Gary Dretzka
Noah Forrest
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Douglas Pratt
Ray Pride

Leonard Cohen:
I'm Your Man

Of all the folk troubadours who worked the coffeehouse circuit in the ’60s, Leonard Cohen was the one who most obviously didn’t fit the mold of the blue-jeaned, shaggy-haired, guitar-strumming, peace-sign-waving, angry young man favored by the media.

Although his albums could be found alongside those of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Donovan and Joan Baez in record stores, Cohen’s messages weren’t topical in the limited definition of the word applied to the era’s “protest singers.” His poetics owed far more to Blake, Shelley and both testaments of the bible than Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and “On the Road.” At a time when fashion and sentimentality were being condemned as bourgeois affectations, Cohen was suave, introspective and unapologetically romantic.

Lian Lunson’s new film, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, examines the man, his music and the influence he’s had on a wide spectrum of younger artists. The centerpiece of the Aussie ex-pat’s admiring documentary is the tribute concert "Came So Far for Beauty," staged last year at the Sydney Opera House by producer Hal Willner. It features appearances and testimony by Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Antony and various members of the Wainwright, McGarrigle and Thompson families. For the grand finale, Cohen joins U2 on "Tower of Song"

Already a published poet, novelist and world traveler by the time “Songs of Leonard Cohen” announced the arrival of the Montreal native on the New York folk scene, Cohen’s subversive influence on impressionable young minds couldn’t be measured in arrests and blacked-out entries in an FBI file. The songs on the 1967 album demanded that listeners open their hearts and minds to the myriad options afforded by life and love in the 20th Century.

Cohen’s greatest commercial popularity came in the beginning of his singing career, with widely covered versions of “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire.” For the next 40 years, his journey to personal fulfillment would require him to navigate around all the usual potholes encountered by artists of stature. In his darker moments, he found relief not only in various potions and remedies, but also in the rarefied air of mountaintop ashrams and meditation.

In between infrequent album releases and tours, Cohen’s revenue flow would benefit from the halo effect of tribute albums (“I’m Your Fan” being the most eclectic, Jennifer Warnes’ “Famous Blue Raincoat” the most beautiful) compiled by his admirers. His music and cover versions of his songs could be heard in dozens of movies and TV shows, as well.

Vocal and instrumental versions of “Sisters of Mercy,” “The Stranger Song” and “Winter Lady” provided a sensual backdrop for Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller. It would be the first of many such soundtrack choices. The famously enigmatic “Suzanne,” for example, has been licensed for use dozens of times between Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore, in 1971, and the documentary, A Beggar’s Decision, released a quarter-century later. (The latter chronicles the life of fellow Montreal poet and musician, Philip Tetrault, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Cohen, an admirer of Tetrault’s poetry, also appears in the film.)

It took a while for music supervisors to discover “Hallelujah” – Patricia Rozema’s 1994 drama, When Night Is Falling – but it’s now been used in more than two dozen documentaries, films and television shows. The titles range from Shrek and Basquiat (John Cale’s version of the song), to The OC, The West Wing, Crossing Jordan, Without a Trace, The L Word, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Dead Zone, Joan of Arcadia, LAX, House and Falcon Beach (most often, Jeff Buckley’s rendition). At this rate, it will officially become a cliché in … well, it’s already a cliché.

Not only was “Bird on a Wire” heard in a romantic comedy starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn, and a made-for-TV film by Fassbinder, but it also gave both projects their titles. Christian Slater played Cohen songs to disaffected high school students in Pump Up the Volume, via his pirate radio station, while strippers danced to it in Exotica and Dancing at the Blue Iguana.

Like Nick Cave and co-producer Mel Gibson, Lunson discovered Cohen’s music at a time when it was being embraced by frequenters of Australia’s punk scene. In the documentary, Cohen attributes his niche appeal to the release of the widely reviled “Death of a Ladies’ Man,” which was produced by Phil Specter under extremely bizarre circumstances.

"At the time, I thought he was the coolest thing … dreadfully handsome … I’d sit and stare at his album covers,” enthused Lunson, over an amped-up variation of ice tea on the shaded back porch of Elixir Tonics and Tea, on Melrose. “We were all into punk music. But, after spending the night at a Melbourne club, we’d go home and listen to Cohen.

“He’s a sensualist … he reminds us of something we remember from long ago or would like to do. He offered the promise of something bigger and more interesting … out there … this was particularly appealing if you were from Australia.”

Cave would re-locate to Berlin, where, in 1987, he and his band, the Bad Seeds, would play themselves in Wim Wenders’ The Bad Seed. John Hillcoat, his collaborator on The Proposition, currently is on pre-production on another movie based on a Cave screenplay, Death of a Ladies’ Man.

Meanwhile, Lunson headed for Hollywood to pursue an acting career. Unlike Gibson, her dream of making it big would last “all of five minutes.” Instead, the rural Victoria native embraced work behind the cameras, producing commercials and music videos for such artists as INXS, Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Public Enemy and Dwight Yoakam.

In 1997, she formed her own production company, Horse Pictures. The company’s first major project would be a music video, short documentary and PBS film on country-music icon, Willie Nelson. To achieve the warm, good-ol’-Texas-boy tone she desired of Willie Nelson: Down Home, Lunson would be required to invest two years of her life in the musician’s traveling circus and medicine show, but it sounds as if she enjoyed every minute of it.

After Willner introduced Lunson to the music from the London performance of "Came So Far for Beauty," she agreed to shoot a reprise of the show in Sydney. It took a few more months worth of letter writing and lunches to convince Cohen to agree to be interviewed for I’m Your Man. Once that was accomplished, she enlisted another longtime friend, Bono, to back up his idol on the closing song, which was shot in a New York strip joint.

“When I approached Leonard to perform in the film, he said, ‘I don’t have a band,’” Lunson recalled. “Bono volunteered U2 for that assignment, and Edge carried the ball on the recording. They added "Tower of Song" to their playlist on the tour, so, when we brought them together in New York, everything was set up and ready to go.”

Cohen has avoided the road for the last dozen years. Instead, he sought peace and wisdom at the Zen Center on Mt. Baldy, an hour’s drive from downtown Los Angeles (five hours with traffic). He came down from the pinnacle in 1999, and wrote the songs for his last album, “Dear Heather.” His “Book of Longing,” a new collection of previously unpublished poems and drawings from his sojourns on Mt. Baldy and India, was released in May. He currently is weighing another tour.

At 71, Cohen remains handsome, healthy and “very private.” His “golden voice” is as a deep, dark and profundo as ever, if not more so.

Although Cohen doesn’t appear on the Sydney stage, his presence is palpable. The artists are reverential, but not so much that they appear to be intimidated by the material. Rufus Wainwright is especially animated, and everyone else performs as if the show’s a family affair, which, in a sense, it is.

Lunson photographed the concert in HD, and it looks great. Her team, however, was forced by Sydney Opera House management to remain invisible to the audience. The lack of crowd shots and swooping cranes will only disturb those who think a concert movie isn’t complete unless audience members are shown waving blazing Zippos and Bics in the air.

Lunson’s next project will be a theatrical feature, in which Willie Nelson and Katherine Helmond play carnies, and Dita Von Teese portrays an aspiring burlesque dancer. It’s Von Teese’s ethereal presence that adds a sheen of fantasy to the performance of “ Tower of Sound” at the end of “I’m Your Man.”

June 30 , 2006

- Gary Dretzka

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