Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention.
Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound.
Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.
Examples: Frederick Wiseman’s films, e.g. High School (1968); Gilles Groulx and Michel Brault’s Les Racquetteurs (1958); Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter (1970); D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967), about Dylan’s tour of England; and parts (not all) of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle Of A Summer (1960), which interviews several Parisians about their lives. An ironic example of this mode is Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will (1934), which ostensibly records the pageantry and ritual at the Nazi party’s 1934 Nuremberg rally, although it is well-known that these events were often staged for the purpose of the camera and would not have occurred without it. This would be anathema to most of the filmmakers associated with this mode, like Wiseman, Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who believed that the filmmaker should be a “fly-on-the-wall” who observes but tries to not influence or alter the events being filmed.
After the death of Malik Bendjelloul, who threw himself in front of a subway train, a THR writer heads to Sweden to talk to his friends, who reveal the perfectionist's quirks -- from eating the same breakfast for six months to walking one lap around his apartment before and after work -- and open up about his fear, doubt and their own surprise: "He was the least likely to take his life."
In the late afternoon on May 13, a young man with a mop of soft brown hair and a delicate frame stood on the platform of the Solna Centrum metro stop in Stockholm, Sweden, waiting for the Blue Line. It was rush hour, and the station, one of the deepest in Stockholm's rail system, was filling up with commuters leaving the city. At the bottom of a long escalator, cavelike tunnel walls had been painted with elaborate pastoral scenes from the 1970s: lush green hillsides studded with fir trees and a giant yellow moon rising against a vast, dark red sky. Vignettes of Swedish life were overlaid against this Nordic backdrop -- chain-saw-wielding loggers presiding over a recent clear-cut, a twin-engine prop plane taking flight, and a solitary violinist standing in a field pondering the city's encroachment. At one end of the platform was a sign. "Stop!" it warned. "Unauthorized people prohibited on the tracks."
It was just the type of place that the young man, a 36-year-old Swedish journalist and Oscar-winning film director named Malik Bendjelloul, might have found intriguing. The Stockholm metro system is reputed to be the largest display of public art anywhere in the world -- 68.3 miles of paintings, mosaics, installations and sculptures. The station was an artistic, humane endeavor, an urban fairy-tale landscape that might have piqued his curiosity and fueled his imagination. But on that day, as the train neared, the picturesque station was transformed into a devastating scene of the director's final moments. With a crowd of Tuesday-afternoon commuters looking on from benches or standing against walls, Bendjelloul flung himself into the path of an oncoming train.
Almost immediately, Bendjelloul's suicide, just over a year after his 2013 Academy Award for the documentary Searching for Sugar Man -- a soulful, wrenching account of a forgotten Detroit folk musician named Sixto Rodriguez -- threw Sweden and much of the rest of the world into stunned disbelief. How could such a talented artist choose to take his life at the height of his creative powers, when anything seemed possible and probably was? And how did a positive, happy person fall into the depths of despair with almost no one being the wiser?
The first press reports from Swedish media outlets repeated the police's initial statements that Bendjelloul had died in an "incident" of indeterminate nature. "The police do not suspect any foul play in his death," said Mats Eriksson, press officer of Stockholm's western police district. On that Wednesday, Johar Bendjelloul, a radio journalist and the director's older brother, clarified that it indeed had been a suicide, the result, he said, of the recent onset of mental illness. Stockholm police officials later confirmed to THR the details of Bendjelloul's death on the tracks. "He jumped in front of a fast-moving metro train," one police official said. "It traumatized both the train conductor and witnesses. The SL [Metro Co.] is working with trauma and crises handling with the train conductor." Johar Bendjelloul, meanwhile, went further. "He had been depressed," the elder Bendjelloul told reporters, adding that he had been by his brother's side "almost constantly" in the days before his death. "I know he had been depressed for a short period, and depression is something you can die from," he said. "But the question of why, no one can answer; it will ache in my chest the rest of my life."
The sense of bewilderment was no less acute among the people who had worked alongside Bendjelloul for years and called him a friend. "If I think of every person I've met in my whole life, he was the least likely to take his life -- the least," said Karin af Klintberg, a producer for a Swedish arts and culture program called Kobra and the first person to encourage Bendjelloul to turn Rodriguez's story into the film that would become his abiding passion for five years. "He was the happiest person I knew."
Many of his friends struggled to accept it. Simon Chinn, who co-produced Searching for Sugar Man and shared an Academy Award with Bendjelloul, snapped at a reporter from the Associated Press for even asking about suicide because the idea seemed so preposterous and out of character to him. When someone updated Bendjelloul's Wikipedia page to reflect his death that Tuesday, Klintberg just stared at it, thinking the author had made a mistake. When the truth finally sunk in, she stayed home from work for four days and wept. "I just made up with him for a few days," she said.
Death, especially when it is violent and unexpected, often leaves a hazy, and sometimes unwarranted, glow around the deceased. But Malik Bendjelloul, by all accounts, stood out as exceptionally talented, creative and for the most part also happy and well-adjusted. Over the course of the past several months, however, friends say he also had become increasingly lonely and isolated. The Oscar win had catapulted him into the upper reaches of the New York and Los Angeles art worlds, away from his best friends and family. For the past several months, he had been living in New York, writing a script for a feature-length film about a South African conservationist named Lawrence Anthony, who had traveled to Baghdad in 2003 to rescue wounded and abandoned zoo creatures. However, writing for movies was harder than Bendjelloul had anticipated, and he apparently had grown frustrated and anxious. He developed insomnia while in New York. He also had lost touch with some of the people he had been closest to in Sweden and confessed to at least one close friend that he felt lonely.
Experts in the psychology of celebrity say that the sudden onset of stardom of the type Bendjelloul experienced can be traumatic, akin to a physical accident or violent encounter. "Fame is experienced as an impact, like a car crash," says Donna Rockwell, a Michigan psychologist who did her doctoral dissertation on the effects of celebrity, interviewing A-list actors, sports figures and others for her research. "For a person who has lived an ordinary life, to all of a sudden be thrust into a world of the spotlight, it can be quite overwhelming." ___The Oscars---
Bendjelloul had poured every ounce of energy and artistic flair he had into Sugar Man, and now that it was over, he was struggling to find a new passion, say his friends. In the final weeks, he told those closest to him, a fear had taken hold that somehow, inexplicably, he had "lost his creativity." So, when spring arrived, Bendjelloul decided to travel home to Sweden. The dark Nordic winter was lifting, and the days soon would grow longer and lighter. He wanted to see old friends. And there was something else: Bendjelloul's mother, painter and translator Veronica Schildt Bendjelloul, would be turning 70 on May 20.
Bendhelloul was born in Ystad, in the south of Sweden, the second of two sons. His father,Hacene, was a physician who emigrated from Algeria; his mother a Swedish artist and translator of books. As a child, Bendjelloul acted in a popular Swedish television drama calledEbba and Didrik, about two siblings whose idyllic family is upended by domestic disputes and romantic intrigue. After high school in Angelholm, Bendjelloul enrolled in a visual media program at Kalmar University. During the late '90s, television producer Per Sinding Larsenvisited the school to give a talk and review the students' work. Bendjelloul's clips immediately jumped out at him. They demonstrated a creative power and tenacity he never had seen before. Bendjelloul was using tools that even professionals hadn't yet mastered. "I couldn't figure out how he [did it]," says Larsen. "He didn't have the money or the means to do the things he was doing already at the time." A few years later, Larsen ran into Bendjelloul at a production company in Stockholm where the young man had gotten a job. "There were quite a few talents, but he was something special," recalls Larsen during an interview in Stockholm. "I think I was a bit jealous -- he knew the media in a way I didn't." Larsen was so impressed with Bendjelloul and liked him so much, he kept in touch.
In subsequent years, Larsen would become a casual mentor to Bendjelloul, helping him develop professionally in the rough-and-tumble world of deadline journalism but also personally. Bendjelloul, in turn, befriended Larsen's family, regularly attending birthdays and family events. Often late at night, in the studio or out in Stockholm, the two would have long, meandering conversations. Bendjelloul often questioned his own life path, wondering whether he should settle down and with whom; whether he should have kids.
More passionately than most, he thought about the ideas that went into his work; he wanted to change the way that television was made. Sometimes, it seemed to Larsen that his sensitive young friend risked being swallowed up by the frenetic, fast-paced environment of the world of media. He wanted to protect him. But if Bendjelloul was worried about something more serious, Larsen never attributed more than a passing importance to it; everybody, concluded Larsen, needed to grow up, and Bendjelloul was no different. "We had talks regularly, and I tried to tell him you can't separate those two sides," recalls Larsen. "You can't just forget what you have at home. Or you can, but you'll have to deal with it."
During the early 2000s, Bendjelloul went to work for Kobra, which aired on publicly funded Swedish TV (SVT). From the start, he established himself as the in-house creative wizard and set the bar for other reporters to meet. He had a spirited, frenetic energy and often would bounce up and down from one foot to the other as he excitedly pitched story after story to his editors. They reciprocated, giving him plenty of room to explore his passions. During work lunches, he would order huge salads accompanied by sandwiches and ferociously nibble his way through them, consuming little but leaving a detritus of crumbs and shredded napkins on the table -- like Fantastic Mr. Fox, says one friend.
His energy was infectious, his ideas wild and exciting. Reporting trips took him all over Sweden but also abroad. He traveled to Iran, Ethiopia and South America. Back in the vast hallways of SVT, he would disappear down a long hallway and into a cavernous editing vault called R6, where he would remain for days and sometimes weeks, perfecting his work. Bendjelloul relied on paper, glue, scissors and a huge appetite for endless hours of work. He knew his way around a computer, but he much preferred the more antiquated methods and being able to see his work in front of him, to play with it in a tactile way. Few people bothered him in the editing vault. "We always knew that whatever he came back with would be perfect," says Jane Magnusson, aKobra colleague. "We called him our genius-in-residence."
Many of these early short films showcased Bendjelloul's burgeoning artistry. He could be fascinated by ominous signs and strange portents and fashioned a clever piece about the brief 1960s obsession with clues in Beatles paraphernalia alluding to Paul McCartney's imminent death -- only to debunk it all later. He loved the French analog master Michel Gondry and spent hours cutting, pasting and fashioning cardboard cutouts into miniature sets in R6. He stunned his colleagues with a movie short that would be played at the beginning of each Kobra episode; it had been shot in one very long, very carefully orchestrated take, with actors jumping in and out of scenes on Bendjelloul's cue.
In another short piece from those days, a Swedish-Hungarian designer ruminates on the beauty of dead stuffed animals versus live ones. Bendjelloul interjects a question: "Is death more beautiful than life?" Bendjelloul then edited it in such a way that as the designer responds, saying that a photograph is "like a picture of a hero … the best representation," a mirror slides across the frame and Bendjelloul himself appears -- thin and smiling -- nodding placidly in agreement. Skeptical that Bendjelloul was harboring any thoughts of suicide at the time, another SVT producer, Emelie Persson, nonetheless recalled that very clip several times in the days after Bendjelloul's death, wondering, as those left behind by suicides often do, if she had missed something.
Faced with the overwhelming suddenness of his death, others wondered the same thing. But again and again, the answer came back a resounding no. Bendjelloul's zest for life had been huge, his enthusiasm infectious and all-encompassing. In 2006, after several years working atKobra, Bendjelloul grew restless and decided to travel. Reluctant to lose his talent, another producer secured him some money and asked him to send in reports from abroad. It was during a trip to South Africa in 2006 that he walked into a record store off Kloof Street in Cape Town and met the owner, Stephen Segerman, who told him a story that would change his life. It involved an American musician named Rodriguez, who had shaped an entire generation of South Africans with his mournful, rebellious ballads during the long years of apartheid only to disappear without a trace. People assumed he had died. Rodriguez had been a megastar in South Africa, where his hit song "Sugarman," off a debut album titled Cold Fact, was a staple for hundreds of thousands of young people. The singer was all but unknown at home in the U.S. Bendjelloul sent the idea to Klintberg, who very quickly realized that seven short minutes onKobra wasn't going to be nearly enough. She encouraged him to make a movie. Bendjelloul leapt at the chance, knowing he had stumbled onto the story of a lifetime. He had no money, but he made do. He stayed at Segerman's house, and they drove around Cape Town in a cheap car. They listened to one of Bendjelloul's favorite groups, Slow Dive, as they drove along the picturesque cliffs of Chapman's Peak one day, waiting for the perfect shot. And as the months passed, they bonded; with each revolution of the unfolding tale, they often said to each other, "This story always has happy endings."
Bendjelloul's ensuing search for the mysterious "Sugar Man," which took five years, all of his money and a considerable part of his emotional energy, went on to become one of the most celebrated films of the year, garnering Bendjelloul every significant award of the season and culminating in the Academy Award for best documentary feature. During the early editing, he had told Klintberg, "I don't understand why I wouldn't aim for an Oscar." Responded Klintberg, "Are you crazy?" But Bendjelloul knew what he wanted and set about making it happen with a passion that soon took over his life. It was a mark of his generosity that he brought along everyone who had helped him. Segerman recalls a dinner at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, just before the premiere, where Bendjelloul's sensitivity was on full display. "He stood up and thanked everyone, and he talked about each person in particular who helped him get there. There is not one person who had any problems with that guy." When he took the stage to accept his Oscar, the drive that had gotten him there was replaced in an instant by the characteristic charm and innocence that had endeared him to so many. "Oh, boy," he said, with a huge grin.
Bendjelloul's mind, like that of so many artistic geniuses, also had an obsessive quality. As creative as he was, he also could be rigid and uncompromising -- "anal," in the words of several friends who knew him well. He created elaborate routines and rituals that helped channel and direct his creativity. While editing Sugar Man at his Stockholm apartment, for instance, he began work only once he had completed one full lap walking around his apartment; he signaled the end of the work day with the same single loop. He gave himself exactly 1,000 days to edit Sugar Man and held himself close to it. He could be quirky and fun with his self-imposed rules. Last summer, during a radio series called Summer Talks in which prominent Swedes take to the airwaves and speak about their lives, Bendjelloul informed listeners that they would hear only songs whose titles began with the letter "I": "I Am the Walrus" and "I Hate You Forever." He said his favorite film was Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, in which one director challenges another to make "the perfect human" five times with a different obstruction each time. More recently, he concocted an elaborate work schedule for writing, which involved four hours of uninterrupted work, from 8 a.m. to noon. But sometimes he would begin later, in which case he would set his clock back to the 8 a.m. hour so that no matter the actual time of day, he would be able to work in the time he allotted himself.
These habits extended to his personal life as well. He would, for example, force himself to eat exactly the same breakfast for six months straight simply for the joy of, finally, one day changing breakfasts. There was, for a long time, a particular brand of canned tomato sauce in Sweden that he loved, and when he learned that it was going out of production, he called up every single shop in Stockholm and bought out their remaining stock. He was perfectly happy to eat pasta with this particular brand of tomato sauce every night. One day he told Klintberg that he had decided to break up with a girlfriend because they had been going out for exactly four years, four months and four days. "It always seemed totally reasonable when he said it," recalls Klintberg. "He was very convincing."
To Klintberg and others, these eccentricities seemed like the harmless, even charming quirks of an artist for whom life itself was a tableau that could be played with or manipulated to enhance its power -- or perhaps dull its ability to inflict pain. "It was like he was creating ways to not be disappointed," says Klintberg, "so he wasn't disappointed, until now. And when it came, it struck him so hard because he wasn't used to it. I think that this [depression] was a total shock for him and very unexpected. He didn't have the tools to handle this situation. It was like a psychosis, I think."
He also was sensitive and, like many artists, complicated. To the people closest to him, Bendjelloul sometimes showed a temper. While working on Sugar Man, Bendjelloul often was broke, or nearly so. His old friend and mentor Per Larsen offered to get him a job to help with the bills. It didn't pay much, but Larsen figured something was better than nothing. Bendjelloul thought otherwise and exploded over the phone, berating Larsen for thinking such an ill-paying job was worth it and making it clear that he felt patronized. It did no lasting damage to the friendship, but it belied another, deeper level to the man "everybody loved." When Bendjelloul first applied to the Swedish Film Academy for funding, a consultant there viewed an early version of Sugar Man and told Bendjelloul it was "shit." This episode understandably provided the grist for repeated late-night sessions with Larsen in which Bendjelloul raged against the established arbiters of culture and taste. "What kind of films do they fund?" he lamented.
Over the years of their friendship, Larsen had begun to probe gently into Bendjelloul's past and his family. Bendjelloul often told Larsen stories about his father. They were almost as fantastical as some of his short films -- fairy tales about his roots and land and perhaps a lost family fortune, a bygone nobility to which he nonetheless felt a certain attachment. In the end, Bendjelloul never told Larsen anything that was cause for major concern. And Larsen, like so many of Bendjelloul's friends, was in the dark right up until the last moment, at which point it was too late. Looking back now, many of his friends wonder what combination of factors -- genetic, professional, artistic -- collided so violently to cast Bendjelloul into such an abysmal despair. "In [my limited exposure to] depression, it's the darkness, it's completely like there's no hope," says Larsen. "I was wondering if there was something that made him go up and down, but which he dealt with through his work, his movie -- and suddenly there wasn't anything. There was a silent period. And so the darkness comes up."
By all accounts, Bendjelloul tried his best to keep the flush of success in check. Segerman recalls how, at Vanity Fair's Oscar party, he and Bendjelloul stood off to the side taking everything in while everybody else seemed, on the face of it, to be working, planning the next thing, making the next big deal. Bendjelloul wanted to remain connected to his friends.
When reporters asked Johar whether success had contributed to his brother's demise, Johar replied, "He was a very straightforward person when it came to success," he said. "Admirably earthy and relaxed. Unimaginably relaxed about [his] successes, I cannot see any such links." But while Bendjelloul might have put on a good face, the toll of success might have been greater than even he had realized. "To achieve such widespread and unparalleled acclaim and then to have to ask yourself, 'Now what?' " says Rockwell. "In that world of Hollywood and New York, you really have to keep producing. You can't just have a work of art. It's always, 'What's next?' And the pressure, coupled with the onslaught and impact of fame, can be quite challenging terrain to navigate." In hindsight, several of his friends wondered whether achieving such massive success at such a young age might have placed Bendjelloul in an uncomfortable quandary. "After a huge success, maybe the best way is to produce something small," says Klintberg. "Instead of aiming even bigger, he could have come and worked for me and made small things instead of aiming to make a bigger film."
By early May of this year, Bendjelloul had returned to Sweden and already was contacting friends. He texted Klintberg with a message: "Karin, I miss you and how are you?" On May 2, he and Klintberg met for lunch. Bendjelloul seemed happy. They spoke about his script; his girlfriend Brittany Huckabee, an American documentary filmmaker; where he was going to live -- the usual things. Meanwhile, however, his sleeping problems had continued and were leaving him anxious and depressed. He told people close to him that he was convinced that he had lost his creativity and would never get it back.
To Klintberg, Bendjelloul had said he wanted to get to work right away, and she happily had obliged and offered him a project to take on. When she asked how long he would stay in Stockholm, he told her that "if and when Hollywood called," he would have to go. She immediately wished he had just said "when Hollywood called" and wondered to herself whether the sudden rise to fame was too much for Bendjelloul. On Monday, May 5, Klintberg was out of town, and Bendjelloul showed up to work anyway despite her assurances that he could take his time getting back into his rhythm. But by Tuesday, May 6, Bendjelloul had changed his mind. He called Klintberg and told her he didn't want to be part of the project. He didn't like the approach they were taking, he explained: It was too repetitive. "I can't come in to do this," Bendjelloul told her. "I want to have a small challenge, not too big a challenge." She said she understood and, in a sad irony, later realized he had been right about the show's faults. They agreed to meet up again soon. But Klintberg never saw him again.
Klintberg looks back on their encounters and remains convinced that her friend, the former childhood actor, was not acting at all, but that his happiness was genuine and his commitment to life authentic. But in the shadow of his death, every little thing now has taken on a greater significance. All those arbitrary, live-by-numbers rules now, in hindsight, leave her with an uneasy feeling. "Now, with this end? No, they seem more serious," she says. "What was a small, little joke or a small thing -- now it feels bigger."
While still in New York, Bendjelloul had invited Larsen to come for a visit. He missed talking to his mentor and in a phone conversation had expressed his desire to get Larsen's advice on several projects. But family obligations kept Larsen from traveling, and in any event, the news of Bendjelloul's impending return to Sweden meant the two could reunite at home. But Larsen never saw him, either. The void left by Bendjelloul's disappearance is such that Larsen has found himself looking in the oddest places, like astrology, for answers to his endless questions. Every day, he casts himself into abstractions as a way to try and find his friend. He wonders whether the messiness of life without a movie like Searching for Sugar Man to keep Bendjelloul's attention focused contributed to his death. The director had grown up a lot under Larsen's careful gaze, evolving from a happy kid to a mature, developed artist. But there still were so many unanswered questions.
By the second week of May, only a few people in the very inner sanctum had access to Bendjelloul -- his brother, his girlfriend, another female friend and some of his extended family. To distant friends like Stephen Segerman in Cape Town, Bendjelloul responded to emails and texts with enthusiastic but short replies. "Wow!" he replied to an email Segerman had sent him about a recent lawsuit that had emerged as a result of the movie and Rodriguez's record sales. The news of Bendjelloul's death hit Segerman with brutal force. Bendjelloul always had seemed so centered. But there was no way to know what was roiling underneath. "We said this story always has happy endings, but unfortunately we can't say that anymore," says Segerman. "It's been a wonderful journey, but this is just too sad; it's absolutely shocking."
There is a small shrine of sorts for Malik Bendjelloul in the downtown Stockholm offices of Swedish Television, near a blue neon sign that says Kobra -- a memento that Bendjelloul himself bought for his colleagues years ago. The shrine consists of two small pictures, three candles and a black condolence book whose pages are empty. "Nobody dares sign it because we all think he's going to come back," says his former colleague Magnusson. But the real shrine is elsewhere -- in that massive, soundproofed room at the end of a series of hallways that feels more like an airline hangar: the R6 editing vault.
Inside there are two pianos, a table with an editing suite in a corner, a large mirror and a mortarboard where pictures can be tacked and hung. Once the doors close, the room is utterly silent, a womb for creativity and reflection. It was here that Bendjelloul spent the years of his apprenticeship as a visual artist, perfecting the craft that ultimately would allow him to undertake his epic search for "Sugar Man" and, because all great art is a reflection of the artist, too, the search for himself with such force of will and unerring exactitude. The silence and isolation of R6 was both Bendjelloul's refuge and his inspiration. And as soon as time permits, the staff of Kobra, many of whom accompanied him on his journey, will place a single brass plaque there with the room's new name.
The Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man tells the almost unbelievable story of a Mexican-American songwriter whose two early Seventies albums bombed in America, but who wound up finding a huge audience in Apartheid-era South Africa. Sixto Rodriguez had no idea he was a legend there until a group of fans found him on the Internet and brought him to the country for a series of triumphant concerts. But while Searching for Sugar Man (soundtrack and DVD now available) is a fantastic film, it only grazes the surface of Rodriguez's life story. Here are 10 things you may not know about Rodriguez:
Not only did he skip the Oscar ceremony – he was asleep when he won.
Searching for Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul begged Rodriguez to attend the Oscars, but he refused, feeling it would take the attention away from the filmmakers. "We also just came back from South Africa and I was tired," Rodriguez says. "I was asleep when it won, but my daughter Sandra called to tell me. I don't have TV service anyway."
Australia discovered him before South Africa. A handful of copies of Rodriguez's 1970 debut LP, Cold Fact, reached Australia months after the album bombed in America. One wound up in the hands of Australian radio DJ Holger Brockman, who began playing "Sugar Man" on 2SM radio in Sydney. Record stores started selling Cold Fact for upwards of $300, and Blue Goose records eventually released it to huge sales all across the continent. "Every single one of my friends had Cold Fact," says Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst. "We'd play Bruce Springsteen'sThe Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, Billy Joel's first album and Cold Fact."
By the late 1970s, Australian concert promoters tracked down Rodriguez in Detroit. He arrived in Australia with his two teenage daughters for a 15-date tour in early 1979. "He was just stunned by what we put together for him," promoter Michael Coppel told Billboard at the time. "He had never played a concert before, just bars and clubs." He played to 15,000 people in Sydney, almost as many fans as Rod Stewart drew a few weeks earlier. "The man himself seemed almost embarrassed onstage," noted Billboard. "He spoke no more than a dozen short lines throughout each show. When returning to the stage for an encore at his first Sydney show, he mumbled emotionally to his audience, 'Eight years later . . . and this happens. I don't believe it.'"
A live album from the tour was released in 1981, right around the time he came back for a second tour. This time he shared the bill with Midnight Oil at some gigs. "I thought it was the highlight of my career," Rodriguez says today. "I had achieved that epic mission. Not much happened after that. No calls or anything."
He's earning crazy money right now . . . Rodriguez's rediscovery by South Africans in 1998 allowed him to retire from the construction business. He returned to the country for shows every couple of years, and he also started gigging around Europe. Cold Fact was rereleased on CD and it slowly began finding an audience across the continent, though American success proved elusive. Searching for Sugar Man, however, changed everything, bringing Rodriguez to a previously unfathomable level of success. He was playing the 190-seat capacity Joe's Pub in New York under a year ago. He soon graduated to the 700-seat Highline Ballroom, and his shows at Town Hall (1,500 seats), the Beacon Theater (2,900 seats) and Radio City Music Hall (6,000 seats) all sold out in minutes. They just booked him at Brooklyn's 18,000-seat Barclays Center.
And that's just in New York City. He has over 30 shows across the world on the books right now, including Coachella and Glastonbury in England. "I call those money dates," says Rodriguez. "I have a lot of commitments, and the list keeps growing. We have to strike while the iron is hot . . . The money, I must say, is obscene." He's not kidding. A recent string of shows in South Africa netted him over $700,000.
. . . and he's giving away most of it. Rodriguez has lived in the same modest Detroit house for over 40 years. He has no car, computer or even a television. His daughter Regan forced him to get a cellphone a few years ago because she grew weary of driving around the neighborhood trying to track him down. "He lives a very Spartan life," says Regan. "I almost want to call it Amish. He once told me there's three basic needs – food, clothing and shelter. Once you get down to that level, everything else is icing."
He plans on giving much of his money to his three daughters and some old friends. "That's his philosophy," says Regan. "He takes great pleasure in giving it away, especially to people that supported him when he wasn't a big commercial success. I do really wish he'd spend some of the money on himself, though."
He nearly went to Vietnam. Despite being a pacifist, Rodriguez contemplated signing up for the army at the height of the Vietnam War. "It was the spirit of the times," he says. "They have a war every 15 or 20 years, and there's always a crop of youngbloods who don't know this is happening. They've been inspired by the media. I love my country. It's just the government I don't trust." He didn't end up actually enlisting. "I had to fight my brother twice over that," he says. "Also, I just got married, and they didn't take people that were married at the time."
He released a single in 1967 under the name Rod Riguez. In 1967, Rodriguez was working in a car factory and playing in Detroit's coffee houses and bars by night. Local producer Harry Balk caught one of his shows and recorded his Donovan-inspired track "I'll Slip Away" for Impact Records. (It was later re-recorded during the Coming From Realitysessions.) Balk changed his name to Rod Riguez. "It was his decision," says Rodriguez, still wincing at the memory of seeing his name whitewashed. "He thought it would be more attractive."
He originally refused to appear in Searching for Sugar Man. First-time Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul first heard about Rodriguez while traveling through Africa. He originally planned on creating a short film for Swedish television, but the project slowly grew into a feature film. He decided to tell the story from the perspective of the South African fans. "Why did everyone think Citizen Kane was a fantastic movie?" he asks. "It's because it was really smart. It didn't tell the story about this rich guy. It told the story of a journalist who is trying to tell a story about a rich guy. That was the thing that hooked me in the beginning, that this story would be different."
There was only one problem: Rodriguez was very reluctant to appear in the movie. "His kids told me I could probably meet him, but I shouldn't get my hopes up about an interview," says Bendjelloul. "I went to Detroit every year for four years. He didn't agree to be interviewed until my third visit. I think he only changed his mind because he felt kind of sorry for us. He saw how hard we were working and was like, 'I think I better help these guys.'"
He's going blind. Rodriguez suffers from glaucoma, and it has dramatically limited his vision. As a result, he moves very slowly when he walks, and he's usually clutching the someone else's arm. "I'm still able to make out some people in the crowd at my shows," he says. "It's a condition that can be treated, though early detection is very important. I can still get around, but I take things slowly." He calls himself a "solid 70 years old," and his family is concerned about the physical toll of his constant traveling. "I always worry about him, and his health is one of my main concerns," says his daughter Regan. "We book him first class and do everything we can to make it comfortable for him."
He has backing bands all over the world. Much like Chuck Berry, Rodriguez tours without a regular band. "I like to say that I do covers of my own songs," he says. "And I have about a dozen bands all over the world. That's no exaggeration. I have a South African band, an Australian band, Swedish bands, English bands, American bands. They're all notable musicians, too." On his recent Australian tour he was backed by the Break, which features former members of Midnight Oil. "His daughter Regan called us and she gave us a list of songs to rehearse," says Break drummer Rob Hirst. "We'll rehearse for a few hours when he comes into town. He doesn't like to rehearse, so we'll be flying by the seat of our pants at first."
He's working on his long-awaited third album. There are only two Rodriguez albums: Cold Fact (1970) and Coming From Reality (1971). His priority right now is touring, but he's also beginning to work on new songs. "I have a lot of titles and themes I've been working on," he says. "I played with an orchestra on David Letterman recently. After doing that I know I can go in with a super album idea." His daughter Regan hopes he follows through with it. "I'm super optimistic about that," she says. "If you had asked me in the past year I would have said, 'I don't think so.' But he's been talking a lot about it. We're even closer, but you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch."
I. Introduction - Thesis Statement (1 - 2 paragraphs)
Your introduction is like a sign post or a map at the beginning of a trail. It tells readers where you are going to take them, what ideas you will explore, and what they will see along the way. It should create a feeling of anticipation and interest.
Your introduction announces to your readers the thesis of your essay
- your thesis is the main idea about the film that you intend to prove through your essay's argument.
Ask yourself:
* What is my thesis?
• Who are my readers? What do they know and believe?
* Why is my thesis important? Why will anyone care to read my exploration of this thesis?
* How do I want my readers to respond to my thesis and to my exploration of it?
• Does my thesis statement identify my film's title, my film's dominant documentary mode
Pointers:
• Open your introduction with some background information that will lead the reader toward an
appreciation and understanding of your thesis?
* State your thesis at the end of your introduction.
• As you formulate your thesis, make a list of exemplifying points from the film. Organize those
exemplifying points into a logically flowing and persuasive argument that supports and proves your
thesis (see "ill. Body Part 1" below).
II. Film Synopsis (1 - 2 paragraphs)
The film synopsis simply describes the basic argument of the documentary and identifies the film's main social actors, main conflicts, and main course of events. The film synopsis does not include interpretation or analysis; it serves only to introduce the documentary to the reader who
has not seen it.
III. Body Part 1 (2 - 3 pages)
The body of the essay moves the reader along toward the goal ofyour argument, which is to prove your thesis. It will have a number of paragraphs, each paragraph related to one of your exemplifying points from the film which you want to explain to the reader along the way toward proving your thesis. Each exemplifying point will take more than one paragraph to develop completely. There should be connections or transitions made as you move from one paragraph to the next to help your reader follow the logic of
your argument.
Ask yourself:
• What exemplifying points do I want to explain in order to help my readers understand my thesis?
* What examples can I use from the film's stylistic, argumentational, and/or character designs to help my
reader understand each exemplifying point?
* What evidence do I have that each exemplifying point and its examples are reliable interpretations of
the film?
* Am I keeping the reader interested in following my development of my ideas?
IV. Body Part 2 - In-Depth Sequence Analysis (2 pages)
The in-depth sequence analysis is the detailed analysis of a representative sequence from the film which encompasses the fullest possible demonstration of the uses of the Two chosen Film techniques discussed in
Body Part I. The in-depth sequence analysis drives home the points of your arguments and claims in Body
Part I and reinforces the validity of your thesis statement.
V. Conclusion (2 - 3 essay paragraphs)
The conclusion is the end of the journey. It looks back on the points you have shown the reader, and
reinforces, but does not simply repeat word-far-word, the thesis. In other words, your conclusion
summarizes the main points and the logic by which your argument has proven your thesis.
Ask yourself:
• Has the reader's mind been changed by following my points and examples? How so?
VI. Works Cited (1 page not to be counted toward the 5 page essay requirement)
This assignment requires that the 3 minimum references (6 minimum for graduate students) be incorporated within the body of your essay. In other words, you will use your research references to support aspects of your argument by including direct quotations and/or concept references and roll will refer the reader to the publication source, authors and pages where the original quote or concept can be
found.
See MLA and APA Style Sheets for correct reference citation formats. You must consistently follow either the MLA or the APA format throughout your essay.
Before writing your essay, you will outline the logical sequence of your essay's argument as follows:
1. Introduction - Thesis Statement
II. Film Synopsis
III. Body Part I
A. Major Exemplifying Point I: State in one sentence the primary argument you will make in this
portion of the essay.
I. First supporting example
a. First supporting detail
b. Second supporting detail
2. Second supporting example
a First supporting detail
b. Second supporting detail
B. Major Exemplifying Point 2: State in one sentence the primary argument you will make in this
portion of the essay.
I. First supporting example
a. First supporting detail
b. Second supporting detail
2. Second supporting example
a First supporting detail
b. Second supporting detail
IV. Body Part 2 -In-Depth Sequence Analysis
Identified in your outline by its number and title that must correspond to the number and title given
