Have you ever wanted to hang out with eternal badass Nick Cave? Well, frankly, who wouldn’t? But most of us won’t ever get the chance to sit down and break bread with the musician/writer/raconteur, so this project may just be the next best thing. It turns out Cave has been hard at work on a secretive docu-drama entitled “20,000 Days On Earth,” and the first details of the project are now coming to light.
Artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are behind the concept of the film, which instead of going down the traditional documentary route with Cave, constructs a fictionalized day in his life. And around this, Cave is free to improv, with folks like Ray Winstone, Kylie Minogue and his own kids popping in and out, giving him people to play against. The idea here is to reveal a bit more about the man, without shattering the public perception completely. “The thing that kind of seems so prevalent in contemporary music docs is that they’re all about getting behind something, revealing something, taking away the mask, taking away the myth,” Forsyth told The Guardian. “The major thing for us was not breaking the mythology.”
The events throughout the film are both ordinary and surreal, with Cave watching “Scarface” with his son, visiting a psychoanalyst and even taking a bit of drive. And as for the man himself, he’s not even sure what it’s going to turn out like, but he has faith in the filmmakers. “There’s some things within this movie that I have no idea how they’re going to go. But you’ve got to take risks,” he said. “I mean, there’s so many documentaries out there about people working in the arts that You just kind of sleep through. You know, what I do not want is a documentary that gives….You know, I want the whole thing to be imaginative and interesting and … I do not know. Fuck, I do not know what my hopes are, to be perfectly honest.”
Yep, that sounds about right. In the works for a few years, from at least circa Push The Sky Away, production continues on “20,000 Days On Earth” as it gears up for a 2014. Until then, you can see the first Cave/Forsyth/Pollard collaboration on the video for “Dig, Lazarus, Dig.” Watch below, followed by another still from the movie.
