![]() ![]() The first episode wraps on the peace-and-love high of Woodstock, but not without alluding to the end-of-innocence undertow of the Manson murders - antithetical events that took place within days of each other in August 1969. “It was just a better place to live.” Soon enough the Canyon was a scene, home to dozens of young, productive and increasingly influential artists who hung out together and inspired one another, visiting house to unlocked house - “Not even knocking,” Micky Dolenz says. “It wasn’t a scene yet,” says Crosby, who with his Byrds bandmates was among the first musicians to move there in the ’60s. Rentals were cheap, real estate affordable. The sense of place comes through potently: the geography and semirural beauty of the neighborhood, with its dirt roads, hilltop views and easy access to the clubs on the Sunset Strip. But it isn’t clear for everyone, and it would have been helpful to indicate dates along with names in the identifying onscreen text - not simply for historical reference but to signal the personal vantage point: When did Joni Mitchell, for example, recall that soul-shaking acid trip? How many years after the breakup telegram (!) she sent Graham Nash did he describe it, striking a balance between wistful and philosophical? In some cases it’s obvious that the audio was recorded years earlier: The speaker is long deceased, or there’s a telltale youthful pitch to the voice (hello, Neil Young). A wise creative choice that heightens the you-are-there immediacy, it also allows Ellwood to use both new and existing interviews. Rather than interrupting the visual rhythm with talking-head segments, the musicians’ comments play in voiceover while their beautiful young selves fill the screen. And it might be news to many viewers that Diltz, legendary for his snapshots, came to Los Angeles as a member of the Modern Folk Quartet - seen in archival footage that looks like outtakes from the Spinal Tap backstory. Wilde was working at talent-showcase hotspots the Troubadour and the Whisky when she began taking pictures of the performers. Many of the film’s intimate images of musicians at work and play, whether rehearsing in Stephen Stills’ backyard or barbecuing at Cass Elliot’s, were captured by Wilde and Diltz, indispensable chroniclers of the scene and part of it too. It’s a touch of brilliance that the only new interviewees who appear on camera are photographers Henry Diltz and Nurit Wilde. In a show that’s mostly in perfect tune with its subject, another episode or two would have offered the time and space to unwind some of the abruptly dropped narrative threads. Sometimes, though (in the second installment especially), the leaps from one rich topic to the next can feel rushed or disjointed, as when a discussion of political awakening segues to an exploration of the Mamas and the Papas’ psychosexual soap opera. ![]() ![]() Thanks to a superbly curated wealth of material and the ace editing of Anoosh Tertzakian, a world comes alive within the doc’s relatively brief running time (the two episodes each clock in under 90 minutes).įittingly, a conversational flow propels Laurel Canyon‘s thoughtful and spirited nostalgia trip. The director has a sure feel for the essence of the period and its players, and for the social and emotional impact of their songs. But Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time is immersive rather than analytical. Like that film, Ellwood’s is interested in the creative lineage and cross-pollination of the Canyon’s much-mythologized artists. Two recent entries focused on key figures in the Laurel Canyon scene, Linda Ronstadt and David Crosby, and one, Echo in the Canyon, delved into the Canyon crowd’s musical influences through terrific new interviews that were, unfortunately, framed by awkward Jakob Dylan & Friends sequences that never lost the whiff of self-promotion. Over the past year or so, a number of docs have profiled the musicians whose work shaped a generation, from poetic heavyweights Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan to such genre-busting pioneers as The Band. Martin Scorsese Self-Shoots Short Film for BBC About Being in Isolation ![]()
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