DCist Interview: Patterson Hood

What was the genesis of the film? Did the director, Barr Weissman, approach you, or was it the other way around?

We were playing the 9:30 Club in '04, we'd just put out The Dirty South, and we were having a really, really rough tour. It was one of the tours the way we used to do it, when we'd just get in the van and be out for weeks. We were in our sixth or seventh week nonstop away from home, my back had gone out, and I was real sick. It was a miserable time.

So we get to D.C., and this guy sends word backstage that he wants to talk to me about a proposal for a documentary. I didn't want to talk to him because I felt like hell. But he said, "If I can just have five minutes of your time, I promise I'll leave you alone."

That was Barr Weissman, who has turned out to be one of the nicest, coolest people I've ever met. In five minutes, he completely sold me not only on the idea, but on his vision of how to do it, and that he was the person to do it. If he'd read my mind he couldn't have come up with a more perfect pitch. Everybody met him shortly after that, and everybody came to the same conclusion I had about him.

He sent me a box of mostly VHS tapes of movies he had made before, his other documentaries. Every one of them was amazing, and none of them was music related. It was the polar-opposite end of the documentary spectrum from movies about rock bands. I liked that.

What did he say to convince you in five minutes to go along with his movie?

He was upfront, like, "I don't want to do a VH-1 Behind the Music type thing. I don't care about your battles with record companies, or even each other, or the seedy side of rock and roll on the road. I was one of those people that as a teenager, rock 'n' roll saved my life. It was where I found out what I wanted to do, and my identity: from going to rock shows as a kid. You sing about that in your songs." Which we do, a lot, because we were all those kinds of kids, too. He said, "I want the movie to be a love letter to that kind of rock and roll, starring your band." Wow.

I'm a lifelong movie nut. I'm probably as crazy about movies as I am about rock. They're definitely my two big loves. [A documentary] was always something I figured would happen one day if we met the right person who wanted to do it in the right way, but I wasn't really thinking about it that early.

So he started filming us in January of '05, and pretty much followed us around for three years. Not nonstop or anything, but he would show up -- we'd usually know he was coming, but occasionally he'd surprise us. He followed us all home for Thanksgiving one year and talked to our families. He wanted to really delve into where the songs came from and where we come from, as people and artists, how that relates to the music. To me, it seemed like a unique approach to a band movie.

Over the course of those three years, our band hit a pretty rocky period. We went through the whole thing of [third singer/guitarist Jason Isbell] and [bassist Shonna Tucker] getting divorced and Jason leaving the band. Then the making of A Blessing and a Curse, which was a troubled record from the start, all the way through it coming out and the tour. So that's all in there, too, even though it's not about that. When I talk about the movie, it's almost like I'm talking about somebody else. Even though it's me and us in there, we've all moved on and things have gotten better.

Have you seen the Wilco documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart?

Yeah. It's excellent.

Your description reminds me of that that one, where Sam Jones went in just intending to do a little movie about a band he likes making a record, and instead he ends up getting all this dramatic stuff: Jay Bennett getting fired, the band splitting from their label. I talked to Jeff Tweedy last summer, shortly after Bennett died, about those arguments between him and Bennett that are in the movie. Tweedy spoke about it from a kind of remove, like you just did. Like it was something that'd happened to someone else.

You almost have to. When Barr finished the film, he wanted us each to see it so we could essentially give him our blessing. It's his film. He had final cut. But at the same time, he ended up with more than he set out for, too. He wasn't trying to do a film about us fighting. But it happened, and it's in the film. He didn't want it to be something we were all ashamed of. We never asked him to change anything. The only thing I ever asked him to do was to continue filming a little bit longer.

He had originally wrapped it up at the end of the Blessing and a Curse tour. At that point in time, I wasn't sure we were going to stay together. We were very precariously poised on the brink of maybe just calling it a day, going home and finding something else to do. Once we decided we were going to continue on, I did go to Barr and say, "If you end this movie right there, it's gonna fuck us a little bit. You've got to keep filming a little longer and show what happens next, with us and with Jason. That's all I ask. If we end up breaking up in the next six months, at least you've got an ending to your film."

As a movie lover, I have no problem with the ambiguous ending. But it being our lives, that was a little too ambiguous, right there. [Laughs.]

So you persuaded him to stick around and keep shooting?

Yeah. He filmed some footage when we came back to town the next year doing The Dirt Underneath, and I think he filmed us in Baltimore that year. He got some footage of Jason with his new band. So it does at least point in the direction of where we've gone.

Now enough time has passed that I wouldn't be that uptight about it anyway. Because it has all worked out good. Everybody is in a much better place now. When he finished it, he wanted everybody to see it, so we all took it home and watched it separately. Shonna was like, "I watched your movie, and you have my blessing, as long as I never, ever have to see it again." So she won't be attending the premiere, and fair enough. It's just a little too much of her life in it, I think.

That's understandable, if disappointing just because her singing and songwriting have started to become so much a part of the band.

Oh, yeah. And unfortunately, that doesn't really get touched on. It might be hinted at, but that's happened, really, since the filming of the movie. That's one of the happy endings!

That title, The Secret of a Happy Ending, has a lot of a levels to it, for me. It was an unhappy time, a lot of when he was filming. That line came fromfrom our song, "A World of Hurt": "The secret to a happy ending is knowing when to roll the credits." Even the line in the song has a certain, almost, sarcasm. But the band is doing great. Jason is doing great -- his record [Sirens of the Ditch] was really acclaimed, he's got a great band [Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit]. And Cooley and I -- hell, this is our 25th year. So that's all part of the happy ending.

Was there ever a moment when you had to ask Weissman to turn the camera off?

We had to run him out of the studio when we were making A Blessing and a Curse. We had initially told him he could come in for three days. We were there for two weeks making the record. We figured three days would be enough time to get everything he needed, but not cramp us in the studio.

We ended up asking him to leave after the first day, and he was not happy about it. That was the only really rough snag in the whole three years of the movie, and it came early. This was June or July of '05. He was like, "Is this how it's gonna be? Are you gonna shut us out whenever it's not convenient?"

I told him, "No, it's not like that. But our absolute first responsibility is too each other." As it turns out, he was there the best possible day he could have been, in terms of getting footage. He was there when we cut "Feb. 14" and "World of Hurt," which are pretty much the bookends of that record, and the extremes of the record. You can definitely see hints of trouble brewing in what he caught there. None of us wanted to star in a remake of Let It Be. The mere fact that cameras were there was bringing things to a head faster.

I knew early on that we were in trouble, but what do you do? We had studio time booked. We were touring so heavy in those days that the bus would literally drop us off at the studio, we'd unload and record for a week, then the bus would come back and we'd be right back out on the road. And I had a newborn at home, and a very unhappy wife.

So you threw him out, and then a year, year-and-a-half later you're asking him to stay six more months. That means another long stretch before there could be even any possibility of him being paid for his work.

He did us a big favor on that. It's never been talked about after we had that discussion. I went to him and pleaded my case. I know he probably wasn't happy about it, but he never dwelled on that. I think he'd have to agree now that his movie is better for it. 2006 would not have been, for us, a good place to end something called The Secret to a Happy Ending. [Laughs.]

Was that title was already in place back then?

Pretty early after we cut that song, yeah. After we threw him out of the studio, I felt bad about doing that. I wanted to reassure him that we were still committed to letting him do the movie, and that we hadn't wasted six months of his life. So I emailed him to tell him that, and in one of those e-mails, I suggested the title.

I'm hoping the movie gives us some insight into the mind of the elusive, laconic Mike Cooley. You tend to do the talking for the band, but your band played what were, I think, a historic pair of shows here last year: The only two DBT gigs your 15-year history featuring Cooley as frontman. It was just about a year ago, when you missed a weekend 9:30 residency due to pneumonia.

I would love to have been able to see those shows. I would have preferred to have been there playing, but I was sicker than I'd ever been in my life. I know one thing: Cooley's been a little nicer to me since then. [Laughs.]

The Secret of a Happy Ending screens Sunday at 5:30 and 8:30 at the AFI Silver Theater. Tickets for the screening originally scheduled for 9:15 p.m. on Feb. 5 will be honored for the 5:30 show; tix for the midnight screening Feb. 5 will be honored at the 8:30 screening. The Q&A with Hood, Cooley, Morgan, and Weisman will follow the 5:30 screening. Both are currently sold out, but the AFI encourages would-be attendees to check back throughout the weekend as tickets may become available. Get tickets here.

The Drive-By Truckers' new album, The Big To-Do, is out March 16 on ATO records. You can hear the first single, "This Fucking Job," for free here.