Remember that “Largo” film we blogged about back in the day – a simple black-and-white performance-based documentary featuring mainstays of the L.A. hipster club like Fiona Apple, Jon Brion, Aimee Mann, my beawd huwts comedian Zach Galifianakis, E from the Eels, actor John C. Reilly, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, bluegrass trio Nickel Creek, indie violinist Andrew Bird, songwriter Colin Hay, comedians Patton Oswalt, Flight of the Concords and Sarah Silverman, Grant Lee Phillips, Sara Watkins, David Garza, Tom Brosseau, Bic Runga and many, many more?
Directed by Largo club owner Mark Flanagan and filmmaker Andrew van Baal the doc, recently screened at the L.A. Film Festival, and more details have been revealed. One, we had wondered aloud if dearly departed singer Elliott Smith would be feature in the movie, as the initial reports didn’t list him (and he played a few legendary sets there), and the L.A. Times confirms that Smith does indeed appear in the film playing solo piano at the beginning of the film.
Largo, which had been open for some 12-years, recently moved locations, which probably makes the timely documentary release all the more special.
van Baal said the original inspiration for the film came from the impressario Flanagan who in turn was encouraged by director Paul Thomas Anderson an executive-producer on the project according to the L.A. Times.
“Anderson saw a DVD of some early shots/edits and felt that it should be a movie as opposed to clips on a website or a TV show or whatever,” van Baal told IndieWire.
The filmmakers would like this doc to be seen outside of film festivals. “We might retain rights to screen it ourselves or bring it to other festivals or colleges,” Flanagan told the L.A. Times. “Just so that it won’t [become] another obscure DVD thing.
PS. on a personal note? We were at Largo in February of 2003 and who walked in as we were walking out very randomly? Kanye West. We reported this the next day for MTV in a brief, “hey, could Kanye West and Jon Brion be working together?” and it turned out to be true. We were kinda proud about getting to that one first, as it was rather large news.
[ed. now that we’re looking at it, we realize the, ‘could they be working together’ part got cut out, but still, we know what time it is]