FILM4, CORNICHE PICTURES, PULSE FILMS AND THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE PRESENT IN ASSOCIATION WITH PHI FILMS AND GOLDIN FILMS A PULSE FILMS / JW FILMS PRODUCTION 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH A FILM BY IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD OFFICIAL SELECTION Sundance Film Festival 2014 - Winner Best Directing and Best Editing Berlin International Film Festival 2014 True/False Film Festival 2014 New Directors/New Films 2014 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 San Francisco International Film Festival 2014 RUNTIME: 97 MINUTES / NOT RATED CANADIAN DISTRIBUTION CONTACT Films We Like, Mike Boyuk, mike@filmswelike.com, 416.971-9131 (Canadian Publicity) Jasmine Pauk, jasmine@filmswelike.com, 416.971-9131 Download press kit and high rez images http://filmswelike.com/films/drafthouse/20000daysonearth filmswelike SYNOPSIS 20,000 Days On Earth is an inventive, lyrical ode to creativity and an intimate examination of the artistic process of musician and cultural icon Nick Cave. In their debut feature, directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard fuse drama and documentary, weaving a staged day in Cave’s life with never-before-seen verité observation of his creative cycle. It features those who have affected his life, including wry tales from the road shared with his regular collaborator, the multi- instrumentalist Warren Ellis; actor and friend Ray Winstone; and Kylie Minogue, who shared a duet with Cave in the breakout hit "Where the Wild Roses Grow." These voices from the past revisit Cave in daydream-like scenes as he sits behind the wheel, driving through his adopted hometown of Brighton, England. Neither a music documentary nor a concert film, 20,000 Days On Earth still contains electrifying performances. Audiences see a song grow from the tiniest of ideas to an epic performance at Sydney Opera House. Cave also opens up to a psychoanalyst as he discusses how his early years continue to inform his work, and journeys through his memories via mementos from his personal archive. This category-defying film pushes the form into new territory, exploring universal themes about artistry and celebrating the transformative power of the creative spirit. ABOUT THE FILM Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard have worked extensively with Cave on various projects over the past seven years and now know him very well. Cave says, “I’ve always liked their unorthodox approach to things and on a personal level we have always gotten on very well. I invited them into La Fabrique Studios to film some promotional footage for Push The Sky Away. As it turned out, in the end, they shot everything and the studio footage was so compelling we decided to expand the idea.” Forsyth and Pollard recognized that this invitation from the resolutely camera-shy Cave was an unmissable, unique opportunity. They started filming without a plan for what the footage might become, and with unprecedented access began to capture extraordinary moments of Cave’s creative process. “Nick’s surprisingly brutal with his ideas; songs mutate with speed and lyrics are slashed and forgotten,” says Pollard of the time spent filming in Cave’s office and the recording studio during the first half of 2012. “Instinctively we knew what we were shooting had to form the starting point for a film, so we began to dream up ideas of what that might be,” Forsyth adds. Cave next agreed to hand over his notebooks, which proved fertile ground for the filmmakers. “We were able to trace the transformation of his ideas,” says Forsyth. “We found disparate phrases which instantly sparked ideas that excited us. This included a calculation to work out how many days he had been alive on the day they started recording the album, next to the unusually coined phrase ‘20,000 days on earth’.” Pollard adds, “We began to work with the idea of what makes us who we are and what we do with our time on earth.” The phrase eventually spawned the opening line of the film and the pair resolved to structure the film around a fictional narrative of Nick’s 20,000th day. Cave adds, “This day is both more real and less real, more true and less true, more interesting and less interesting than my actual day, depending on how you look at it.” Taking the found phrases and ideas from the notebooks as starting points, the artists began requesting Cave to write short texts on prompted topics. An edited selection of these was to form the voice-over backbone of the film. Cave comments, “The ideas initially came out of them looking in my notebooks. They could see my interests, my concerns and they would ask me to elaborate.” “With Nick, we quickly arrived at this shared understanding that what we didn’t like about a lot of contemporary music documentaries was their presumed unobtrusive, observational style. That seeing the ‘real’ Nick Cave would somehow reveal something more about Nick Cave. Watching a rock star washing the dishes or taking the kids to school might be interesting to some on a vacuous star-spotting level, but it doesn’t intellectually engage you,” Forsyth explains. By remembering visionary films including Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains The Same, and Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One (Sympathy For The Devil), Forsyth and Pollard began to craft the visual and structural language they wanted to use. “With these films, the results don’t necessarily match the ambition of the vision, but they tell us that we should never sway from having crazy, bold intentions,” explains Pollard. They knew they didn’t want to make a reverential portrait of the artist, nor unmask him to reveal the ordinary. Instead, Forsyth and Pollard wanted to play with rock mythology and harness what is gloriously extraordinary about Nick Cave. “The thing that is remarkable, that is inspirational, the thing that affects you about Nick is his brain, his creativity, his ability to reframe and shape-shift the normal to make it truly vivid and moving,” says Pollard. “That’s what we wanted to engage you with. We wanted to portray the Nick that tells stories, that thinks, that weaves myths, the man who is constantly churning everything through the mill of the imagination,” Forsyth adds. 20,000 Days on Earth rails against the part of our culture that now normalizes genius and talent through TV shows such as American Idol. “There’s a strand of the culture that says almost anyone can do it; [almost anyone can] be made into a successful star,” says Pollard. “But I want us to celebrate those remarkable practitioners, the Cohens and the Dylans and the Caves, who have carved their own persona and path, who work magic with words and music.” Up to this point, Forsyth and Pollard had worked alone in order to minimize their impact on the dynamics of the writing and recording sessions. This was not the approach they wanted to take when filming their fictionalized day in the life of Nick Cave. “We believed that if we’re going to take up Nick’s time, if we’re going to take up our own time, then this needed to matter. It needed to be ambitious.” Stating their intent, Forsyth explains, “We took the idea to Pulse Films, brought in Jim Wilson and got the brilliant cinematographer Erik Wilson on board.” Was it liberating for Cave to have the pair directing this creative work and for him not to be in charge? Cave answers, “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. They have a huge amount of energy. They have worked hard on this film. It has been a privilege to watch people invest so much energy into something like this. Pulse and Film4 have been amazing as well, in the sense that they have stepped back and allowed Iain and Jane the space to do their thing. I’ve worked in film before and that’s not often the way that is. Iain and Jane have succeeded in getting what they wanted with very few compromises. That’s been one of the most heartening things for me. It has restored my faith in film! Most films in my experience are fraught with compromise. That’s the nature of filmmaking. I think they were given a lot of freedom to allow the film its ambiguities, its eccentricities and, most of all, the time for scenes to develop and breathe. It has a lovely air and space in it.” Forsyth and Pollard began talking to London-based production company Pulse Films because of their focus on thought-provoking and structurally adventurous films, such as Shut Up And Play The Hits, about the last days of the band LCD Soundsystem, and docu-drama Who Is Dayani Cristal? with Gael Garcia Bernal. The project immediately ignited the interest of Thomas Benski, Pulse founder and 20,000 Days on Earth executive producer. “We pride ourselves on being a place where brilliant filmmakers and great talent can combine to take creative risks in a way that still serves the market,” explains Benski, “which is why Iain and Jane’s collaboration with Nick felt like such a natural fit.” “What has always excited us at Pulse is to tell music stories differently, bringing them to life through truly original approaches,” says 20,000 Days on Earth producer Dan Bowen. “When we first started seeing material they had brought back from the studio, there was something so distinctive about it; it pointed to a clarity of vision and you could quickly begin to see the film they were imagining. Combine that with Nick as a subject and it was very exciting.” “The film world is very different from the art world in which we’ve grown up, and we’ve been astounded by the networks of support we’ve met at every level.