Playing in Shadows: Exclusive interview with Feist's film director

Anthony Seck chats about her rise from obscurity to stardom

By BJ Hogendorn
Published: December 7th, 2010 | 7:00am

I sat down with Look at What the Light Did Now director and producer, Anthony Seck, before viewing the film at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall. What was supposed to be a 15 minute interview turned into a 45 minute conversation about music, film, perversions, fame, America versus Canada, men versus women, fashion, and, most importantly, Leslie Feist and the album that brought her into music’s center ring.

I saw that you have done a lot of work with several artists at Arts & Crafts, like Feist, Amy Millan and Broken Social Scene. How did that relationship start?

Yes, I’ve done some work with Amy. I like the ladies at Arts & Crafts. They’re fabulous.

I think Brendan [Canning] introduced me to Leslie in ’95 or ’96 when she was starting off with the first album Monarch. That’s when we first got together and started talking about stuff.

She had a crazy experience doing video for Monarch. I remember that distinctly as the first time her and I meshed. They had her paint her face blue for this video or something. We were at a vegetarian restaurant in Toronto and she was really upset about the video; she thought it went terribly, and felt really bad. I thought in the back of my head, I wonder if there’s anything I could ever do for her. I didn’t know it would be fifteen years later, working together for four years to produce this documentary.

I saw that she brought you on more to document Montreal artist Clea Minaker, who was the shadow puppeteer during the tour.

Well, I started working back on Let It Die. I produced a “Mushaboom” video in Paris. Not the Daughters one, but another. They did two versions. When it came to The Reminder, she called me in to do “behind the scenes” stuff. I started archiving. I knew that what we were archiving, even if it just ended up in a library, I wanted it to be a quality view of something you don’t get to see. So she’d call me now and then and say come to set of “1234” or “My Moon My Man”!

In “My Moon My Man” she called and said she had this idea. “We’re shooting in an airport, and I was thinking, ‘What if there was a couple breaking up and they stumbled across the video?’ Wouldn’t that be cool?” That’s very Leslie. So we shot a short movie during “My Moon My Man” that will be on the DVD, and it’s something that’s never been seen before.

We’ve been creatively doing things for a bit, but when Clea’s show got bigger with the stadiums, she called me to start documenting.

Were they expecting The Reminder to reach the heights that it did? Let It Die, Stars, Metric, and Broken Social Scene all had relative success, but The Reminder became a turning point for Leslie’s career. I know some critics and people in my circle who knew her prior work thought she became commercial with this album and the “1234” Apple commercial.

Thank them all for making my job a lot harder.

“1234” almost didn’t make it on the album. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s not about that at all. No one wants to say no to something being successful.

This documentary is about someone who’s very sensitive about her work, how they’re represented in their work. She’s never gone Gaga, which is whole different thing. She’s always been very sensitive about how she’s photographed or portrayed.

She’s not an opportunist about that [fame]. If anything, she’s an opportunist for exploring her music, going to the source, going back to the source, exploring space, and who she surrounds herself with in that space—not in a protective sense, but in a creative, bouncing-off sense. That’s what I love about her. That’s what was so exciting about making this movie, just finding it out as it went along. It became experimental.

That’s a very Canadian thing, I find—discussing your friends or critics knocking success. Canadians are the quickest to jump on someone who’s successful, especially happy to embrace someone who’s successful outside of their country. It took her going to Paris for her to be successful in Canada. It wasn’t intentional, she was pursuing something fun that became exciting, and then Canada embraced her.

Just considering in the U.S., I’ll mention Broken Social Scene and someone will say “I don’t know who that is,” but then I’ll mention Feist and there’s an immediate recognition.

Broken Social Scene is guys. Amy is there to support, but it’s a band of guys. Girls have a much easier time breaking through, especially when trying to cross borders. Guy bands have a harder time breaking through, especially Canadian guy bands. There’s an attraction to the female singer. At the Grammy’s it was Leslie, Amy Winehouse…

Were there any drawbacks or strong points about working with an artist who doesn’t want to be in the spotlight, but you’re following her tour? Does it focus more on the people who surround her?

It’s like a ripple in a pond. There’s this reflectivity that goes on with Leslie. All artists are interested in creating art with interesting people, but she creates a certain bond. I got to know everyone involved in her world, so nothing was cold. I had an instant access and immediate comfort, but that was a result of everyone having a dedication to working with Leslie. Leslie pushes with her music and her creativity to find something that’s not just hamming it up or selling it up. Everyone works hard and gets more satisfaction in the end because of the push. That’s the positive form of competition, not the negative: there’s no concept of “you’re getting big.” The positive form is that you’re pushing me, I’ll push you; it’s an action/reaction. That is why it got interesting talking to everyone about similar themes and lines. That’s what started to draw the thing together. It’s more of a quilt than a couple of doilies; a quilt formed of relationships.

That’s what you’re drawn to, is the bonds. I toured with Stars for two years, made a DVD with them for three years. It was the same thing. You can’t just do it as a job, you become friends, you start to worry about people as they become part of your life. The film has a quiet connection to it. There are all the other sides too, but that’s the true line for it all.

What do you know about Feist’s upcoming album?

I know she’s working with [Chilly] Gonzalez. I know she’s working on it.

Thanks for the input.

I’m not even hiding anything. If I did have something to hide, I probably would, but I don’t even have that.

[He went into Leslie’s fashion, thinking that that’s where my next question was going.]

She wears fabulous dresses. Come on, that’s a big part of it.

Have you designed any of her dresses or gone shopping with her? You look like a fashionable guy.

Oh yeah! Cut to not being able to see me because this is a print interview. Are we talking about her fashion sense?

That’s what you brought up, so is that what you want to talk about?

I love her fashion sense. I’ve never seen her pick up anything that’s screamingly not her. She has that Grace Kelly class. It’s Mary Rozzi, her photographer, and her as a combination. What they’ve done with The Reminder photography and Mary’s bleached-out natural light style with pale overtones like the ‘70s, but it’s not like the ‘70s because it’s cleaner, more refined, like a pencil sketch. It’s ‘70s but with the looking glass into a bizarre future. That also defines her fashion; it’s becoming a signature that people are starting to copy and those two really nailed it. And that’s a big fashion statement, when people begin copying it.

What would you say viewers should consider going into the documentary or what do you hope they come away with?

Think about the atmosphere. Don’t watch it with the kids bouncing in front of the television. A friend of mine who saw it in L.A. told me never to let anyone watch it on a home viewer; just let them see it projected because it’s beautiful as projection—he said that not knowing about the DVD.

It’s very impressionistic, so be ready for that. Let it hit you. Honestly, the whole point is allowing the audience to walk in and have their own feeling about it. Who knows who the hell is coming into it. Maybe someone in Minnesota was just fired. You can’t say, “Hey, you have to be in a good mood.”

That’s what I like about filmmaking—it never comes out the way you intended, even when you finish it. You can have the clearest intention, but it’s inevitably about how the person who views it feels and how they relate to it. It only exists for the people watching or listening, otherwise it’s just an archive for the people who did it.

Yeah, one day I could listen to an album and hate it, then I will listen to it two weeks later and it blows my mind. It’s all relative.

Yeah, it’s for you, otherwise it’s a memory box capsule. But for the listeners, it becomes something you can reference and go back to over and over, like when I listen to Master in Everyone by Will Oldham. I also love “Honey, Honey,” I was amazed she asked me to do that video.

But Will Oldham. I listened to that record for six months. When you come across something like that, you just reference and reference and reference. Same with Amy Millan, Mazzy Star, Basia Bulat…

I like the ladies. I like the guys, but I like the ladies.

I’m going to try really hard not to make you sound like a pervert with your repeating of how much you like the ladies.

You can make me sound like a pervert.

Check out Venus Zine's review of Look at What the Light Did Now here.

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