Although the guitarist John Scofield has been featured in various performance videos and interviewed in films about other artists over the years, he’s never been the subject of a documentary. Until now. The German filmmaker Joerg Steineck has produced and directed Inside Scofield, a documentary that follows the influential guitarist on a mini-tour of the West Coast with his Combo 66 group with Gerald Clayton (piano), Vicente Archer (bass) and Bill Stewart (drums). Shot in cinema verite style, Steineck also catches the self-effacing Scofield in idle moments away from the stage—walking around town, talking on a train, touring the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, and resting at his home in upstate New York. The result is an unvarnished look at one of the most influential and singular guitarists of his time.
I spoke with Steineck about his creative process in making Inside Scofield and his impressions of its subject.
Listen to our conversation, above.
Interview transcript:
Lee Mergner: Now, the first and obvious question for you, given all the time, energy and money it takes to make a film, why John Scofield as the subject?
Joerg Steineck: I always wanted to make a film about jazz. Jazz was all around the house and my childhood and my youth because my father listened to it a lot, and so I would listen to it too. It really stuck with me and it's probably one of the few genres that I can still listen to nowadays without getting bored. And then jazz guitar is special or unusual, I would say. And John's way of playing and the music that he was involved with stuck with me the most.
He's one of the greatest guitar players around today and very authentic. You get the real deal when you're listening to him. That makes it more interesting for documentary filmmaker. I love to do documentaries about creative people and people in general, but also uncommon people. I would count John as kind of uncommon in the way he plays and everything about him actually. I had an album of his, I think it was A Go Go in my early twenties. About 15 years later, my father showed me a concert on German TV and it was John. That really made an impression on me. He said he can look up [for John’s music] in his jazz collection. He came back with three albums I never heard about. Then he said, “You are making all these films about whatever, maybe you should make a film about him.”
Probably 10 years after that, when my previous film came out, I was doing some research for other topics and I found out that there wasn't anything about John. So I wrote him a message and he eventually replied. I showed him my last film, Los Sound Desert, the film about punk rock in the California desert. It impressed him in some way and then a year later, we met at one of his gigs and I thought, “Well, he's, he's quite a character.” It was something about his personality that really inspired me. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it, because I know from my last episodes with musicians how much work it is and how many compromises you have to make in order to make it good and honest.
One of the first things I noticed about the film is its emphasis on exteriors. So often jazz films capture performances, and they're often in the dark basement clubs, but in this film, there's a lot of footage of John walking about in the world. Why did you have that approach?
Jazz is such a vibrant genre and there's so much movement in general in the music. It never rests and always strives for moving onward and forward. I thought it needed this kind of energy at times, this moving quality that's also in the images and by showing him walking around his old neighborhood, for example, that has like a nostalgic quality as well. He's not just sitting somewhere watching the people passing by, but he's walking through it and he's kind of turning the pages of an old photo album, but he's still in the middle of it. It's kind of an analogy to life, but I don't think the whole film is just about movement. In contrast to that, there's also the reclusiveness at home where John enjoys the quietness after being on the road. Then of course there's the even harsher contrast by the end of the film when the imposed standstill of the pandemic happens, which is shortly represented in the film. It's also a film about contrasts. And what would be better than movement and standstill for that?
The film does have a real sense of place much more than time because you didn't do the strict chronological approach of showing John in his early years and how he evolved by tracing his career. You let him tell the story and in many ways narrate his own life. What was your thinking about that?
There was a lot of traveling and filming during these three weeks of constant tour with the band with many different locations, many venues, many people, and not necessarily in order to give the impression that there isn't too much chaos involved in this organized process. I wanted to show what John actually referred to, that sometimes you really forget where you are because you are in a different city each day and that kind of messes up your mind sometimes. I didn't experience that, but probably John does it a lot because he's touring so much. As a listener and observer, I had to wrap the topic in a way that, that seemed to be most honest and transcendent at the same time. I believe that there are more actual facts and reasons to be found in sounds and images and in the gaps between spoken words than in words themselves. To me, a subliminal understanding is just more interesting and revealing than watching a pictured CV. There's this little quotation by Miles Davis in the beginning. I really try to understand and use it. He said, “Don't play what's there. Play what's not there.” That's something that John is doing too. I think he learned that from Miles. I really try to make that part of the film as well. It’s the opposite of a common biographical documentary.
Yes, John narrates his own story and explains his life to us and his music to us. There’s no voiceover narration and you're not in it as well. Was that also a purposeful choice, because so many filmmakers seem to want to put themselves into these films with their subjects. You seemed very conscious not to be in it.
I think so. It was necessary to not show myself, to not break the narration concept. The immediacy of John's presence as a narrator of his own story, so to speak. As a filmmaker, you're already filtering and putting your own personality into it without even wanting to do so sometimes. In this case, you have to withdraw yourself from the subject completely, I believe. It is us witnessing him thinking about his life and what makes him go on the stage inside his mind and and soul. It's not so much a factual treatise. It's like thoughts and ideas on the go. Most of the time I didn't even cut out the parts where he stumbled verbally, because I thought that was necessary to include that. I think that gets closer to someone's personality and it reveals the way he plays.
You used animation as well throughout at different points. When did you feel like animation was really helpful to you to use in the film?
Using animation in in documentary film sometimes is a useful way to close gaps for footage that you don't have. I just used it here for a representation of teachers and authority like blackboards. In a way, those animations are animated blackboards, especially when John is talking about mathematical approaches to define music, which is kind of necessary, but also kind of observant at the same time. Of course, you have to learn notes to play, but the real playing comes out of an emotional process, another rational one. These animated blackboards are a symbol for narrow mindedness and bigotry in the field of music. It is a satirical and entertaining element. And nothing more.
You clearly had complete access to John. You were everywhere. There's one point where he's going to bed in his hotel room and you're filming it. Now that is total access. How much footage did you have after filming? How much time did you spend on this?
I can’t tell you how much footage I had in the end, but it was a lot. I went on tour with him and the guys for like three weeks. Sometimes you just think, well you are here with these guys now on tour and that's probably the only chance you have to get the stuff that you need for making the film work. That's like a conflict. You have to fight with yourself. Sometimes I had to force myself to stop filming because the more you film, the more you have to edit and look through. It doesn't really make much sense to keep on filming the whole time.
You did film a lot of them traveling because it's a tour and what people don't know is how much work that is. There’s one part where Vicente's bass got lost. They’re taking trains, they’re taking planes. It showed the world weariness that working musicians have. I assume that that was a real conscious thing. That you wanted to show that this is the life. It's not just playing up on stage. That's an hour or two, but there are all those other hours in the day.
It was a lot of traveling and many different locations and venues and things that you want to show in a film and makes it more colorful. As a filmmaker, you want to show all the great impressions that you were able to shoot in the film as well, because it gives it a visual richness and actual sense for time and movement and space. But, of course, you only have like one and a half hours to show all that. So there's a lot of footage that has to be cut out. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings to tell the story. Things that you really like as a camera operator, because that's who you really are during the time. The camera guy that follows the band. There's a lot of great footage that's been cut out just to keep the storyline. The locations are not just randomly connected, but important for me was to show the hodgepodge of being on tour.
You didn't use many talking heads, but you did film Pat Metheny talking about John. You kind of led with him. What was the reason for that that? Was it sort of putting a mark down.
The interview with Pat was pretty short, maybe six or eight minutes, and it was the last interview I did for Inside Scofield. The film was finished for a couple of months by that time. But what he said and the way he said it was very specific and he kind of put the whole film into a nutshell. The part I used stuck in my head for a couple of days afterwards. It sounded like an introduction to the film. The film originally started without anyone talking. Not even John, but this kind of leveled up the beginning and expressed the necessity to watch what comes afterwards. So it makes total sense.
The reason why I used only those tiny pieces of the interviews in the film was that I didn't want to break the general narration. I think it would've dragged you out of the experience of listening to John's mind too much. So I used just tiny bits, like little reflections, echoes in his mind. It's not really so important what they're talking about or what they're saying, but the way they're saying it.
What did you learn about John during this filming that you didn't know before? What surprised you in making this film about him?
Well, before shooting the film, I did a lot of research on John. So I think not a whole lot really surprised me about his career or the things that have been already exposed on YouTube. But of course, I was kind of surprised that he's such a down to earth guy and even if he gets so many compliments, he doesn't let his personality be intoxicated by that. I think that that's something really special about a person.
One thing I was curious about is what John thought of it, because I could imagine it must be really hard. When I asked him about it, he said I should talk to you, not him, about the film. Did John have any response to the film? Has he seen it?
I assume he has. He said he has and he actually told me that he really liked it. So I'm not questioning that. I know he's an honest person, so I think he's not lying about it.
How is the film available now?
It’s on Vimeo and we are working on releases on Prime, iTunes and Google Play at the moment. [Note: film is now available on those platforms.] Hopefully even more people who don't know so much about John yet will start to listen to him. I really hope so. And in the meantime, I'm trying to figure out where to dig my teeth into which topic.
Do you have anything specific picked or are you still sorting through that? Do you have a next film that you're set on doing?
Yes. I have a film about a country focusing a songwriter, which is kind of the opposite film of Inside Scofield. It's been shot before Inside Scofield, and it's been finished since a couple of months. It’s called American Dutch and it deals with all the bad things that can happen to you when you don't make it in the arts. It's also about the family burden, and the weight of the world that is put on you when you do something for life that is rather unusual or out of the ordinary. And while Inside Scofield is like an uplifting kind of success story, this one is quite the opposite. It's very harsh and sometimes even very brutal. And dark and very honest, even though it's a half documentary and half part of it is fictional. It's just about failure and the reasons not to condemn it.
People just don't know how difficult it is to make it or to make a career out of playing music. It's a hard road. It’s not easy on so many levels, whether it's the business and career side, the physical side of it, the health, the psychological thing of being rejected and also seeing other people get success and all that. I think it's interesting that you're going to show that aspect, because it's rarely shown.
Failure is much more common than success. It always was, and especially in the arts. That's what people sometimes seem to forget, like people who enjoy and consume art. There's a necessity to support artists and not to flail someone, or damn them down on internet because he or she couldn't deliver in time. That actually happened to me with Inside Scofield. Even if there's so much potential, the internet can be such a harsh and cruel place sometimes. So the message is to keep on supporting the arts.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
