SOUNDGARDEN: First Details Of Upcoming Official Documentary Revealed
Canadian indie director Reg Harkema ("Monkey Warfare") has confirmed to Bad Feeling Magazine that he is working with the Banger Films duo Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn on an upcoming documentary on reunited grunge legends SOUNDGARDEN.
Harkema previously collaborated with McFadyen and Dunn on the feature "Super Duper Alice Cooper", which follows the outrageous theatrical rocker chronologically from his childhood as a minister's son to pop culture icon, as well as on the TV doc series "Metal Evolution".
"To me, Alice Cooper was a voyage of discovery, from someone who could kind of journey into the past and see what it was like," Harkema told Bad Feeling Magazine. "SOUNDGARDEN is much closer to my own sort of experience of being a music fan and kind of reconciling these punk rock ideals. For them, it was much more exaggerated, having these punk rock ideals and then dealing with becoming 'metal rock stars.' I get that kind of internal struggle, much more than I do wrestling with freebase cocaine addiction."
According to Harkema, filming for the SOUNDGARDEN documentary is likely to begin this summer during the band's co-headlining tour with NINE INCH NAILS.
"It's a little bit difficult because they're touring, but [SOUNDGARDEN drummer] Matt Cameron is not touring with them this summer because he's got PEARL JAM commitments," Harkema said. "There's some key shows that Matt Cameron is going to be playing, so we're going to be trying to send cameras out for that. But I think when they're coming through Toronto, we've definitely got it scheduled in to get some interviews in with them."
Harkema revealed to Bad Feeling Magazine that the SOUNDGARDEN film cover the band's entire career, from their early days in the Seattle club scene through their breakup in the late '90s and their reunion in 2010 which led to the release of a comeback album, 2012's "King Animal".
"We're going to concentrate on [the '90s] era mostly," Harkema said. "It'll probably be like 70-75% mid-'80s to the breakup, and then catch up on the reunion and the present day. We'd like to shoot some big special concert, and maybe use that as a structural spine. We're going to shoot all the interviews so they're more on-camera, so you can kind of get the emotion in the faces. There's a lot of stuff that they went through, and a lot of stuff that they [shrug off], that I think we can dig deep underneath, and get back to how they felt emotionally at the time."
In a recent interview with Metal Insider, Dunn stated about the upcoming SOUNDGARDEN documentary: "We're going to look at that band's career, how they were the first band in the Seattle scene, how they rose to become the biggest band in the world in the mid-'90s, and much to everyone's surprise they called it quits. And here we are, 20 years later, and they're back at it, so we're excited to tell that story."
