‘In Restless Dreams’ Director Alex Gibney On Paul Simon’s Extraordinary Music: “It Gets In Your Lungs And Suddenly You’re Breathing It”
04.10.2023 - 20:37
/ deadline.com
Wind gusts quivered the tree limbs, rainfall ricocheted off the roads, and in an instant, power cut off at the old Opera House on Elm Street in Camden, Maine, scuttling screenings there at the Camden International Film Festival.
With that mid-September atmospheric outburst, Hurricane Lee did in the scheduled U.S. premiere of Alex Gibney’s new film In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon. Now, the honor of hosting the American debut goes to the Hamptons International Film Festival this Friday, where the documentary screens as the festival Centerpiece (Simon will appear in person there for a conversation moderated by Rolling Stone’s David Fear). On Sunday, the film plays across the pond at the BFI London Film Festival.
During what was supposed to be Gibney’s Camden premiere, I stopped by the hotel where the filmmaker was staying to talk about his exploration of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters. A documentary about Paul Simon may sound like a thematic departure for him – after all, Gibney has become renowned for his cinematic exposés: On the Bush administration’s torture policies (the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side), the Church of Scientology (Going Clear), and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley), among many others. But he reminds me, “This would be the fifth film, really, I’ve done about music… I did a film about James Brown, did a film about Fela Kuti, and did a film about Frank Sinatra. So, I’ve kind of been invested in that.”
He adds, “My wife will tell you that I’m not much of a singer, but maybe for that reason I’ve always been really interested in the music-making process.”
For a filmmaker intrigued by that process, he couldn’t have hoped for a