"Some Journey" - A Documentary by Mooncusser Films
Mooncusser Films wraps production on Suzanne Vega Documentary
Chatham, Cape Cod - After one and a half years of trailing alterna-folk musician Suzanne Vega, Cape Cod filmmaker Christopher Seufert is heading into his Chatham studio to begin editing the over 200 hours of footage he and his crew have gathered, documenting her life both on and off the road. The independent documentary was conceived by Seufert, funded entirely by his company Mooncusser Films, and will premier initially at festivals in the winter of 2004. “I’m shooting for venues like Sundance, South by Southwest in Texas, and some of the independent festivals in New York and Boston as well” says Seufert. “The project in many ways is very much connected to the type of reality documentaries I’ve been doing ever since I started this in the early nineties, but it’s also a big step forward and I’m hoping to take it to a wider audience than ever before. If all goes well at the festivals I think it’ll be a natural for HBO and also a limited theatrical release as well.”
Seufert wrote a letter to Ms Vega out of the blue two years ago, she accepted the offer to shoot some test footage and, after seeing some of the initial rushes, signed on to be the subject of the feature-length documentary which is funded entirely by Seufert’s Chatham-based Mooncusser Films.
“The production budget,” says Seufert, “is not strictly a dollar for dollar thing. I think of it as the “country doctor” approach to filmmaking, which is really a very Cape Cod barter-like approach, more than anything. For example, Suzanne had a gig at the ASCAP convention in Washington DC last week, which would have cost about $500 in travel expenses for us to send a camera person along with her. So, we called ASCAP and made a deal that if they covered the travel for our crew to DC we’d share ownership of the footage with them. It takes more work this way but it’s been a win-win to everyone involved. Suzanne gets something of a free media arm for her promotions, ASCAP gets footage shot cheaply that they wouldn’t normally have, and we get the documentary done, and also a new client too, as an added bonus”.
Seufert drew up a business plan with Vega and her management whereby Mooncusser Films funds and owns the final documentary and in exchange he provides raw footage from the shooting to her for promotional purposes throughout the production period. “It sounds a bit too grass-rootsy to work practically in the business world or the entertainment industry” says Seufert, but in actuality the freedom to get shoots done this way has been one of my most valuable tools. Larger more formal arrangements just wouldn’t have gotten this project in the can so quickly.” As a result of this arrangement, not only has Seufert gotten the project shot, but Vega herself has been provided with additional promotion on CNN, Minnesota Public Radio, VH-1, and Seufert also provided an electronic press kit to her management last year pro bono. “This way,” he says, “we’re able to provide some real, concrete benefit to her, and not just be a distraction all the time.”
“Some Journey,” the working title he and Vega have agreed upon, was taken from the title of a lesser known song from Vega’s self-titled debut album in 1985, which featured the hit Marlene on the Wall. “The journey here,” says Seufert, “is not one that necessarily has a neat resolution but it does have a sound narrative and chronological structure focusing on a difficult and uncertain chapter in her life, where she deals with the death of her youngest brother, being dropped by A & M Records, which was her label for the last 17 years, and the tension created between the demands of being a rock and roll musician who must tour all over the world in order to make a living and those of a single mother with a home in Manhattan.” Vega’s seventh and final recording with A&M, Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega, was released in early 2003 and the musician has been on an international tour schedule with her band to support the release with Seufert, his crew, and their various bags of equipment in tow, which sometimes cause close inspection these days in airport lines.
The shooting, much of which took place on the tour bus traveling to locations here in the US and in Europe, was completed by a large crew who, though based primarily in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, all have some Cape Cod connection. The crew list includes assistant director and editor Melissa Kinski from Brewster, assistant director and photographer Greg Mentzer from Orleans, also Kelly Brennan, Jessica Ferguson, Jennifer Pitman, and Katy Gallagher from Dennis, Richard Moos from Osterville, and Robin Romano from Chatham.
“It really has been an adventure for everyone,” remarks Seufert, “It’s hard work, of course, really brutal, but it’s a tremendous amount of fun when the shooting is taking place back stage, in limousines, or on the red carpet at some photo shoot or other. At one of our shoots, a red carpet event at Glamour Magazine, we were refused press passes and told, ‘Absolutely no shooting past the sidewalk.’ Greg Mentzer and I talked about it and just decided we were going to just keep moving and see how far we could get. So we make it in, someone with a headset silently puts all sorts of credentials over our neck and the next thing you know we’re inches away from Sharon Stone, Britney Spears, and Ellen DeGeneres, closer than any of the other press crews. Then someone comes out and hustles us down the hallway and we’re in the blue room eating free sandwiches and having all the celebrities brought out to us for interviews. Definitely keeps winter on the Cape from getting boring with a project like this going on.”
On other shoots musicians Peter Gabriel, Bryan Adams, The Talking Heads, Rufus Wainright, They Might Be Giants, made appearances and Seufert may add one more shoot in June to the project and head over to the the Isle of Wight Festival in England where Vega will be sharing the bill with David Bowie and the Who.
The budget and logistical limitations of keeping up with Vega’s touring schedule meant that Seufert couldn’t be on the tour with her the whole time, so they connected with her at various points along the way, which, according to Seufert, was a hit or miss proposition. “It’s been a bit tricky working out the logistics, actually it’s enough to bring a grown man to his knees sometimes. We had shoots in Virginia, Philadelphia, California, England, and Belgium and the logistics of getting getting my crew and equipment to intercept with her and her crew at mid-tour, whether they’re traveling by plane or by bus, has been the hardest part of the shooting really. Surprisingly our smoothest shoot happened in Manchester, England, and the one that fell apart the most was on Martha’s Vineyard. Labor Day weekend on Martha’s Vineyard beat any sort of international travel we encountered,” laughs Seufert.
He first came into contact with Vega in the summer of1987 when her biggest hit “Luka” was on the radio. He worked as her landscaper from 1987 t0 1990 at her property off Ridgevale Road in Chatham. “I wrote her a letter last year and told her about what I do now and that I’d like to do a documentary about her along the lines of DA Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back” with Bob Dylan. After about 8 months I heard back from her, I went to Manhattan to shoot some performance footage for her on spec, she liked it, and we’ve been off and running on the project all year. She’s been really great as a subject, and has opened her life to our cameras as much as I could possibly hope for. Sometimes when I go to Manhattan I sleep at her apartment so in the morning I’m right there when she’s having breakfast. You could see where that would really get suffocating for her but we’ve gotten pretty close over the course of production and I’m pretty good at picking up when she’s about to turn on me. There was a time at a show in Northampton when I really caught her off guard shooting her from behind while she was on-stage. She laid into me pretty good on that one but it was probably worth it as I kept rolling and it’s a pretty interesting little moment really for people to see.
Though the Mooncusser crew has essentially wrapped production the overall plan has been to let the editing phase overlap with the final shooting. This way if gaps appear in the editing they can still go out and shoot the required footage. “We’ve got the first 10 minutes now of a rough cut,” says Seufert, “and I’m starting to get nervous. It’s a project I feel strongly about and it’s nerve-wracking actually beginning to finish up and begin thinking about people watching it.” Blurbs about the project have already appeared in Rolling Stone, People Magazine, and NewEnglandFilm.com and Seufert has committed to teaching a weekend workshop based on the project at the Provincetown Film Institute in the fall, where Suzanne will make a guest appearance.
As for Vega, when asked how it feels to have an audience backstage as well as onstage? "I don't mind being filmed for a documentary, since it allows the camera to see me when I am in action, and then I don't have to worry about posing. I hate posing! This approach shows me at my best." she says in a statement.
Updated information and video samples can be seen at www.MooncusserFilms.com