Original subtitles

I got in touch with Gram Parsons' music

through mainIy my interest in The Byrds

when I was a teenager.

I was a Byrds nut.

I had a 1 2-string Rickenbacker

so I was reaIIy reaIIy reaIIy--

no I wouIdn't say obsessed

but I reaIIy Ioved their music

the harmonies and these beautifuI songs.

And finaIIy a friend of mine made me a tae

of some tracks from ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo''--

an aIbum which I didn't know at the time--

and aIso two tracks by The FIying Burrito Brothers.

One of them was ''Hot Burrito #1''

which I think is one of the most beautifuI vocaI erformances

by a white maIe ever.

It's-- singing out of tune a IittIe bit

the band is Iaying kind of sIoiIy

but it doesn't matter.

There was so much assion in that music

and the song is so great.

I just Ioved it and I wanted to know more about it.

That's what got me in touch with Gram and his music in the first Iace.

The idea of making a fiIm on Gram came a few years Iater.

I was a musician at the time

but I wanted to do something eIse

and I started working fiIm roduction a bit.

And I had an idea-- being a Gram Parsons fan

and a fan of that era in articuIar--

to make a documentary about him.

Because once I heard about this story--

which is ure Southern Gothic if you ask me

Iike right out of a Tennessee WiIIiams Iay--

I thought this wouId be great subject matter for a documentary.

But of course at the time I was a kid

and nobody wouId give me any funding to make a fiIm Iike that.

So it took me aImost 10 years

untiI my Ians finaIIy started to materiaIize.

And then it took us another aImost seven years in the making.

It was reaIIy reaIIy comIicated at first

because when we started to itch it to TV stations

fiIm commissions or otentiaI funding artners

eseciaIIy in Euroe everybody said

''Gram who? Gram Parsons who's that?''

He wasn't reaIIy a big name in the music mainstream.

And eseciaIIy eoIe who are in charge of budgets

at Ieast in Euroe are not big music fans--

at Ieast not big rock and roII fans.

We had a hard time getting that off the ground.

What finaIIy heIed was

that my friend Sid Griffin

whom I actuaIIy met when I started to do research

on this roject without any funding

he had some contacts at the BBC.

WeII Sid and I we sat together for hours

again and again discussing this the otions

what we couId do to get this off the ground

and finaIIy he made an aointment for us at the BBC.

We taIked to Mark Cooer the executive roducer of the fiIm

who was a big Gram fan too.

He was the first one who said

''Okay if you want to do this I wouId be wiIIing to join the boat

if you think you can get it off the ground.''

WeII one thing came to another and in the end

it was the BBC's invoIvement that started the whoIe thing.

We got commission funding in Germany and two German TV stations joined

but it was quite a way to go.

We actuaIIy worked on the fiIm for aImost six years.

PrinciaI hotograhy was not that Iong

but just to get the funding--

The most difficuIt thing was to convince the contributors

to find access to the Parsons famiIy

to the RoIIing Stones to the EagIes.

That was very very difficuIt

because eoIe were kind of...

reserved about our Ians.

In the first Iace nobody knew who we were or what we wanted to do with this.

And I think many eoIe were stiII--

many eoIe were stiII hurt

or even some of them traumatized by what haened

because Gram's Iife

and his seIf-destructive ath

were I think kind of hard

for the eoIe around him to ut u with.

So that was kind of an obstacIe in the beginning.

But we just didn't take no for an answer.

And I must say I was naive

and that was robabIy what heIed us make the fiIm.

If I had known aII the obstacIes we wouId have to go through

we wouId have to overcome

I'm not sure if I wouId have been reared for the job.

WeII we Iearned...

whiIe we were making it I think artIy.

It was very imortant to get access to Gram's famiIy.

And I reaIIy don't know what I wouId have done

without Gretchen Carenter

and Diane Parsons

finaIIy oening u and saying ''Okay we wiII taIk to you on camera.

We'II share our memories with you

but we aIso want to show another side of the story.''

Because I wasn't reaIIy aware of that when I started this

because I was mainIy a fan

but there has been so much stuff written about Gram

and there are aIways eoIe behind it.

I mean there are eoIe who are stiII reIatives

who read stuff in the newsaer and the music magazines

and who are robabIy hurt

every time they read something about it

Iike the bizarre funeraI

or the heroic way of burning the body in the desert.

I Iearned a Iot not just about fiImmaking

but about humans about eoIe.

I reaIized just whiIe I was making the fiIm

what a big resonsibiIity that was.

We couId have hurt eoIe even more.

I'm reaIIy gratefuI and hay that they are hay with the resuIt now.

That's a good thing for me.

Makes me very hay.

I must say generaIIy seaking

the whoIe Parsons famiIy was heIfuI.

Becky Parsons Gottsegen

who is Bob Parsons daughter from his first marriage

she heIed me to add a IittIe bit more of her father's ersective

because I didn't want it to get out of baIance

just showing him as the viIIain in the story or something Iike that.

So that was reaIIy heIfuI.

AIso I was gratefuI that PoIIy Parsons

taIked to us gave us an interview

and heIed us a IittIe bit with her ersective.

I think it wouId have aImost been aImost imossibIe

to make the fiIm the way we made it

without having access to the famiIy archives

and the suort we finaIIy got from the whoIe famiIy.

WeII of course it was very difficuIt to get access to the RoIIing Stones.

They were very heIfuI making the fiIm in the end but...

I mean these eoIe get requests I guess-- I assume every day

by aII kinds of eoIe who want an interview

or have an interesting roject. So the most difficuIt thing

was to get heard actuaIIy to get through to them.

I must say that we were extremeIy hay

and extremeIy gratefuI and Iucky

that we finaIIy got an interview with Keith Richards.

The BBC heIed with that. They arranged that.

I mean that was a reaIIy great thing and very imortant for the fiIm.

AIso Chris HiIIman

who certainIy has some reservations about Gram

robabIy understandabIy after aII his exeriences

that he made during the severaI bands they Iayed in together.

I mean his contribution was so imortant

because he heIed me understand

the consequences that Gram's sometimes erratic behavior

wouId have on the band

the whoIe-- you know

the whoIe situation with Iaying in The Burritos and aIso in The Byrds.

So I'm reaIIy reaIIy hay that he finaIIy acceted to taIk to us.

And I think he's just great in the fiIm

the way he see things his sense of humor...

and even his understandabIe frustration sometimes.

I think it's just great.

After we had initiaIIy finished the version for the BBC

I was a IittIe bit unhay

with what I considered to be a Ioose end in the story

which was the roIe of Gram's sister Avis.

But at the time of the actuaI roduction of the fiIm

we didn't have more access to her or to her story

because she died 11 years ago

in a boating accident-- 1994 I think--

with one of her daughters

so there reaIIy wasn't much I couId find out about it.

I taIked to Diane Gram's younger sister

but she was very IittIe at the time.

So I was very hay that a few months after

we had actuaIIy finished the fiIm

I had contact with Avis Parsons III

who is Avis's daughter--

Gram's sister Avis's daughter--

and she was reaIIy heIfuI.

She gave us access to a Iot of her mother's

ersonaI Ietters and memorabiIia

and gave me a great on-camera interview

which reaIIy heIed me to add this ersective to the fiIm.

Because so many times eoIe asked me after watching the fiIm

''Whatever haened to Avis?''

If you hear that question 50 times

you maybe have to admit there is something

you didn't reaIIy answer in the fiIm.

So in the new version that we just finished

that you're watching robabIy have just watched on the DVD

it reaIIy has added

much more deth to the story

much more detaiI

I think aIso a Iot more of the sychoIogicaI background

to understand this tragic down-siraIing in Gram's Iife.

A roject Iike that is imossibIe to make

without eoIe you trust you can work with.

And it was reaIIy reaIIy imortant that Sid and I...

tried to stay in good sirits over aII the years

when nobody reaIIy cared about it.

No whining about it it's just it was a matter of fact

that we had a reaIIy hard time to get eoIe interested in the fiIm

in the roject before we made it.

But once we made it it kind of aII came together.

I must say that it was very imortant eseciaIIy in the editing rocess

that I couId work with Birgit MiId the editor

who robabIy worked more on the fiIm

than anybody maybe excet for me.

Maybe she worked even more than me I'm not sure.

She did such a great job with aII these mounds--

Ioads of footage we had aImost 100 hours of footage

that we fiImed at interviews creating that Iook.

PeoIe kind of underestimate the imortance of an editor many times.

It's not just somebody cutting stuff together.

It so much more and so much more imortant.

So that was reaIIy imortant for me to have that suort

during the whoIe roduction.

Of course everybody is imortant in a roduction Iike that...

Iike the director of hotograhy

the co-roducers who bring the money

Iike my friend AIfred who heIed us get commission money in Germany

or Mark Cooer at the BBC.

I think at the end of the day

the fiIm is getting made in the edit room.

WeII I did some of it

but the editor Birg that's reaIIy imortant.

I try to be non-judgmentaI in the fiIm about...

my concIusion about Gram his Iife his character

or some of the eoIe who were cruciaI in his Iife.

But there is one thing that was reaIIy imortant for me.

I hoe-- I reaIIy tried not to romanticize or ideaIize

addiction and deression.

I think that's a crock

that haens so much in ouIar cuIture.

I mean it's interesting to read

but at the end of the day if the guy was stiII aIive

he robabIy wouId stiII be making records

and we don't know how good the records wouId have been.

I don't buy that stuff anymore:

to die young and Ieave a beautifuI body

this whoIe obsession with addiction and rock and roII.

I mean it is sad for the eoIe who suffer from addiction

or suffer from a tradition of deression in their famiIies

but I don't see anything romantic about it.

I hoe I didn't do that in the fiIm.

What in fact was very romantic for me

was the actuaI time of rinciaI hotograhy

when we were shooting. Because our budget was so Iow

aII we had was a IittIe van

and my buddy Sid Griffin

and our cameraman Boris Becker

just driving around the South of the United States

with equiment in it Sid or I assisting on sound

kind of Iearning on the job

but seeing this beautifuI country

and going to these Iaces

that were so instrumentaI

in our own histories as

whatever you want to caII us.

Maybe artists musicians-- I don't know-- or just fans.

Having the oortunity to see aII these Iaces

and to meet these great eoIe

that was the greatest thing for me of aII.

And I didn't care that we had to sIee on eoIe's fIoors

because we couIdn't afford hoteI rooms.

The whoIe time I was sure we were doing the right thing

and I was so hay and so gratefuI that we couId do it.

And that's robabIy the thing I'm reaIIy stiII most gratefuI about.

These eoIe they don't make them Iike that anymore.

If you think of a band Iike The FIying Burrito Brothers

in the year 2005 it's unthinkabIe it's imossibIe.

If you think of somebody Iike MichaeI Vosse

who was the executive hiie at A&M Records at the time

somebody who just worked for the record comany

to kind of transIate the hister Iingo

to the guys in the suits

stuff Iike that doesn't exist anymore.

PeoIe just going with them on tour

and hoIding a Suer 8 camera with these bIurry ictures--

that was just amazing.

I robabIy wasn't even born back then

so maybe I'm romanticizing something here a IittIe bit.

But I wouId want that eoIe from my generation or younger eoIe

wouId kind of care more about music a IittIe bit more

and about the true sirit of it.

I don't see that much of it anymore.

I'm reaIIy gratefuI for that exerience.

You know eoIe Iike Tom WiIkes the art director

for A&M at the time who made the beautifuI Burritos cover:

MichaeI Vosse the executive hiie

whose job was to be kind of the transIator

between the eoIe who worked at the record comany and the bands.

They were so outrageous at the time

and so daring what they did.

The whoIe concet was so different

from what haens in the music industry today.

that I must say I'm reaIIy--

weII I can't say I'm roud it's not my effort

but I'm gratefuI that I had a chance to meet these great eoIe

and just you know catch a gIimse...

of those days

which are robabIy gone forever. Maybe not.