Scene Selection — Geoff Carter: Documentary is an anatomy of a great album

Friday, June 27, 2003 | 8:59 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

"We're either going to get something great or lose our (expletive) minds," says Jay Bennett, the former guitarist of critically acclaimed band Wilco. He's talking about the making of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," and his optimism seems well founded: Reprise Records is allowing the band to make an album free of interference, and as Bennett gloats, "They haven't heard a word of it."

So opens, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (Ryko Distribution, $29.95), a year in the life of America's best band, faithfully documented by first-time director -- and friend of the band -- Sam Jones.

Jones hoped to capture the band's creative process; he got that, and also Bennett's angry departure from the band and the label's stunning rejection of the finished album.

The band starts out wildly optimistic. Wilco's singer and chief songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, talks excitedly to Jones about "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's" unconventional sound: "We made it. It's ours to destroy," he says of the album's near-dissonant sonic extremes. Band manager Tony Margherita confidently predicts the album will "take the band to another level."

Jones presents Wilco bathed in the light of purest optimism -- the band plays, tinkers, plays. Songs from "Foxtrot" take shape, and Bennett notes with satisfaction that Reprise has spent $85,000 on the record without knowing what it's going to sound like.

But trouble is brewing. Margherita worries aloud about the "serious state of flux" at Reprise. Tweedy and Bennett begin fighting; Bennett seems to aspire to some sort of leadership role in the band, and his persistence rattles the easygoing Tweedy. Bennett evokes the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and it's hard not to hear the "Magnolia" star when things get ugly.

The label probes Tweedy at a solo show. What's the album like? They want to know. Tweedy tries to explain "Foxtrot" to the executives, but the shy musician is not one to sell himself, or anything else. After a few agonizing minutes of hemming and hawing -- "there's a lot of, um, drums on the record" -- he ducks his head and flees.

Reprise demands changes to the record, and paradise crumbles to dust. Tweedy won't budge -- "I don't how to make anything other than the record we made" -- and the band finds itself a free agent, with a record to sell to the highest bidder.

The making of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is one of the most fascinating music-industry Cinderella stories of recent times, and Jones presents it free of embellishment or interference. When Bennett pushes Tweedy so hard the singer literally becomes nauseous, Jones follows Tweedy (tastefully) into the men's room.

The Reprise bashing is almost compassionate, as well it should be: Margherita predicts, correctly, that the album will be successful.

The movie could be like "This is Spinal Tap," right down to the happy ending, but for three things: it really happened, it's not the least bit funny, and the music is actually brilliant.

Expert witnesses such as Rolling Stone editor David Fricke defend the band, but it's hardly necessary; the music of Wilco plays under nearly every frame of the film, and it speaks volumes.

The DVD of "Break Your Heart" features more than an hour of bonus footage, a commentary by the director and band (the latter avoids talking about Bennett), and a making-of feature, but the best reason to watch the movie is for the acoustic reading of "Be Not So Fearful" that's the second-to-last song in the picture.

Tweedy sings alone, accompanying himself on guitar, while the band looks wearily into space. It's a beautiful moment, one that would have earned Tweedy and his friends a niche in the history of rock cinema, if Reprise Records hadn't already clumsily carved it out ahead of them.