“Dave Chappelle’s Block Party” (2005)
Enough has been written about Dave Chappelle as mythologized comedy enigma, vanishing from his own acclaimed show in 2004 until his tentative recent reappearance. “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party,” shot by Michel Gondry shortly before his retreat from the limelight, captured Dave Chappelle as the ordinary guy he has so badly wanted to be, except that he’s the kind of ordinary guy who can decide to throw and fund a free block party in Brooklyn featuring Mos Def, a Fugees reunion (then the first time they’d been seen together for seven years), Erykah Badu, Common, the Roots, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez and Kanye West (back when he was A Very Interesting Rapper rather than God-Emperor of the Known Universe). Also a college marching band Chappelle picked up more or less by accident, on camera, back home in Ohio. They all play a street behind a community centre in Bed-Stuy, and Chappelle is at pains to show how at home he is in urban Brooklyn and in the small-town Ohio of his youth. The result is a freewheeling, fresh-feeling concert movie MC’ed by Chappelle, who does skits and chats directly to camera as he preps the party: Gondry shot much of it handheld, walking down the street with Chappelle at the height of his fame. It’s a slight shame that several of the songs aren’t shown in full, but there’s so much material to get through that it’s an understandable decision. Hip-hop seems like it’s been oddly underserved by the concert movie, but this (and “Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That,” elsewhere on this list) are honorable and enjoyable exceptions. Perhaps Chappelle would like to celebrate his return to performing by throwing another party like this?
From the Playlist to your playlist: Kanye doing “Jesus Walks” backed by the Roots; John Legend and an entire marching band; “Killing Me Softly,” following on from the Fugees’ conversation backstage about how they can’t quite believe they’re all back together.
“Woodstock” (1970)
When Michael Wadleigh, having seen D.A. Pennebaker’s “Monterey Pop” film of the 1968 Monterey festival (which just missed being on this list), heard that a few thousand hippies were planning on getting high and listening to some music in upstate New York one weekend in August 1969, he figured someone should take a camera up there and see what was going on. When he got there, he found 400,000 people in a sea of mud and goodwill, slowly realizing that they had all showed up to the defining moment of ’60s counterculture. Wadleigh got to work, and ended up with more than 120 hours of footage, which he eventually wrestled into a 3 hour film with the help of rookie editors Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, whose experience served them well when it came to making “The Last Waltz.” It was Scorsese, supposedly, who came up with the groovy use of split-screen to utilize as much of the footage as possible, and to show the performance and, simultaneously, the audience reaction. Even so, there was so much going on at the festival—and Wadleigh was so keen to get wonderful spaced-out, time-capsule vox-pops from the people in the crowd—that he couldn’t even fit in performances from, for instance, the Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar or Creedence Clearwater Revival. Still, you’ve got The Who, Crosby, Stills & Nash (Neil Young, for some reason, refused to be filmed), Santana, Sly and the Family Stone… and the final, 8 AM-on-Monday appearance by Jimi Hendrix, by which time half the crowd had gone home or passed out. Luckily, we have Wadleigh’s film to record it all for us. If you have the time, the 4-hour director’s cut is, for once, even better.
From the Playlist to your playlist: Hendrix’s segue from “The Star-Spangled Banner” into “Purple Haze”; Joe Cocker’s epic, ultra-heartfelt rendition of “With A Little Help From My Friends.”
“Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That” (2006)
The concert documentary is such an obvious idea that it’s difficult to know how to do anything new with it. You point some cameras at a show, maybe shoot some behind-the-scenes stuff, and then you’re done. Attempts to reinvent the wheel can be admirable, but sometimes go wrong—you won’t find Pink Floyd’s “Live at Pompeii” on this list because filming a concert played to an empty amphitheater isn’t brilliant, it’s stupid (and so is intercutting slow pans across Roman mosaics—it only looks like it means something). But in 2006, some time after they’d stopped feeling especially culturally relevant, the Beastie Boys had an interesting idea that actually does mostly work: let the audience make the film by distributing 50 camcorders into the crowd and editing together the resultant footage. Then they slapped a title on it that really gets the concept across. Inevitably, it’s scrappy as fuck—even professionals would have trouble getting a decent shot while being jostled by yuppies reliving their misspent 80s summers—but that adds to the energy and immediacy of the whole thing, and the mild ridiculousness of the Beastie Boys themselves is refreshing seen through such a literally amateurish lens: the guys on stage look just as homebrewed as the footage, except for how they’re actually absurdly talented rappers. The fans had fun too, above all the guy who filmed himself taking a bathroom break: he must have assumed that bit would be cut, but hell no it wasn’t. And, indeed, spare a thought for the editing process here too, which must have been nothing short of heroic. Someone ought to repeat this idea, now that you could get not just 50 camcorders’ worth of footage but video from every audience member’s phone.
From the Playlist to your playlist: the sheer shameless fun of “Pass the Mic”; “An Open Letter to NYC” performed right there in the city like it should be.