War­ren Ellis and Andrew Dominik on This Much I Know to be True

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds had pur­sued an intre­pid path before War­ren Ellis added vio­lin to 1994’s ​‘Let Love In’. But once the Dirty Three founder and mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Ellis estab­lished him­self a de fac­to Bad Seed in 1997, the green shoots of a spe­cial rela­tion­ship appeared. Ambi­ent film scores and exper­i­men­tal side projects have fol­lowed, build­ing on the partnership’s ever-grow­ing résumé. This Much I Know to be True is film­mak­er Andrew Dominik’s sec­ond doc­u­men­tary look­ing at their work and fea­tures mate­r­i­al from their last two stu­dio albums, ​‘Ghos­teen’ and ​‘Car­nage’.

LWLies: How did shoot­ing This Much I Know to be True dif­fer from 2016’s One More Time with Feel­ing?

War­ren Ellis: I guess both doc­u­men­taries have a back­sto­ry of trau­ma. For this one, we’re all com­ing through a glob­al trau­ma with the pan­dem­ic. One More Time with Feel­ing dealt with Nick’s son [Arthur] dying, and it was a dif­fi­cult thing to make. Mak­ing it was just a fog. I real­ly loved that film, and only Andrew could have made it.

Andrew Dominik: In One More Time with Feel­ing, we’re see­ing a guy who’s been shat­tered by some­thing try­ing to work out how to take any kind of step for­ward. He’s say­ing the right things, but it’s pret­ty ten­ta­tive. I think that you’re see­ing some­one in this film who has not recov­ered, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but has inte­grat­ed it.

Nick Cave estab­lished his ongo­ing fan cor­re­spon­dence series, The Red Hand Files, in 2018. Was it impor­tant to you to cap­ture Nick’s reflec­tions on it?

AD: I was liv­ing with him in LA when he was real­ly get­ting into The Red Hand Files. He was more inter­est­ed in them than the music he was mak­ing. He would get a ques­tion, and, over the course of a few days, he would read me var­i­ous ver­sions of the response. I realised he was bring­ing his mind to heal. He must answer some­body respon­si­bly. This means he must think respon­si­bly. And it means that he isn’t let­ting insan­i­ty gain ground. He loves his fam­i­ly, and he wants to keep it together.

Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s appear­ance in This Much I Know to be True bring its Covid-era time­stamp into sharp focus.

WE: I find it to be one of the most mov­ing moments in the film. Even in her chair with Covid, she’s still total­ly in con­trol, and I love that. It speaks about friend­ship, what we’ve been liv­ing through, and the effects of it. Marianne’s so defi­ant. You can see that she’s real­ly strug­gling, but she’s actu­al­ly more Mar­i­anne than ever.

In the after­math of Nick’s loss, was it dif­fi­cult enter­ing the cre­ative space with him? You must have felt in a dif­fi­cult position.

WE: All you can do in that sit­u­a­tion is say, ​‘I’m there’. Beyond that, unless you’ve expe­ri­enced it your­self, you can’t dive into where they are. It’s about being com­pas­sion­ate. The sound of [2016 album] ​‘Skele­ton Tree’ wasn’t inten­tion­al­ly as it was to accom­mo­date what had hap­pened. Peo­ple com­plained with Skele­ton Tree that there were no beats, there was no tim­ing, and that nobody could play to any of it. Lat­er, I thought, ​“okay, I’m going to make a beat”.

How did you solve the beat conundrum?

WE: I was sit­ting around eat­ing lemon driz­zle cake with Mar­i­anne, and we would be watch­ing the most insane TV series togeth­er. She would fall asleep and go, ​‘What’s hap­pen­ing?’ I would go, ​‘Fuck, Mar­i­anne, you’re the one mak­ing me watch this! You’re mak­ing me suf­fer here!’

She also edu­cat­ed me on Shel­ley, Byron, and Keats. She would read their poems, and I would record them. When we start­ed mak­ing that record [Faithfull’s 2021 spo­ken word album with Ellis, ​‘She Walks in Beau­ty’], I decid­ed to use read­ings of poet­ry, flip them around back­wards, and detune them. That became the beat. The scene in This Much I Know to be True [where Faith­full appears] is part of the cre­ative process of ele­ments of that record.

Do you remem­ber when you first met Nick?

AD: The col­lab­o­ra­tion part start­ed with The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James. I need­ed a bar­room singer for ​‘The Bal­lad of Jesse James’. I knew he could do it with some vit­ri­ol, so I rang him. He then asked me if he could do the music for the movie. I didn’t know how to say ​‘No’, so I said, ​‘Yes’. It turned out to be a great deci­sion. That score is amazing.

WE: I met Nick in the ​’80s at a dealer’s place where I used to live, but we didn’t talk then. Then, in the mid-90s, we met through a mutu­al friend who arranged a din­ner for us. Nick sub­se­quent­ly invit­ed me into the studio.

How quick­ly did you realise that you would devel­op this high­ly fruit­ful partnership?

WE: It’s a kind of mys­tery: which col­lab­o­ra­tions work, and which ones don’t. I think around the time we did [the sound­track for] The Propo­si­tion it became appar­ent that we could make oth­er stuff togeth­er. It showed that we could move in oth­er ways musically.

Has there ever been a moment where you thought it might be over?

WE: I thought after [2019 album] ​‘Ghos­teen’ that it was the end.

Why?

WE: I remem­ber Nick looked at me when we did the play­back with a face I’d nev­er seen before. He just said, ​‘Fuck. We did it.’ I had this wor­ry sud­den­ly: maybe that’s the end. I always had this thing in my head that one day I’ll make some­thing great, and then that’ll be the end of it. Then I’ll open a fish and chip shop or some­thing. And that’s pushed me on for years. For­tu­nate­ly, we rolled into doing [the sound­track] for Blonde after that.

Andrew, speak­ing of Blonde, this project start­ed in 2008. You’ve lived with it for four­teen years. That must feel like a lifetime?

AD: (Sighs) Yeah, total­ly. I just couldn’t let go of Blonde. You have a lot of projects that don’t hap­pen. Some of them hold your atten­tion for a year or two and when some­one comes up with the mon­ey, you can’t be both­ered with it any­more. But Blonde was a movie that kept on giv­ing. I kept hav­ing ideas and I just couldn’t leave it alone. It’s the film I’ve most want­ed to make.

Why has Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe been such a com­pelling propo­si­tion for you?

AD: We know her life. The unloved child that became the most desired woman in the world. She didn’t see the world the way that it was, she saw it the way that she was, and that paid less and less div­i­dends and she killed her­self. It’s pret­ty com­pelling. Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe is about imagery, and that imagery has mean­ings that you can dis­tort. You can change the famil­iar and turn it into some­thing else, and that’s real­ly attrac­tive to me. The movie is great. It’s real­ly powerful.

WE: I think that’s Andrew’s mas­ter­piece. It’s unbe­liev­able. It’s some­thing else.

War­ren, how does the approach dif­fer between work­ing on a score and work­ing on a Bad Seeds’ album?

WE: For me, I go in the same: I take what­ev­er I can into the stu­dio, I set it up, I throw a quick prayer out to the gods, hit record and away we go. The music works with the image in the way that it would oth­er­wise work with the lyrics.

How do you view the future of your cre­ative part­ner­ship with Nick?

WE: I hope that we would be intu­itive enough to realise the day it’s not work­ing. So long as we’re both curi­ous and push each oth­er, then hope­ful­ly it’ll keep going. I’m 57, so what’s retire­ment? 65 or 70? I’d be quite hap­py going out onstage or peel­ing bananas for mon­keys in Suma­tra or get­ting back on the gear and going out in a blaze of glo­ry (laughs). I’m amazed I’ve had 30 years doing it. Hope­ful­ly, there’s some more left yet.