A California journey with Brian Wilson
Can a documentary be sad, frustrating and fascinating at the same time? The “American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-14, check local listings) presentation of “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road” is all three, and, as such, eerily appropriate to its subject.
Wilson’s story and the history and tragedy of the Beach Boys is among the most familiar legends in rock history. Three brothers from the outskirts of Los Angeles find they can harmonize and are schooled in music by their cruel taskmaster dad, Murray. Young Dennis convinces his older brother, Brian, that “surfing’s not a fad, it’s getting bigger every day,” and in a few short years, they join up with neighbors and cousins to form a band and sell songs of surf, sand, cars, girls and fun, fun, fun. This legend has been embroidered upon in any number of TV movies and major motion pictures.
What sets “Promised” apart is Brian Wilson’s active participation. He joins Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine for a drive around his old Beach Boy haunts, from beaches where he never surfed to the house where Wilson put a piano in a sandbox to another where he retreated for long stretches, paralyzed by creative blocks, drug abuse and breakdowns.
We quickly learn that Fine is not so much an interviewer or profiler but a gentle minder. Wilson is both fragile and mercurial. He asks Fine what he does when he gets frightened, intimating that he is scared most of the time. But he’s also a tyrannical DJ, insisting on the music Fine must play, only to snap at him to turn tunes off, sometimes only seconds into a song.
An intimate film, “Long Promised Road” offers no “expert” narration or voice-over authority, even though at times that might be illuminating. We hear from a chorus of Wilson fans of the highest order, from producer Don Was to singers Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Nick Jonas as well as conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
At times, it’s difficult to tell if Wilson is working from living memory or responding to an agreed-upon history.
Yet he says some odd things in this film that can seem jarring. At one point, Fine plays songs from the late Dennis Wilson’s 1977 solo album, and Brian claims he’s never heard them before.
There are other strange holes in the narrative. How can you talk about Wilson’s place in musical history and the role of the producer in creating a kind of musical landscape and not even mention Phil Spector? Like Wilson, Spector’s early genius gave way to erratic behavior.
Don Was praises Wilson for creating, or hearing, tones and textures in his head and translating them into new sounds in the studio. This observation arrives a few minutes after we’re informed that Wilson began to suffer auditory hallucinations by 1964.
Did one affect the other? Discussing that would perhaps turn this into a film about madness and mania and the destructive, debilitating storms that feed creativity.
Yet “Long Promised Road” is already a film about mental illness. Spend two seconds in the car with Fine and Wilson and that becomes apparent.