The New GOAT of Music Documentaries
Last week I was fortunate enough to witness the premiere of my new favorite music documentary, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel. Please enjoy my review… and just a heads-up, it contains some spoilers.
On a personal note, my respect and admiration for this band is massive. While attending high school in South Africa, all of us boys would huddle together at recess and listen to Chili Peppers music and create messy mosh-pit style clashes to the music. It was the soundtrack to my teenage years back home, and seeing the band’s origins portrayed so respectfully in this film was emotional. However, I truly believe people from all around the world will enjoy this documentary, even without knowing the band’s music.
The emotional depth in this documentary deserves enormous praise and acknowledgment. This said depth elevates the documentary away from just a mediocre ‘rock doc’, magnetically pulling the viewer into the storytelling with its immense heart; it’s a love story between the guys in the band. Specifically crushing is how it captures what heroin did to their band member, Hillel Slovak, and the accounts from the rest of the band as they reminisce about their grief and loss. They even recorded a four-hour interview with ‘Flea’ to use as a primary source (which was shot in one sitting), and this gives the documentary an incredible sense of authenticity and backbone.
Producer James Slovak (Hillel’s brother) credits the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck for the “chaotic” editing style used during the scenes depicting the band’s early club days in Los Angeles. Additionally, the work by animator Harvey Sherman here is amazing, bringing a layer of visual storytelling that captures the spirit of their early days.
During the Q&A, which I attended after the screening, the producers commented on how wonderful it was to work with a very decisive director in Ben Feldman. “He wasn’t shy about cutting amazing lines or parts they shot if he didn’t think they were central to the theme. He had the strength of character to not be negatively influenced by external factors”, said Slovak. If there was a great line but the story could still be told without it, it was dropped to the cutting room floor to keep the narrative lean and powerful.
Right before snapping a selfie with the producers, I actually got to tell them that this film encapsulates everything you want from a music documentary. “It was absolutely beyond special. This screening deserves a massive, Paramount Theatre-sized audience, not the small Alamo Drafthouse-sized theater it was given”, were my exact words to them… and they sincerely appreciated that.
The only critique I can think of is that I would have liked to hear more about the popular hits and the stories behind them. However, I understand the focus was strictly on the band’s origins and the Hillel story, which I did not know about.
You talk about the “good” documentaries and tell people to watch them. The “very good” ones, you might remember for quite some time. But the incredible ones, like this, are proverbially seared in your memory forever.