Adult Swim: Time to Waste Time with John Flansburgh

John Flansburgh is one of two Johns in what's lovingly come to be known as the "geek-rock" band, They Might Be Giants. If you haven't heard of them, not only do we feel sorry for you, but you've missed out on great anthems like "Birdhouse In Your Soul," educational jaunts like "Why Does The Sun Shine?", and a whole series of tunes about hotel detectives. Most recently, the band released the new Join Us, a return to albums for grown-ups that's brimming with songs about Viet Nam, mortality, and caskets.

In an attempt to join them, as the album suggests, we dialed up Flansy to talk about the films of D. A. Pennebaker -- a filmmaker who Flansburgh says is so influential "it's actually impossible to understand the way the world was before him."

Can’t Keep Johnny Down

Don’t Look Back (1967)

The biggest Pennebaker film, probably. It's fascinating on a lot of different levels. If you're a Dylan fan, it's an impossibly direct portrait of him. It's an amazing moment in his career just because he's enjoying a level of notoriety that no one ever gets to. It's him in his pre-electric moment. So he's completely engaged the intelligentsia. The culturati of the world is completely enthralled with him, and he is so young it's startling. I think he might be 21 years-old. There's part of me that can't help but think that after he saw that movie he actually changed course in his life. Clearly being under the influence of speed for a bunch of the film, he's also just in general so precocious. It's surprising it didn't get worse reviews. He's not a kind person, and it's not because he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He doesn't suffer people gladly. There are completely reasonable people entering the scene constantly and getting basically bitchslapped by him, as if they're clowns in his way.

“There are completely reasonable people entering the scene constantly and getting basically bitchslapped by him, as if they're clowns in his way.”

There's this weird dorm-room cutting contest between him and Donovan where Bob Dylan clearly has some notion that -- well, Donovan is a Bob Dylan tribute act. Donovan is the Stone Temple Pilots to Dylan's Pearl Jam. You can't help but think Dylan heard Donovan and was like, "Who the f*** is this guy? He's completely copying all my s***." [Laughs.] Somehow there's this direct interaction between Donovan and Dylan, and Dylan is like, "Hey man, play me one of your songs." And Donovan plays, like, "Catch The Wind," I think, which is really a magnificent song. It's a beautiful, thoughtful song. Dylan sings some song off Highway 61 Revisited I think, that's just devastating. He just eviscerates him with some super-angry song. He's moving past his folky-philosopher moment into his "I want to burn down the world" moment. He always had an acid, harsh side to him, but when he went electric he definitely got mean in a very exciting way.

Pennebaker on Don’t Look Back

There's a point in the movie where he's being interviewed by a Brit who is the representative of Time. Bob Dylan goes into a classic hippie rant about how Time is for phonies, and anybody who needs to get an abbreviated version of the news because they have a busy life doesn't really know the truth about what's happening in the world. It's this incredible, "you can't handle the truth" kind of soliloquy that would be echoed by a million older brothers for a decade to come. [Laughs.] And the guy from Time, he's a very unfortunate-looking, pasty, potato-looking, kinda unattractive fellow, and he's very nervous and he's sweating. In that very gallant, private-school way that upper-class British way have of hanging onto their rhetorical skills, he keeps on asking good questions, but it just makes Bob Dylan more and more furious. He is so used to interviewers being super sh**** that he can't deal with someone sticking to it. It's the reason Gene Simmons walked off Terry Gross. Gene Simmons is only used to being interviewed by people who are bad interviewers. He doesn't really hold his own because Bob Dylan is wild.

“Gene Simmons is only used to being interviewed by people who are bad interviewers.”

But the crazy back-story that I found out in the years since after seeing this film, is the guy who is interviewing him for Time was basically the only staff writer in the UK. So he was sent from Cambridge, or wherever he was living, to interview Bob Dylan in London. He was the science editor. He wasn't even a music person. The strange thing about him is he's an incredibly serious intellect. He wrote some tome about the history of scientific thought that is some Oxford University Press book that outlines from Darwin until now for the scientific community. He is not some joker smoker looking to write a crazy headline. [Laughs.] It's so evil the way Bob Dylan treats him. This guy actually contributed to the world in a real, thoughtful way. He's not just selling popcorn.

It's a great movie. It's incredibly compelling, and it's beautiful because it's all shot in 16mm black and white, which is the most beautiful format ever created. It's funny because it was all that was available, and I guess they're using some super-fast film so they can be in low-light situations, which makes it even more grainier than it would be, but the whole combo platter is perfectly right. It's lovely.

Daybreak Express (1953)

It's a total document of New York City in the early '50s. It's in color. It's in really beautiful, strange color. But it's basically an experimental film. It is the completely nexus of documentary film and experimental film together. You see so much of New York City at a very specific time. It's from the point of view of someone in the subway, but then there's this driving Ellington score. Because it's on the subway and there's all this pixilated visual information, like shooting through the window as things are flickering by in the subway station and all the obstacles it's passing, it really might be the first rock video. It's all about sound and image, that crazy confection of sound and image. Obviously, the song exists and the visuals exist, but together they're incredibly compelling. There's nothing about it that's a story. There's no beginning or end. The end could be the beginning.

“There's nothing about it that's a story. There's no beginning or end. The end could be the beginning.”

Do you find yourself mapping a story onto it?

No, I don't actually. I really take it in as a psychedelic experience. [Laughs.] I'm probably thinking more of a Mondrian painting, Broadway Boogie Woogie. In a lot of ways it's very much in that same spirit. I wouldn't be surprised if he was kinda trying to do a bit of that. It's very much about New York as a grid. It feels like a grid. That one's pretty spacey.