In Great Nick - Nick Cave Documentary

“It wasn’t until the film was accepted at Sundance to premiere in the World Documentary category that we realised we'd made a documentary!” admits director Iain Forsyth. “The subject is real and the film contains a great deal of truth, so on some level it clearly is one. But it has been called docu-fiction, fiction, drama, docu-drama."

“Psycho-drama – that was our favourite!” chips in partner Jane Pollard.
The two are discussing their latest creative outing 20,000 Days On Earth, an imaginary 24 hours in the life of Nick Cave, for which they landed the Best Directing gong at Robert Redford's aforementioned independent film festival in Utah.
“Coming from a visual arts background we were wholly uninterested in making a standard conventional documentary and Nick has turned down hundreds of those offers previously,” says Jane. “He didn’t want a self-serving, back-slapping endeavour or an earnest reflective film. Nick is a very forward-looking person. It had to be a film about right now, capturing what he’s doing, the record he’s making.”
In fact, 20,000 Days... has its roots in the directors being asked to shoot behind-the-scenes footage for current album Push The Sky Away. Having worked with Cave previously on several videos for the Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! long-player and material to accompany album re-masters, they were in a unique position of trust.
They conceived and wrote the film, which is entirely unscripted with the exception of small sections of narration by Cave. They use clever devices to draw optimum output from their subject, such as pairing him with a therapist  for an insightful exchange rather than with a lowly journalist.
“Even the most casual Nick Cave fan knows that Nick’s had a chequered history with the media,” says Iain. “The psychoanalyst in that scene, Darian Leader, is a friend of ours and we just had a hunch that he would have a unique approach in speaking to Nick. We wanted to create a conversation that would not only be very interesting to us as the audience, but interesting for Nick as an artist.”
The pairing proves successful as Cave speaks candidly about his childhood in Wangaratta, early romances and the impact of his father reading the opening chapter of Lolita to him when he
was 12.
Further insights are provided when Cave chauffeurs Ray Winstone, Kylie Minogue and former bandmate Blixa Bargeld around his adopted hometown, Brighton.
“They each offered us a different facet of Nick’s personality,” explains Jane. “With Ray there’s no bullshit; you can’t get away with anything with him, he’s very down to earth. The exchange with Kylie is quite tender. We chose Blixa because we knew there would be an elephant in the car so to speak, which was, 'Why did he leave the band?' That’s never really been answered. We wanted to set up the possibility that that might be addressed in some way.”
The most revealing scene in the film, which Cave apparently found ‘monstrous’ on viewing, is a segment in which he watches Scarface eating pizza with his twin sons. How did they get Nick to agree to that?
“We paid for the pizza,” deadpans Iain.
“I think they do that quite regularly, they call it ‘inappropriate film night’ where he’d show them a film that was a bit too old for them, but a really great one worth watching,” says Jane.
“That scene on the sofa was about hinting at this idea that the Nick you see sitting there with his boys is the same Nick you see on stage,” explains Iain. “He’s not one of these rock stars that turn something on on stage and become something completely different when they go home.”
Indeed the most striking thing about the film is how Nick Cave-ish Nick Cave actually is; the man is the persona.
“He is what he’s created, he is exactly that,” nods Jane. “He has alchemically chrystallised into that character.”

20,000 Days On Earth opens on September 19