We’ve been hearing about Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary since September 2007 when it was first announced.
While it’s birth has been a long one, amassing a portrait of such a figure is no small undertaking and Scorsese has been shooting interviews with key figures in Harrison’s life while making films like, “Shutter Island,” and often at the same time.
The good news is now the film has actually finished shooting, has a title, “Living in the Material World: George Harrison” — named after Harrison’s 1973 album — and is currently being shopped around in Cannes towards a 2011 release date.
Made in conjunction with Harrison’s widow Olivia, Scorsese (or a surrogate, Bob Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen conducted all the interviews with Zimmy for “No Direction Home”) interviewed an impressive assemblage of talent for the documentary, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Eric Idle, Tom Petty, Yoko Ono and Phil Spector (the latter of which produced Harrison’s seminal 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass). As you’d imagine the doc will contain lots of never before seen footage and according to Variety, Olivia Harrison, “spent countless hours pouring through her husband’s notes, cassette tapes and photos,” that the public has obviously never seen.
Scorsese has an affinity for rock documentaries, having already directed films about The Band (“The Last Waltz”), the aforementioned Bob Dylan doc (one that we put at the top of our Best Music Documentaries of The Aughts), the Rolling Stones (“Shine a Light”) and of course this current Harrison portrait. But the filmmaker just seems to love documentaries period and is currently at work on at least two others including a look at writer and acidic social commentator Fran Lebowitz and one created with longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker about the history of British Film (Schoonmaker was married to to British auteur Michael Powell, who co-created “The Red Shoes,” a magnificently sumptuous 1948 drama about ballet that Scorsese has helped restore and bring back to screens in the last year).
The doc will concentrate heavily on Harrison’s spiritual side (see the title), but will apparently span his time with The Beatles up to his death in 2001.
“No Direction Home” was an incredibly immersive and absorbing documentary that also took Scorsese several years to complete. The idea of the filmmaker delivering another deep dive into the life of another iconic musician — and one amassed by the same editor, David Tedeschi — is one that leaves us salivating like Pavlov’s dog.