pitch 8+ hour documentaries you would watch for your favorite bands

so the Beatles Get Back inspired this, but what other 8+ hour documentaries, if possible, would you want to see for your favorite bands? and what would you want to see in it?

some of mine...

Slayer - would love to see 10 hours of them writing Hell Awaits, footage of them touring from various restaurants, also want to see footage of them eating at various restaurants to get an idea what food they ate. and also i want footage of the infamous incident of Tom Araya pissing in Crono's hair and getting punched.

what would you all watch?

scrap the first "from various restaurants", rewrote the post a few times and that got left in there.

bob seger

rolling stones, early brian or sticky fingers/exile/etc

rod stewart/faces

bruce springsteen

joni mitchell

madonna

inxs

sly stone

honestly I don't think I'd watch an 8 hour doc of any band

I’d watch 8 hrs of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpzmoBniw_I

Maybe Bach or Gustav Mahler

Duke Ellington

Long Strange Trip was pretty good. It's hard to think of many bands that can carry an 8 hour doc though. Dead worked particularly well because of the entire culture and economy that developed around the band, affording a lot of material.

David Bowie would be good.

Death

You could probably do an eight-hour Neil Young documentary, devoting an hour to each:

1) coffehouse years/Buffalo Springfield
2) Everybody/Gold Rush/Harvest
3) CSNY
4) Ditch Trilogy
5) Zuma-Reactor
6) Geffen wasteland
7) Freedom/Ragged Glory/grunge avatar
8) everything since

fugazi, even though i already have instrument which feels like 8 hours long

Death

― brimstead, Saturday, November 27, 2021 11:37 PM bookmarkflaglink

awwwwwww yea

btw don't forget to mention what you'd want the 8 hour doc to cover!

think i would watch almost any band practice/write songs together for eight hours, idk why

i kinda would love to see the lyric writing process for Cannibal Corpse

lol yes

Would gladly watch an 8 hour documentary of a coked up to the eyeballs Bowie at Cherokee Studios magicking Station To Station out of thin air.

I would watch a Jeanne Dielman-style 8 hour movie of Keiji Haino just going about his day - picking out the perfect pair of black pants, polishing his cane collection, eating chocolate cake, and then at the end plugging his guitar into a wall of amps and destroying the world.

Is this new version of "Get Back" really 8+ hours long?

Hüsker Dü recording Zen Arcade.

Duke Ellington

Seconded. It would be difficult, given how little film there is of him, relatively speaking, until the mid-‘50s or so, but it seems bizarre that there hasn’t even been so much as a middling biopic on Duke.

Watching Get Back, while I am mostly enjoying it, I feel like maybe I’d be more interested/invested if I was a bigger Beatles fan. So I thought, hm, would I want to see 8 hours of my favorite band doing a mediocre last-gasp record? And I realized, yeah, if filming had taken place, I would totally watch 8 hours of the Who making Who Are You.

I'd watch 8 hrs of Fleetwood Mac making Tusk, Minutemen making Double Nickels, or Frank Zappa making Uncle Meat.

WURZELS

Or Peter Jackson being tortured to death

Or Peter Jackson being tortured to death

Etc

he should have died retired after making Bad Taste

Nah Meet the Feebles was his pinnacle

I'd still rather have 8 hours of Beatles than 248 hours of hobbits tbh.

potato potato

Just a reminder the United Artists originally acquired the rights to LOTR as a vehicle for the Beatles.

"Dear Gollum"

Talking of UA, 8 hours of Hawkwind going about their business circa 1972 would be an eye-opener, or possibly an eye-closer

i would love a documentary of Wu-Tang trying to figure out where Raekwon's Killer tape went

Thing is if you are a good film maker you can make a good 8 hour movie about anything, unforch if you're a hobbit-fucking permalescent maybe not so much

I've already listened to the Headquarters sessions so I would watch the visual equivalent of that.

An 8 hour Hawkwind documentary consisting entirely of a recreation of Lemmy's epic hitchhike to the next gig after getting hit over the back of the head by a mugger and left behind by the rest of the band in Michighan.

honestly I don't think I'd watch an 8 hour doc of any band

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Saturday, November 27, 2021 8:14 PM

this.

honestly rather just listen to the records at that point.

as i have said elsewhere, i would totally watch an indepth documentary re the moody blues.
i have listened to them consistently since the early 80s when i picked up a crappy compilation cassette,
and then subsequently hit their catalogue hard in recent yearsafter getting the cd reissues of their classic era albums.
however, beyond the odd Mojo article that appeared while i was a subscriber, i know absolutely nothing about them.
perhaps it's for the best.

No reflection on their music (honest), but I doubt you get 8 minutes worth of interesting material on the Moody Blues, let alone 8 hours. I chanced upon a documentary on Jethro Tull recently and it was like watching paint dry - and they actually have some interesting stuff to work with, like having a trans ex-member and one of their bass players dying young.

No reflection on their music (honest), but I doubt you get 8 minutes worth of interesting material on the Moody Blues, let alone 8 hours

yeah, i kind of realised this as soon as i posted.
some bands had full on camera crews with interesting footage whereas most didn't.

XP ...and having Tony Iommi as a member for two weeks!

oh i’d watch an eight hour documentary on sabbath, never sleep again/crystal lake memories style where they cover every album

Someone said Bowie and yeah I could easily watch a 45min doc series on each of his 70s albums (10 albums so around 8hours).
Same for Prince 80s and some other great artists with a strong catalogue.

Or 8 hours on Dylan (many different periods… even 8hours on his 66 tour only !)

I'd watch Pavement rehearsing in Stockton with Gary the original drummer, I'll bet there was a lot of awesome passive-aggressiveness

Bad Brains, covering the making of Rock For Light.

maybe the troggs if they had 8 hours of studio bickering

ding ding ding

Would watch a documentary about the recording of Pink Moon, preferably directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Single-camera POV, a foot off the floor and broken up only by the occasional pillow shot of a tape-op walking down a long corridor with a cup of tea.

John Coltrane or any of the greats (Miles, Dolphy, Ornette), ideally 8h on avant-garde jazz if possible but that's cheating the rules here.
A Tribe Called Quest, or again jazz rap in the early 90s. Wu-Tang + solo careers. Outkast.
Soft Machine + Robert Wyatt
Erykah Badu
Björk
Coil
Depeche Mode

Sorry for not pitching what would be covered, everything in hour-long chapters I guess, given the format. I have fond memories of the Iron Maiden early days documentary that was 4h30 long - I even wrote on them for a semester-long high school assignment, it was a fucking thesis - that's my reference point here.

Adding Bob Marley. Presented by Marlon James.

Chou Pahrot.

ooh yeah Björk, for my single artist choice

Oh yeah, Bob Marley would also be a nice one.
So basically, they should make MANY MORE of these !

wouldn't watch an 8-hour documentary about a band

would possibly consider watching an 8-hour documentary about the entire New Romantic movement

For comparison here, in case anyone's wondering what an 8hr band doc would actually look like, imagine Some Kind of Monster but four times the length.

This thread: an entire season of Succession, except it's about some band Mojo Magazine likes

NZ public radio did a 10-part docuseries on Split Enz (totalling about 8-1/2 hours) a ways back. I listened to the whole thing, found it fascinating. And I only actually like about a dozen Split Enz songs!

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/enzology

Would watch footage of Sun Ra Arkestra or The Fall, ideally filmed by disgruntled band members in a spontaneous act of collective protest a la Symbiopsychotaxioplasm

Genesis in 1974 and 75, up to Peter's departure (working title: Genesis: Caught in Celluloid)

posts very much in character here but I think an extended Yellow Magic Orchestra documentary would be super cool. they changed sound on every album, they used a lot of state-of-the-art gear (I think they were the first to use the infamous TR-808 and Technodelic might be the first LP to prominently feature the LMD-649 sampler), they have a humongous "extended universe" of material, they were one of the very first Japanese acts to break through in the Western world, there was apparently a lot of infighting between Sakamoto and Hosono and they still have a huge influence today. in other words there are a ton of things to cover & I think even for the hardcore fans there are a lot of odd angles to them that are still a mystery - does anyone really know what Xoo Multiplies is all about? "Rap Phenomenon"? all the weird meta stuff on BGM for that matter?

Massive Attack - blue lines era
Talking Heads - ‘Eno’ era
Rihanna - Anti era
Tori Amos - early 90s
New Order in Ibiza making Technique
Daft Punk - late 90s /early 00s.

I'd watch 8 hrs of Fleetwood Mac making Tusk, Minutemen making Double Nickels, or Frank Zappa making Uncle Meat.

― Everybody Loves Ramen (WmC), Sunday, November 28, 2021 9:32 AM

There's probably 8 hours of Tusk footage between the stuff shot as part of the 'documentary' that was released in the early 80s, and the private footage shot by the band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPn0U7qnXaY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnBA1IYvS9A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6t3ut06pz0

Yeah, I've watched a lot of these "Tusk" footage and would gladly watch more.

Come to think about it I’d gladly would have watched 8 hours of David Bowie. Very charming man.

Also Björk is a good one, specially when she was younger, she’s so genuinely eccentric and unique that she could talk for 8 hours on idk books that have inspired her and I’d probably love it.

I would also be very interested in an 8 hour doc following the Gallaghers on a weekend in the 90s. Not because I like them but because they’re assholes and assholes are fun to watch. It worked for Tiger King.

Also Tom Waits or Iggy Pop, love watching those two on interviews.

Stones, Bowie, and Neil for sure but would def have to span epochs

Dead maybe but would have to expand way beyond than just the band for me. man alive otm.

maybe The fuckin Band tbh /(boomer)

This will surprise no one, but I would happily watch 8 hours of Springsteen and the E. Street Band recording either Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or The River, as long as it was all actual footage of people being exhausted / Bruce yelling at Max Weinberg, and absolutely no cuts to Bruce, today, musing about what the songs mean. (I will accept after-the-fact commentary from ppl like Jimmy Iovine and Chuck Plotkin, but no Bruce or Jon Landau.)

Co-signed on Bjork, all those 90s interviews with her are so special. She’s still good now obv but something about her back then, you couldn’t take your eyes off her no matter what she was doing

Parliament/ Funkadelic. Probably Sly. Fleetwood Mac, but again would need to cover like 14+ years

I’d say Bobby D but I feel like it’s m/l been handled in dribs and drabs idk

xp i have totally watched the short ASMR video of Bjork taking her television apart on repeat for more than 8 hours.

Waylon def

Fleetwood Mac, but again would need to cover like 14+ years


-^ludicrous. Fleetwood Mac could really work but for me should really be a 67-87 thing

no interest in career-spanning docs at that length, unless it was based around extensive uncut performance clips maybe.

in the longform "fly on the wall at sessions" format, to echo Moka above, Tom Waits would be near the top of my list, someone whose process is a complete mystery to me. would love a long doc about the recording of one of his swordfishtrombones-era albums and see how he arrived at some of those arrangements & production decisions & how he worked with those players

^^^ Agree with this 100%. The sonic experimentation would probably be pretty visually compelling, especially when he's doing shit like dragging chairs across the floor as percussion or renting a circus calliope, and to finally get a real look at how the songwriting partnership between him and his wife works would be just as interesting.

I wouldn't watch 8 hours spanning years about hardly anyone, but 8 hours digging deep into a 2-3 week period would open up the field a lot.

I gotta watch this Beatles thing. honestly sounds painful but y’all have piqued my interest

Just watch Beatles memes on the internet for the same duration.

Hüsker Dü recording Zen Arcade.

― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, November 28, 2021 8:08 AM

Ha, and it'd just about be presented in real time too.

I wonder if there are people who don't know about this wondering why there are so many Beatles memes all the sudden

Come to think about it I’d gladly would have watched 8 hours of David Bowie. Very charming man.

Also Björk is a good one, specially when she was younger, she’s so genuinely eccentric and unique that she could talk for 8 hours on idk books that have inspired her and I’d probably love it.

I would also be very interested in an 8 hour doc following the Gallaghers on a weekend in the 90s. Not because I like them but because they’re assholes and assholes are fun to watch. It worked for Tiger King.

8+ hour documentary on the Auteurs reforming and being booked on one of those bleak ‘britpop reunion’ cruises please

Who needs an 8+ hour doc when you could just have, like, two or so fully restored full-length Springsteen shows?

Dylan would of course support a good one. And Bowie and Neil Young (and certain jazz greats, like Miles or Coltrane). Anyone with long careers and lots of detours and performance footage.

I think the Clash would make a good one. You've got their individual early years, you've got the punk explosion, you've got drugs, you've got their personalities and peers, you've got three out of four of them still alive, you've got events like their stand at Bonds Casino (and sojourn to NYC in general, at NYC's peak/nadir), you've got Strummer running marathons, you've got the slapdash "White Album"/"Exile on Main Street"-like 24/7 sessions for "Sandinista!", you've got commercial success, you've got opening for the Who, you've got breakups, busking on the streets ...

(and certain jazz greats, like Miles or Coltrane)

The studio footage of Monk in Straight, No Chaser is probably my favorite sequence in that film. Hopefully there's much more of that that gets released at some point.

I know I'd watch an 8-hour movie about Bowie/Eno's Berlin trilogy.

can't believe no one's mentioned Insane Clown Posse

How about 8h hours of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" sessions ?

What if it just *feels* like it's 8 hours?

8+ hour Tarkovsky-style slow crawl through the beauty and sickness of the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show circa 1982 (or almost any time).

I'm imagining a highly stylized Heavy Metal Parking Lot, I guess.

Or guess Russian Ark x Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Buckingham Nicks era Fleetwood Mac
Gaucho
Bob Marley
Stevie Wonder’s 70s run
Prince
Fela

All in all, 8hours+ documentaries about bands/artists aren't that crazy a thing.
Actually, the Beatles Anthology documentary was... 11hours+ !

Life Without Buildings writing lyrics

If we're going that route, then I'm in for 8 hours of following Joanna Newsom through her creative day.

The Replacements

an extended Yellow Magic Orchestra documentary would be super cool.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

i still can't believe there isn't one already, or a good book/bio

Gaucho

SPOILER ALERT: Eight hours of programming WENDEL an/or Don'n'Walter chainsmoking and telling the Breaker Bros. "That's not it." over the talk back mic.

Replacements would be exhausting! (having read and liked "Trouble Boys")