Lou Reed's Berlin - BEHIND THE SCENES

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"BERLIN"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
July 9, 2008

"Lou Reed's BERLIN" - Watch Trailer

Director’s Statement:

In 1974, Lou Reed came out with a record called Berlin. His record company suggested that Berlin was evidence that Mr. Reed was unfit to manage his own life let alone have a say on what a record should be.

Berlin was used against Lou as proof that he was certifiably committable if that is a word. Reviews included “Lou Reed should just go away and die”. There were worse.

But for some people, me included, this record was the embodiment of loves dark sisters, jealousy, rage and loss. It may be the most romantic record ever made, at least certainly one of the top ten.

Thank goodness that Lou did not just go somewhere and die, he lived and continued to make great recordings.

Berlin was the sound track of my life since 1974, and I’m not the only one. When people would eat dinner in our home, when my grown up children were small, the guests thought our kids were crying. It was on the record. My daughter Lola, who was one of those children, collaborated with me on the filming of this performance.

Berlin has had a huge impact on all rock and roll records since its time. The sequencing and the story telling makes up one of the most poetic and touching works of music since Three Penny Opera and Wojeck.

When Susan Feldman, the director of Saint Anne’s warehouse in Brooklyn, asked Lou if he would perform Berlin, he in turn asked me to do the sets.

I saw this as an opportunity, not only for the lucky audience who could see him in Brooklyn, but I thought it should be filmed and recorded. This is a once in a life time performance of Lou Reed’s Master Work about sadness, beauty and the failure of love.

Julian Schnabel

p.s.

This story is of a doomed relationship in Berlin, promiscuity, children, the disintegration of a relationship, suicide and self hate. Berlin was originally produced and mixed by Bob Ezrin who will produce this performance with many of the original players and Hal Wilner. My daughter Lola Schnabel filmed sequences that are also a part of this program. Images made by the Spanish artist Alejandro Garmendia are also featured.

About Oscar nominated director JULIAN SCHNABEL

Julian Schnabel was born in New York City in 1951. In 1965 he moved with his family to Brownsville, Texas. He attended the University of Houston from 1969-1973, receiving a BFA, and returned to New York to participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

In 1978 Schnabel traveled throughout Europe and in Barcelona was particularly moved by the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the same year he made his first plate painting, “The Patients and the Doctors.” His first solo painting exhibition took place at the Mary Boone Gallery, New York City, in February 1979.

Schnabel’s work has been exhibited all over the world. His paintings, sculptures and works on paper have been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at: The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1982; The Tate Gallery, London, 1983; The Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1987; The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1987; The Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, 1987; The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1987; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1987; Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, 1989; Musee d’Art Contemporain, Nimes, 1989; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, 1989; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1989; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1989; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1989; The Museo De Monterrey, Mexico, 1994; The Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, 1994; The Foundation Joan Miro, Barcelona, 1995; Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy, 1996; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2004; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Velazquez, Madrid, 2004; and Mostra d’Oltremare, Napoli, 2004.

His work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Guggenheim Museums, New York and Bilbao; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo; The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; The National Gallery, Washington D.C.; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Kunst Museum, Basel; and the Foundation Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxemborg.

In 1996, he wrote and directed the feature film Basquiat about fellow New York artist Jean Michel Basquiat. The film was distributed world wide by Miramax films and was in the official selection of the 1996 Venice Film Festival. Schnabel’s second film, Before Night Falls, based on the life of the late exiled Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Colpa Volpi for best actor for Javier Bardem at the Venice Film Festival 2000. Named to over 100 year-end top ten lists, Bardem’s portrayal in Before Night Falls earned him both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best actor. In 2007, Schnabel directed his third film, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. He was awarded "Best Director" at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globes. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is nominated for four Oscars, including "Best Director".

Most recently, Julian Schnabel has exhibited his paintings and sculpture at the Met Life building, New York, New York, December, 2006; Julian Schnabel. Summer Pinturas 1978 – 2006, International Contemporary Culture Centre of San Sebastían, San Sebastían, Spain, July-October, 2007; Julian Schnabel. Paintings 1978 – 2006, Palazzo Venezia, Rome, Italy, May-June, 2007; Rotonda della Besana, Milan, Italy, June-September, 2007; Versions of Chuck and Other Works, Schloss Derneburg, Derneburg, Germany, June, 2007; Schnabel Asia, Beijing World Art Museum, Beijing, China, September-October, 2007; The Warwick House, Hong Kong, November, 2007; The Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China, January-February, 2007; Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea, March-April, 2007; Navigation Drawings, Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, New York, January-February, 2008; The Conscious Gaze of Frightened Young Nuns, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma, Finland, March, 2008, Christ’s Last Day, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, California, February-March, 2008.

Julian Schnabel lives and works in New York, as well as in Montauk, Long Island, and San Sebastían.

Composer, Lyricist, Lead Vocals, Guitar: LOU REED

Lou Reed was inducted in 1996 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of The Velvet Underground and received the Heroes award from the New York Chapter of NARAS in 1997. The same year the French government awarded Reed with the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters. Reed has acted in and composed music for a number of films. He was designated an ‘American Master’ in 1998 by the award-winning PBS documentary series and that same year, Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart won the Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video. Pass Thru Fire, a collection of his lyrics, was published in 1999 by Hyperion and in 2008 by Da Capo Press. His reworking of Poe’s THE RAVEN was published by Grove Press and staged by Robert Wilson at the Thalia Theater and BAM.

In recent years, Lou Reed has established himself as a world class photographer; his first photography edition Emotion In Action, a double book edition of Reed’s photographs was published in October 2003 by 7L and Gerhard Steidl.

In January of 2006, Reed followed up the success of Emotion in Action with a second photography book, published by Steidl and 7L, titled Lou Reed’s New York. Photographs from this collection have been exhibited worldwide. In December of 2006 Lou Reed premiered the live staging of his masterwork Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York. It was filmed by Julian Schnabel and will be released to theaters in Spring 2008.