Sam Jones made a film about Wilco

Thrasher Magazine, May, 2003

BOB MOULD SAID OF ZEN ARCADE before its recording that "...it's going to be big--bigger than punk rock." And although fellow Midwestern band Wilco's 2002 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn't a hardcore album to be recorded in a one-take session followed by a 40-hour mix marathon, both records share some commonalities: Skeletons of folk-like ballads and pop sing-a-longs treated with sonic dissonance--Husker Du with beautiful fuzz and bath bands with other arts of noise. The songs on these are as infectious as anything you've ever heard, and upon release both were hailed "record of the year" by many.

The similarities almost end with the music industry Zen Arcade was released on the primarily independent label SST in 1984 (the Huskers would end up an Warner as well one day), and although a double album wasn't the most cost-effective, SST was happy and proud of it. But when Wilco delivered YHF to the Warner-owned Reprise... Silence on the other end. Unlistenable, unmarketable. Changes please, asked Reprise. Wilco wouldn't budge.

ENTER SAM JONES: Skateboarder, musician, photographer, director, music fan who wanted to make a movie about Wilco's record from beginning to end. He captured the entirety of the YHF story, from the loss of band members to the drop from Reprise, to the eventual ironic signing to Nonesuch (another label under the Warner umbrella) for three times the money. The film is l Am Trying To Break Your Heart, out on DVD in April. It's the story of David and Goliath played out to some very pretty noise, a recent history that will be told for a long time. --Ryan Henry

In your journal on wilcofllm.com you mention that you used to be really into skating.

Yeah, definitely. I lived in Fullerton growing up and one of my best friends was Neil Blender. There was a ramp in Fullerton--Lester skated there, a bunch of people from that era. That was my life for a long time, then I got tall and started hurting myself.

What was your first set-up?

A Dogtown Wes Humpston with Kryptonics, probably Trackers. Then I had a Steve Alba Santa Cruz, that yellow and black one, and a bunch of Neil boards. I had a Christian Hosoi, remember the first one with the Rising Sun on it? I don't have those anymore, but I do still have a funky Neil proto-type.

Did you get into photography because of skateboarding?

I did. Nell was into photography and I rode motorcycles with him and his brother, we rode trials. The three of us did a lot of hanging out at their house. I took my first photography class in college, and my first picture turned in was a huge Nell ollie on the big side of Sadlands. Neil and I went and cemented the crack so we could skate the big side. We were pretty into it.

Now you shoot photos professionally?

For magazines and advertising, movie posters. And I direct some commercials. That was kind of howl started to make the movie--once I made a few commercials I realized it wasn't that different from photography, and I'd learned a lot about editing from cutting down two hours of footage to a 30-second commercial. So I started feeling I could do it.

Then one morning you woke up and decided to make a film about Wilco.

Well, I saw a really great show of theirs at the Bowery Ballroom in NY I thought, "Man, someone should do a film on this band... I should do a film. Let met find out if they're into it." 'Cause I was thinking it was probably about the time they should be getting back in the studio. It started with small aspirations, I was just going to try and hang out in their recording sessions and follow the path of the songs from being written to being recorded, to everything It got bigger, obviously...

Would you have included more of the technical aspects of recording Foxtrot had the drama not unfolded?

The biggest challenge with that stuff is that it's not too exciting of a process to film. I've seen these re-tread movies where they pull out a "great" album from the past, take the band back in and bring the tapes up, then sit around the mixing board and they all talk about it. It's just not that exciting, so it's funny how much mixing did end up in the movie, with the argument in the mixing room [scene]. The reason it works is because--and this is what I learned filming--it doesn't matter what the characters are doing necessarily, it matters if you care about them. By that time in the movie, you know enough about these guys and you care about them enough to be able to watch this argument over the minutia, and it has all these layers of subtext because of what you know. In the beginning I think people make the jump up of "He found all this drama and he abandoned his original idea." I had planned all the time to talk to the people at the record company and to follow the record through the marketing process an d the publicity process. It just so happens that things in that area got dramatic. I didn't want to make the film just about the making of the record. When I say the 'making of the record," I mean all of it.

After the band was dropped, were you there for the actual shopping-around-for-a-new-label?