I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART - Sam Jones' documentary follows the band Wilco -- full disclosure: one of my favorite groups -- through the making and tumultuous release of their fourth album, 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'. The film actually showed on a few screens across the country back in August, but I just saw it last weekend here in Chicago and wanted to devote some space to it for two reasons: 1) As the end of the year approaches and chatter about top ten lists grows louder, 'I Am Trying' might just figure into my list somewhere. 2) It provides a nice segue into our Movie Club discussion beginning tomorrow about Michael Moore's documentary 'Bowling for Columbine'. In his pre-preemptive post earlier today, Eric Baker posed this intriguing question in relation to 'I Am Trying': "Is it possible to make a documentary about a band without slipping into hero worship? Presumably the director has got to be close to the band to get access in the first place." [Query for Eric: Are you saying this is a bad thing? Wouldn't that qualify as a subjective documentary, like several of the best documentaries you have seen? Is there a contradiction here?] According to the film's web site, the filmmakers produced 'I Am Trying' independently. "Neither Wilco nor their record company is financially involved in the film, making it a true documentary, rather than a glorified music video or EPK," the site reports. Then again, just because Jones got no financial support from the band or its management doesn't rule out the possibility that he is a huge fan of the band. And we could debate ad nauseam what a "true documentary" is. But the implication is that Jones and his crew set out to chronicle the band in action as objectively as possible -- minus all of the "hero worship," as Eric so nicely put it. Did they succeed? I say yes, primarily because the documentary doesn't shy away from exposing the flaws of its protagonists, Jay Bennett and Jeff Tweedy (more on them in a second), and does so in a fair and balanced fashion. At first I was conflicted about liking the movie so much because one could easily argue that it is no different than the recent Phish documentary, 'Bittersweet Motel', which I had a lukewarm reaction to, in that it focuses almost entirely on just one member of the band (lead singer/songwriter Tweedy, seen below) and never really efforts to reveal who these people are when they aren't making music.

But Jones had one thing that 'Bittersweet' director Todd Phillips didn't have, something every good documentarian has to have -- luck. Like Phillips, who followed Phish on tour through parts of 1997 and 1998, Jones merely set out to document a significant period in Wilco's career -- the recording of an album, albeit one that was being hailed as a major step forward for the band even before they had finished recording it. What he ended up capturing was arguably the biggest story of the year in the music industry as Wilco's label, Reprise Records (owned by Time Warner), deemed the album unworthy of release and subsequently dropped the band from its label, only to have Wilco sell the album to another label (Nonesuch) and watch it become a relatively huge hit. And the best part of it all is that Nonesuch's parent company is, you guessed it, Time Warner -- an ironic twist that the documentary acknowledges in the end but probably doesn't fully exploit, as this Slate article contends. But the drama doesn't stop there. Shortly after the album is finished, guitarist/keyboardist Bennett, who co-wrote much of the album with Tweedy, was asked to leave the band. I read one review that described Tweedy as taking passive-aggressiveness to a new level and, well, he couldn't be more passive-aggressive if he was lobbing hand grenades while sipping kahlua from a hammock. When asked to explain Bennett's departure, Tweedy can't even admit that he's the one who asked him to leave, saying instead that "you'd have to ask Jay why he left the band." There never is any kind of knock-down, drag-out fight between Bennett (pictured below during recording) and Tweedy -- this isn't Oasis, after all -- just the typical grumblings and misunderstandings that occur between two headstrong, creative people.

If Jones really wanted to make simply a pro-Wilco documentary, he could have very easily aligned himself with Tweedy and let Bennett, who is, admittedly, kind of annoying, come across as the bad guy. As it is, Tweedy ends up looking like a little dictator, someone who can't stand anyone else sharing his credit. Although Bennett's explanation for his dismissal comes off as a bit whiny, Jones lends some credence to Bennett's claim that Tweedy is only interested in surrounding himself with sycophants by intercutting Bennett's dialogue with footage of Tweedy playing the guitar and singing in a coffee-house setting with the other three Wilco members looking on adoringly. But even with all of this drama, 'I Am Trying' is ultimately about the music and the making of one of the best rock albums in recent memory. If you don't agree with this claim, however, chances are you won't find the movie to be half as fascinating as I did.

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