Filmed during their intimate (and allegedly final) performance at the Beacon in the fall of 2006, Shine a Light features The Rolling Stones at their best, even after all these years. They are captured in a way that only Scorsese, a longtime and genuine Stones fan would know how to do. A fact that is precisely why the band chose Marty for the project.
“He’s the best around,” Mick Jagger told Dish at a press event for the film in New York City.
“I like his street cred,” guitarist Ronnie Wood jokes.
“Also, we didn’t choose Marty, Marty chose us,” adds Keith Richards.
Scorsese says the pairing was a natural fit, in that the Stones’ music has been
important to him in his life, as well as in his films.
“The Rolling Stones’ music had a [profound] effect on me. It dealt with aspects of the life [when] I was growing up, that I was associated with or saw or was experiencing and trying to make sense of,” he says. “It was tougher, had an edge, beautiful and honest and brutal at times and powerful, and it’s always stayed with me and become a well of inspiration, like to this day. As Mick said in Berlin, he said (Scorsese asks Mick) ‘Can I take the line from you?’ He said, ‘I want you to know that “Shine a Light” is the only film (of mine) that “Gimme Shelter” is not played in.’ (Everyone laughs) And when I use “Gimme Shelter” in a film, which I think is just as apropos of the world we’re living in today, “Gimme Shelter.” When I use it in a film, I don’t remember that I used it before. I say, ‘Well, let’s do that’ and they say ‘Well, Marty you did it before’ and I go, ‘Well, it’s alright.’ I keep forgetting, you know, but it’s something that the music has been very important to me over these years.”
So armed with his passion and a team of expert and Oscar-winning cinematographers, Scorsese set to work on figuring out how to best shoot every important angle of the Stones performance, which is depicted briefly at the start of the film.
“For me it was literally the moments when you can see the band working together,” Scorsese says of his strategy for cutting everything together. “All the songs, it’s like a narrative, a story, and the whole sound of the band is like a character, one character in each song. With the grace of these wonderful cinematographers, headed by Bob Richardson, and people like Bob Elswit and Ellen Kuras and Stuart Dryburgh and Bob Toll and Andrew Lesnie, who did "Lord of the Rings," Emmanuel Lubezki, they were able to, like poets at times, know exactly when to move that camera to pick up a member of the band.”
Scorsese points out that the film was shot in 35mm, not video or digital, so half of
the battle was keeping up with the camera loads.
“We had 10-minute loads, and cameras were going down all the time, running out of film, so another camera would pick up where someone left off. That’s why there were so many, to be able to pick up the slack. But the key was to find the moments between the members of the band and how they work together. It’s like a machine, its own entity during each song.”
Another “fun” challenge, was Marty’s struggle to obtain the set list - something Mick told Marty would be done, "an hour before the show" - prior to the start of the concert, which acts nicely as a sort of prologue to the concert. It’s one of the more entertaining non-music-related moments in the film, when the man of meticulous preparation is met with and forced to deal with the spontaneous, laissez fair m.o. that is the Stones.
Scorsese says, in hindsight of course, that his anxiety was "the absurdity of trying to be organized when we didn't know what was going to happen. We were dealing with performance which is tone and mood, but it wasn't ours, it was theirs." He likens preparing for the unknown set of songs to a horserace. "It depended on what they felt like together enough to play. It's like the handicapper in the race. He doesn't choose the winner. He doesn't know who's going to win but he can gauge the temperature and make a value judgment as to who to bet on. So I think that's what a performer does and part of the excitement was not knowing exactly what was going to be there," he says, sounding calm and collected about the whole thing, even though in the film he is as frazzled as can be.
"He's so fantastically devoted to detail, which is very important in this," Jagger says.. "He hated the idea of winging it, as you can see with the set list. He's not a person who dictates to you or takes the sort of high ground in knowledge, he listens to your points and either takes them or doesn't take them. He's very cooperative."
One special sequence is the performance of "Lovin' Cup," which features guest artist Jack White using a metal slide on his acoustic guitar and Jagger strapping on his own Taylor acoustic, which then transitions into Richards on his acoustic 12-string for "As Tears Go By," one of the rare performances of that song.
Richards points out that Scorsese's treatment of the guitars in that sequence was further evidence of his genius for the project. "How many times have we all watched fingers going up and down fretboards?" he asks. "The thing Marty did with it was he turned the observation into a Rembrandt. It shows the beauty of the guitars themselves. It wasn't just who was playing them. It was the loving shots of the instruments themselves, which I found very, very, very nice."
Other noteworthy guests who appear for duets with the band are Christina Aguilera, on “Live With Me” and longtime friend of the Stones, Buddy Guy, the latter of which Richards presents with his guitar at the end of their performance of “Champagne and Reefer.”
“We’ve done quite a few shows with Buddy Guy in the past,” says Jagger. “He’s one of those continually wonderful blues performers. I think the thing that Martin captured, the duet that we did with him, was really one of the high points of the movie for me.”
To which Richards adds, “I didn’t give him my guitar for nothing, man.”
“And I think all the guests in slightly different ways add to the movie,” continues Jagger. “I like all the duets very much, they really all work. And they don’t always work, those duets.”
While "Shine a Light" is certainly focused on the music, one of the many highlights is Scorsese’s skillful inclusion of vintage newsreel and TV footage of the band from their earliest public appearances, which is the only non-performance-based commentary in the film.
"There are so many documentaries in which you see the band arriving with their instruments, people saying, ‘Yeah, I worked with so-and-so in '73,’ that didn't interest me,” Scorsese says of forgoing the familiar talking-head device. “The music, its performance, that's what was important. So the trick with the archival footage was to get just the right amount to support the music."
Scorsese says he and editor Dave Tedeschi culled through over 400 hours of footage, whittled it down to 40 and picked the most balanced, representative and non-distracting clips for the film.
"We selected themes, such as the idea of the band's longevity and some of the group's notoriety,” Scorsese explains. “And then, at a certain point, we wanted to show how irrelevant the interviews with them became - the same questions asked over and over to the point where they don't mean anything anymore."
One of those questions, “So how long are you going to keep this up?” is addressed at the, press conference. Will the band keep playing into their 70s (since they’re in their 60s)? And what on earth do they do to keep up their energy?
“That’s only five years away,” Richards answers, laughing. “And if we told you (what we take) you’d all be on it.”
And it’s precisely that kind of statement that subtly sums up the unending allure and charm of The Rolling Stones. They've never seemed surprised at their longevity or their unfathomably endless energy. And they haven't changed. The personalities captured both in footage shot at the beginning of their career and by Scorsese is completely consistent with who they are today – which is why “Shine a Light” and the Stones themselves, are such a wonder to watch.
