Scott Walker: 30 Century Man finally opens in San Francisco

The film "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" opens in San Francisco next Friday, Jan 23. I was thinking, wow, it seems like years since I saw it... and then I realized, it has been.

I was at the film's premiere in Austin at SXSW two years ago, where I also had the opportunity to interview the film's director, Stephen Kijak, for both Club Kingsnake and AfterElton.com -- because fortunately Stephen has teh gay, so I was able to use that as an excuse to get AE to let me write about Scott Walker on the site. Well, that and I also had to throw in some eye candy for the boyz in the form of the film's associate producer Gale Harold, who used to play teh gay on Showtime's "Queer as Folk."

Although I love QAF, Gale and I more bonded around a somewhat scarily obsessive love of Patti Smith and, of course, Scott Walker -- although I think everyone who loves Scott Walker is a bit scary. Including me and definitely including Stephen Kijak, who described his first meeting with the man here:

What was the first meeting like for Kijak? "You see it in the film, actually," he said. "He comes in his little green coat and hat and they go, 'Hey, Scott!' That's the first time he walked in the studio. That's our first shot of him. And I'm behind him, shooting the B camera, and this guy walks in, in a green coat and I'm like, 'Get out of my way - Oh fuck, that's Scott Walker!' I drop the camera and I stand at attention because, you know, you don't want the first meeting to be camera in your face, you know how sensitive he is."

Kijak continued, "This weird electricity shot through the room. It's like, 'He's here, he's here!' And I just dropped the camera and I'm thinking, I really hope the camera hasn't stopped rolling, or the battery just died, because that's our only shot. Thank God, it was rolling. Then he just went about his business and ignored us for about two and a half hours, while he just got down to work. We didn't want to get in his way, we're just flies on the wall, let's just watch him do it. I think later in the day it was just a handshake, 'Hi, how are you?' 'Very good, thank you.'"

You may never have heard of Scott Walker, but if you've listened to alternative music (and quite a bit of music that's gone way beyond the alt label) in the last 30 years, you've heard his influence. Everyone from David Bowie to Johnny Marr of the Smiths to Brian Eno to Lulu worships at his shrine, and they and dozens of other musical greats are interviewed in the film.

Walker's most recent work is a bit esoteric for me, but I spent a rather large part of my formative years lying on my back staring at the ceiling at 3 AM with "Night Flights" blasting loud enough I'm still not sure why my landlord didn't have me evicted.

The film itself isn't as experimental as Walker's recent music:

"I thought I wanted to make a more elliptical, strange movie, but it just resisted it," [Kijak] said. "And the music is such a strange evolution, it's such a unique story that the only way for it to really have an impact is to make it very linear, actually. Just to go from "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" to "Jesse", you know where he's screaming, 'I'm the only one left alive!' in this terrifying, really harrowing song. It has to be a straight line for the impact to really be felt."

You can read my review of the film here, and the interview with Kijak and Harold here. And if you're looking for me on Jan. 23, well... I'll be at the Bay Area premiere of the film at the Lumiere Theater. Friend the film on Facebook and see when it opens near you, or is released on DVD... something Stephen swears is in the works.

And I sincerely hope I don't have to wait another two years for it, either.

I mean, even the trailer is brilliant: