BEING GEDDY LEE

A SUMMARY OF SORTS

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To understand “Being Geddy Lee” a bit better without revealing too much of the ‘storyline’, we should probably begin by examining the two artistic entities at work…namely the film “Being John Malkovich” and the two components that Rush bring to the table; their music and their words.

 

First, “Being John Malkovich”.  If you’re familiar with the film, feel free to skip ahead, but for the uninitiated, here’s the storyline of the film and the principal actors…

 

John Cusak plays Craig Schwartz, a man whose only true desire in life is to be a puppeteer.  We learn within the first 5-10 minutes of the film that he is unemployed, opting instead to stay at home in hopes that his talent will hopefully someday payoff.  His animal-loving, pet shop owner wife Lotte (played by Cameron Diaz) encourages him to find a job, any job, that will help him get motivated.  While perusing the classified ads he finds an opening for a file clerk “with fast, nimble hands” and figures that if nothing else, his talent in this area could be useful.  He proceeds to go to LesterCorp, located on the 7 ½ floor of a New York office building, where he encounters Dr. Lester (played by Orson Bean) and his secretary Floris (played by Mark Kay Place).  After having two bizarre encounters with these characters, Schwartz is hired on and goes to the new employee orientation (which is merely a short film on the origins of the 7 ½ floor) where he meets Maxine (played extraordinarily well by Katherine Keener…who by the way received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for this role).

 

Schwartz is immediately smitten by Maxine, but she wants nothing to do with him, except to perhaps string him along so she can eventually leave him hanging in the breeze.  One day while attending to his filing duties, Schwartz accidentally stumbles upon a small door located behind a cabinet.  He opens the door to reveal a long, dark tunnel and decides to investigate by crawling inside.  He is sucked through the tunnel and finds himself looking through someone else’s eyes.  When this character looks at himself in the mirror, we find out that it is John Malkovich (played by none other than John Malkovich).  A few minutes later (15 to be exact), Schwartz exits the tunnel by being unceremoniously dumped in a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

 

When he shares his discovery with Maxine, she initially reacts with indifference, but later calls him on the phone and suggests the two supplement their income by charging $200.00 a head to anyone wishing to indulge in the experience.  After explaining to his wife that he’s “going to be working some late nights” in his new endeavor, Schwartz invites the disbelieving Lotte to check it out for herself.  She does and thus begins her angle to the story…she decides that she wants to undergo “gender reassignment”.  Maxine, being the sly, conniving character she is, exploits Lotte’s new found desire by arranging a meeting with Malkovich while Lotte is inside him, and they become smitten with each other.  When Craig discovers this, he becomes hell-bent on throwing a wrench into the mix and forces Lotte to arrange a “meeting” with Maxine.  Craig then goes inside the film’s namesake and while having sex with Maxine, discovers that he can control Malkovich.  When Maxine finds out that Craig can do this, she immediately drops her affection for Lotte and manipulates Schwartz’s infatuation for her for her own selfish ends.  Maxine and Craig then decide to ‘redirect’ Malkovich’s vocation from that of an actor to being a puppeteer.

 

After Lotte is dumped by Maxine, she goes to Dr. Lester’s house, where earlier in the film she discovered a room that contained dozens of pictures of John Malkovich.  With this in mind, she asks if Dr. Lester can provide some answers as to her Malkovich obsession.  It is here we learn that Lester is actually an old Irish sea captain who years ago discovered the strange portal that allows him to continue on living, albeit through someone else’s body.  He explains to Lotte that John Malkovich is such a “vessel body” and that said vessel is “ripe” for inhabiting on their 44^th birthday.  Lotte then informs Lester that her husband has now taken over Malkovich and that doesn’t sit too well with Lester.

 

We then fast-forward eight months.  Craig has successfully redirected Malkovich’s career into puppetry, he and Maxine are now married, and they are expecting a child.  One night while Craig/Malk is performing at a benefit show, Lester and his cohorts (he’s decided to bring along some of his friends to inhabit the next “vessel”) kidnap Maxine and command Schwartz to leave the Malk vessel or Maxine will die.  During her incarceration at the LesterCorp office, Maxine is confronted by Lotte who pulls a gun on her.  Seeing no other escape options, Maxine dives into the Malkovich portal followed by Lotte.  Since Craig has complete control over the vessel, the two invaders are helplessly forced into Malkovich’s subconscience and we as viewers are treated to one of the most bizarre sequences ever captured on celluloid.  Once Max and Lotte have been dumped on the turnpike, they decide to reconcile.  Coinciding with this development, Craig calls Lester and says that he will indeed leave Malk as long as Maxine’s not harmed.  Once Scwartz leaves the vessel, Lester & Co. enter and possess Malkovich.

 

We then fast-forward seven years.  Lester/Malk has married his secretary Floris.  Maxine and Lotte are now a couple raising their daughter who was conceived with Malk, and we learn that this daughter (named Emily, by the way) is the next vessel.  Craig reentered the portal in hopes to possess Malkovich again, but was ‘diverted’ into the newly forming ‘vessel’ and is now forever trapped inside Emily.  Then the credits roll.

 

Now, why on earth did I just go and explain in such chronological detail the contents of the story?  Well, as you can tell, the plot and story are truly bizarre…and going back to my “painting” analogy, the film provided me with a deeply rich and textured “canvas” on which I could use the “audio paint”.  Speaking of which, let’s now examine that “paint”; Rush.

 

As the members of Rush have stated at various times throughout the years, they take a cinematic approach to crafting their music.  From their early conceptual efforts like “Caress Of Steel”, “2112”, and “Hemispheres”, to their mid-80’s foray into synthesized-based works like “Grace Under Pressure” and “Power Windows”, and even into the more organic efforts of the 90’s (“Roll The Bones” and “Counterparts”), Rush have created songs which are rich in both music and lyrical content.  In my previous Rush related film-music sync projects, “The Rush/Wonka Project” and “The Rushian Matrix”, I feel that the music utilized in both of those efforts worked rather nicely to create an interesting alchemy.  Not only that, but it was the music that was the principal force behind what drove the works along.  With “Being Geddy Lee”, however, the music is used more as a backdrop for the most part (there are a few instances in which it’s the primary focus, though) and it is the dialogue culled from the dozens of interviews that is the star. 

 

Before we get into the specifics of the dialogue issue, let me also quickly point out another source I used for the musical side of things; concert and soundcheck bootlegs.  These two sources yielded some very unique contributions to the project.  In spite of, or perhaps because of, the less than desirable sound quality of these recordings (some dating as far back as the 70’s), they added yet another interesting aspect to this ‘thing’.  More on this later in the Commentary.  Let’s now move on and examine the dialogue…where it came from and how it is used in this project.

 

First, where it came from.  Over the past 20+ years, since the advent of radio specials and call-in shows catering to the rock and roll crowd, the members of Rush have taken part in countless interviews.  Since they are a favourite band of mine, I have always been interested in what they have to say about their art.  Thus the reason I have the extensive interview archive that I do.  The various sources I gathered the dialogue snipets from include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

Rockline

Album Premiere specials

Innerview with Jim Ladd

MTV

Much Music

In The Studio

CBC

Neil Peart’s instructional drumming video “A Work In Progress”

Numerous local radio and television outlets

The Internet

…and probably others that escape me at this time…

 

Many of these interviews I recorded myself either off the radio or television, while others were acquired through trades with other collectors.  Some of the sound quality is excellent, some of it’s fair, and some of it just downright sucks.  I tried to avoid using the sucky clips as much as possible, but some were simply to hard to resist…I mean, how could you not use a clip of Alex Lifeson saying “It’s like sex, but not as messy,” even if the quality is less than desirable?

 

I began the tedious task of listening to these many hours of interviews in late December of 2000.  The process was simple; hook up the cassette deck or VCR to the computer, and listen…when something was said that seemed to have potential for use, record it and edit it.  I guess you could call this going through the interviews and editing the snipets the “pre-production” aspect of the project.  I would do this whenever I could find time away from attending to the ‘normal’ stuff of life; family, job, etc.  I’ve had people ask me in the past, regarding this synching fetish, “Boy, you must have a lot of time on your hands to go through and do this stuff?”  My answer to that is “No, I don’t have time on my hands, I make time to do this.”  It’s just like any other hobby that one may engage in…if you’re into fishing, you make time to enjoy it…if you’re into bowling, you make time to enjoy it…I enjoy the creative aspects of this artform, so I make time to enjoy it.

 

Anyway, getting back to the pre-production.  This process lasted from late December of 2000 into early March of 2001.  I’d work on it pretty much everyday, anywhere from 2-5 hours a day.  In addition to the interview clips, I also went through every Rush CD, the aforementioned concert and soundcheck bootlegs, and music from others sources (solo projects, cover songs, etc) and recorded various clips for future use.  Speaking of solo projects, this would be a good time to discuss “My Favorite Headache”.

 

A month before pre-production began, Geddy Lee released his debut solo project “My Favorite Headache”.  I cannot express enough how profoundly inspirational this album was/is to me regarding the making of “Being Geddy Lee”!!!  In promotional interviews Geddy gave around the release of this work, he often commented about his love for the creative process, that it both drove him crazy and satisfied him deeply.  I have come to fully understand this mindset through the making of my own project.  Additionally, the music and lyrical content of MFH served to be a huge influence on the concept behind BGL.  It then should come as no surprise why I subtitled the project “my most enjoyable cerebral suffering”.

 

Okay, back to the making-of.  After spending over two months and amassing nearly 4GB worth of audio material (more would be added later), I didn’t skip a beat and went directly into principal production.  The method I used was fairly simple; using my computer’s DVD player and WAV recorder, I would record segments from the film itself into the computer.  I would then open these segments (which, by the way, were anywhere between 10-15 minutes in length) and using the WAV editor I would go in and edit them.  In most cases, this process would involve ‘muting’ certain snipets and passages of dialogue and then ‘pasting’ the Rush material in its stead.  Often times, when for example a particular piece of ‘muted’ dialogue was say, maybe 3.3 seconds long, and the audio file I wanted to ‘paste’ in its place was perhaps 3.9 seconds long, I’d have to somehow shorten it to get it to fit.  This would be accomplished by various means…maybe I’d manipulate the piece by ‘stretching’ or ‘shortening’ it…maybe there was an instance when the person speaking would suck in a breath and I would edit that out…all manner of tricks were used.  I don’t think I could give an adequate number of instances where problems like this would have to be solved…without exaggeration, it would easily have to be in the 1000’s.  With the film clocking in at a little over 110 minutes, and with me having to pay attention to literally every nano-second of the damn thing, you can hopefully see why this project took as long as it did to make.  

 

I won’t give any spoilers here, but I will say that I ‘assigned’ some of the film’s characters the ‘roles’ of ‘being’ the members of Rush.  If you want to know who’s who, you’ll have to either see it or read the online commentary.  With other characters in the film, though, I left their roles completely intact, allowing them to ‘interact’ with ‘Geddy’, ‘Alex’, and ‘Neil’, as it were.  Furthermore, I added Rush’s music at various spots in the film when it seemed appropriate to do so or complimented some onscreen action.  The bottom line is that every piece of edited material had to be connected to Rush and their music in some form or fashion.

 

After working tirelessly on this principal production, day in and day out, into the second week of April, a couple factors led to me taking a break.  One, I was getting kind of burnt out and simply needed to put some time and distance between me and this creation.  Secondly, an annual rite of Spring was upon me; the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  I watched eagerly as my beloved St. Louis Blues made it all the way to the Conference Finals only to be beaten by the eventual Cup Champs, the Colorado Avalanche.  While I wasn’t rooting for the ‘Lanche to win, I always enjoy watching the Cup being raised no matter who it is…and seeing the raw emotion of Ray Borque raising it was quite moving, indeed.  On the very day this event took place, I resumed working on the project.

 

After taking some time to refresh myself with what work had been done previously, I swept out the cobwebs and dove headlong back into the swing of things.  At the outset of this resumption, I was thinking that another 2 or 3 months of work was still ahead of me.  However, the creative juices really started flowing quite nicely and for the next 2 weeks I was working on the project anywhere from 5 to 8, even upwards of 12 hours a day!   After a dizzying fortnight of work, the last piece of editing was completed on 6/24/2001. 

 

So, having read this far, you’ve now come to another fork in the road.  You can either proceed onto the DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY which contains the minutia of BGL (in some cases broken down into milliseconds) OR if everything you’ve read thus far has sufficiently piqued your interest and you wish to watch the thing yourself, EMAIL me for details on how to acquire a copy.