Director Bernard MacMahon talks about making the movie about a legendary band that trusted the filmmakers to get the band’s origin story told right (and told loudly).
There hasn’t been any shortage of music documentaries on big screens lately, but most are presented as special events that come in and out for one or two nights on a weekend, without settling in for a regular run. The Sony Classics release “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” though, has defied expectations of what a modern rock doc can do in cinemas, on its way to finding the favor of fans as a home video hit, too. Its success is, well, highly becoming.
Director Bernard MacMahon sat down with Variety to talk about the long process of making and then finding a buyer for the film, admitting there were plenty of companies that turned it down. The objections were plentiful, as he recalls it, when he and producer Allison McGourty were touring executive suites. But maybe most curious of all, to those who didn’t get the film, is that it doesn’t follow a traditional “VH1 Behind the Music” rise, fall and embattled rebirth narrative. “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is a rise-and-rise story, climaxing with the recording of “Led Zeppelin II.” If someone wanted to make a movie about how things got bigger and more out of control later on, they were welcome to it, but MacMahon knew how Zeppelin changed the music world at their outset was more than enough to fill two gratifying hours. And sending music lovers out of the world’s theaters happy and humming (to the extent that anyone can hum “Black Mountain Side”) is a byproduct of the decision to focus on a celebratory but still revelatory origin story.
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