By Brian Duff
Rock The Bells is a chaotic documentary that takes its viewers behind the scenes of concert production and promotion. Its sheer urgency makes the film a fitting de facto postscript on the life of Wu Tang Clan’s famed lyricist Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB), who died several months after filming. The seminal nine-piece hip hop act had long been the bane of promoters everywhere – especially with respect to ODB, whose erratic public behaviour and drug dependencies made him an obvious liability. “We fought really hard to try to find somebody to finance this in some way before we shot the doco,” co-director, Denis Henry Hennelly, says on the website, wutangcorp.com, about Rock The Bells, a look at the eponymous music festival. “We were constantly told, ‘Oh, yeah, we heard about that show, but we don’t want to put any money into it, because it’s The Wu-Tang Clan and they won’t show up.” We were always thinking that it would be just as interesting if they don’t show up, regardless of what happened. That was never really a concern for us, whether or not they would be there.”
It would not be enough for this film to be a simple concert doco, and it thankfully exceeds all expectations, proving once again that documentary making must be fluid to make use of the interesting subjects at hand. Conceived with unfathomable bravado by promoters, Guerrilla Union, and its main man, Chang Weisberg, the first Rock The Bells hip hop festival was to include the entire line-up of Wu Tang Clan onstage for a rare and gritty live show. Through reckless determination and an unflagging willingness to cater to ODB and his crack habit, Weisberg, Hennelly, Suchan and the production team bring something special to the screen. Rock The Bells is infectious, nerve-wracking and often hilarious. “One of the important things for us was that the movie had a sense of humour, because hip-hop is presented in the media with a lot of posturing that isn’t really what we’ve seen in the art form during the few years that we’ve spent making films about it,” says Hennelly. “It’s a really human, really emotional, really open community, and it has a sense of humour about itself that isn’t really in the media, so that was something that we always wanted to show.”
Rock The Bells is screening as part of GOMA’s “Get What You Want: Music Cinema” programme, which runs from September 2-October 2. To buy tickets to Rock The Bells, click here.
