to ask the
08:28two of you to perhaps expand a little bit further on that comment from Martin from your own perspectives
08:33and how you each personally connect with the art of music through the lens of filmmaking.
08:40That's a, that's a tough one. I would just say that in each of the films we've done,
08:45it's a real challenge to document or capture whoever, whatever artist we're working with.
08:53So let's say, you know, I edited a film called Shine a Light, which is a concert film with the
08:59Rolling Stones. And there were 18 cameras in 35 millimeter. And there was great experimentation
09:08with the angles and, and working with capturing the music. Um, this in a way was similar that you have
09:18Ellen Curtis, who's this tremendous, you know, director of photography. And, um, there were only
09:24four cameras over two nights, four cameras each night, but she's such a, um, wonderful DP that she would
09:37walk around and find things, you know, with a 40 pound camera on her shoulder and she'd be on her knees
09:44or she'd be on a chair or she would be close or she would be far and her. And then there were three
09:50other, a team of total of four people. Um, and that's really the challenge is how, how are you able to
09:58capture the, the feeling of the musicality of a performance? And it's all about the, the angle,
10:05but there's also an intangible, there's something intangible about, um, like capturing the musical
10:14essence during a performance. Um, and that was the challenge.
10:21Well, David and Margaret, again, thank you so much for your time today. I know you're on a
10:25tight schedule, but it was really a privilege to be able to speak with you. And, uh, hopefully we get
10:28another chance down the line to talk about some of your other projects. Thank you so much. Pleasure.
10:33Thanks.
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