A new documentary about Nick Cave called “20,000 Days On Earth” has just hit the big screen.
The summary of the film is: “Writer and musician Nick Cave marks his 20,000th day on the planet Earth.”
The film explores how the Australian musician, songwriter and screenwriter makes art.
Cave is best known for being lead singer of the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The band has been around since 1983 and has released fifteen studio albums.
The English codirectors of the film, Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth, said in an interview with Issue magazine that they made a film to try to understand Nick Cave and to show his creative process as an artist.
The filmmakers decided on situations that they thought would get Cave to talk about his artistic process and his past in a unique way.
For example, Cave talks with psychoanalyst Darian Leader. In this way, Cave can openly talk about his childhood. Cave is also shown in the documentary driving in his car while talking to various artists he has created art with through the years such as Kylie Minogue, former Bad Seeds musician Blixa Bargeld, and actor Ray Winstone who starred in Cave’s first big film “The Proposition.” Each artist has a scene with Cave where they discuss various things and the past. Band member of Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis, and his unique friendship with Nick is also displayed in this film.
Forsyth noted why they chose to show these scenes of Cave interacting with various people:
Nick’s a very different person when he’s with different people. Kylie brings out a very tender, reflective personality; Ray maybe brings out a slightly bolder, brasher side of his character…All of this was about trying to reflect the multiple sides to Nick’s personality.
Cave performed a special live show for the filmmakers to capture and they were excited to do this in order to show Cave’s on stage character. The filmmakers explained in an interview that they tried not to get bogged down with all the details and facts about Cave’s career while making the documentary.
Pollard explains what this did:
Nick says he recognises himself in this film better than he has in anything. And I get that. I understand that. There’s a lot of his character, a lot of his humour, and a lot of emotional truth, but not the spoken, biographical truth.
To read more about Cave and what he has been doing recently, including Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds releasing their new song “Give Us A Kiss”, click here.
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