“Don’t say anything sexy because people can hear you,” Peaches jokes with her boyfriend when he’s on speaker phone in “Peaches Goes Bananas,” a portrait of the Canadian musician who has always done the opposite of what might be expected of her. When the artist, born Merrill Nisker, has made exposing herself a key part of her act, either donning elaborate costumes to playfully accentuate genitalia or leaving little to the imagination as she performs electronica that seems powered by its sexually charged lyrics, it is amusing to think there is anything that she’d want to hide, though always rebellious, to do so would make complete sense and while nothing ever appears to be off-limits in Marie Losier’s exuberant profile of her, it’s a film that honors Peaches’ irreverent spirit in occasionally being purposefully obscure.
“It’s not super commercial at all, but that is quite touching because it’s a small crowd and it’s a very personal story,” says Losier, who didn’t know she actually would be making a film about Peaches when she first began rolling film at the artist’s request nearly two decades ago. “Some people are very surprised, very excited, and some it doesn’t touch them, but if they’re fans of Peaches, they are surprised by the turn of the story and [other] people love it because it’s also just a portrait of the life of an artist over a span of time.”
Ironically, in making a film without an audience in mind, Losier has made something that could appeal to longtime fans and those likely to become them after being thrust into the crowd of one of Peaches’ wild concerts as “Peaches Goes Bananas” begins. The overwhelming feeling could be akin to what the filmmaker felt herself when she was collecting footage for her 2011 doc “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye” and found it impossible not to start filming Peaches as well. It would prove equally difficult to stop when the two would form a friendship and Losier checked in over the next 15 years, coming to know Peaches offstage as much as on and became fascinated with how she wasn’t slowed by time, defying conventional ideas about women as they age when her act was more energetic than ever. “Peaches Goes Bananas” can inspire when its subject embraces getting older than running from it as she somehow becomes even more comfortable in her skin than she already was, but Losier also allows the room to bring in her tender relationship with her sister Suri, who lives with multiple sclerosis and can feel as if she’s confined to a body rather than use it as a tool of liberation as Peaches does.
When “Peaches Goes Bananas” wasn’t planned in the first place, it was a happy accident that Losier’s early choice of equipment — a Bolex camera that doesn’t record sound — set a tone for the picture where audio was naturally disassociated from the image and the director comes to use that to the film’s great advantage when speaking to a notion that people can’t be defined by their physical form. As wily and wild as its main subject, the film evades any easy description, particularly the title biopic, and since premiering last year at the Venice Film Festival, it has turned every theater its played into a concert hall for the rousing show Peaches is known for. With the film now arriving in theaters Stateside, Losier spoke of how she found a way to extend the same invitation to audiences as she received herself to enter Peaches’ life, summoning all the sensations of one of her frenzied performances and ultimately coming to realize she wasn’t only capturing a period of someone else’s life, but her own as well.
How did this come about?
It came naturally because I was filming “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye” in 2006 and Genesis was playing with Psychic TV in Brussels at the Botanical and [she was the opening act for Peaches], and I didn’t know who Peaches was, but Peaches appeared in the hallway with a glittery costume and [said] “Why don’t you film me too?” I said, “Okay,” and the first roll of film I made you can actually see in the film now. That’s how we met and it was just the beginning of our friendship because she came back to New York many, many times to see her sister Suri and for concerts. We’d see each other often and I filmed and she took me to Suri and when I met her, I thought this is where i’m interested because the fragility of the body [as it relates to] Suri and the strength of her mind. The kindness and the softness of Peaches outside of stage was very visible at that moment. I’ve never shot much about families and i thought this was very important for me to capture and very unique. This is where the film surprises me and that’s where I saw there was a film that could take a shape, except I didn’t know it would take so many years.
Well worth it now, it seems. You’ve spoken about the body before as a totem to build around for this. How did it become a central idea?
What I was touched by is that [Peaches] puts the body at the service of the energy on stage. It’s part of the artwork and even the costumes are made for being malleable for the body, for the performance. The performance energy that comes from the body is such a strong energy on stage and I wondered I can you capture that energy for the audience on film? Aging was also part of making a documentary about the body that was very important to me in terms of a woman artist who was growing older, but the body is still the center of the artwork and beautiful. She still has so much energy. It’s inspiring.
You capture those concerts in a very physical way. No coverage, just you and the camera on stage and in the crowd a lot of the time. What was it like to channel that energy?
It’s something that would be difficult today and actually the film begins with the footage I shot much closer to now [where physically] we’re very further away and she’s on the stage and there are people protecting the stage. I wasn’t on the stage [for those scenes] but [in the earlier shoots] it was more like DJ sets and clubs when she didn’t care and people the audience didn’t care that I would be on the stage filming. That kind of setting that’s more underground and avant-garde was something I loved because I was also freer as a filmmaker to make the images that I wanted. I would put on a black T-shirt so nobody would pay attention and I would fit in. I was lucky to be able to have that time to shoot.
And you started shooting on Bolex, which meant that you couldn’t record sound, but now that gives the film such an interesting quality. What was it like to develop the sound separate from the image?
To be honest, I didn’t know when I started making it. I didn’t pay attention to the medium and how it would be assembled and edited. But of course, when we came to edit, it was quite a trip because I had 17 years of sound which was of very poor quality when I started alone. I was really young and I didn’t have much knowledge or equipment. There was a lot to work with [with] the voice of Suri and to find the story within all these sounds and since it’s separated from the image, I discovered the image, which was between video and mostly Bolex 16 millimeter film. Then it was about collaging and assembling and reinterpreting the magic of the spaces [between] the images I chose and then build [these scenes] and invent them. [The raw footage is] not really what it was about because there’s a lot of voiceover, a lot of Foley art, and a lot of things I asked Peaches to do for me afterwards while I was editing, like the [scene at the] ping pong table. For example, I had this footage of the ping pong game and [after we filmed that, I asked Peaches] “I want you to put a telephone between you and Crackers Alison, at this distance as if you were at the ping pong table and you play a game of throwing each other love words and the timing was exact to [the footage we previously shot] and I put [the sound] straight on. I didn’t edit it, so it was a game of collaging between sound and images.
Obviously the photo shoot that’s near the start of the film is closer to the present day, so you knew the capabilities of the equipment, but you place an audio interview over the footage in a really interesting way. What was it like to work backwards like that?
It’s a bit the same [as the ping pong]. I had no idea what this interview was going to be about, but I knew I was allowed to film [this photo shoot] and they had a very good studio [where there was] very good sound. It was a really smart lady [doing the interview with Peaches] and there was no concerts or [ambient] sound in between, so I knew I could have a really good quality of sound and I could play around with the images. I had no idea the interview would be so good, but I [asked the interviewer for permission to use it] and she said, “No problem,” and then I also gave her some questions that she added in.
In general, was it obvious to structure this in reverse chronologically, from the present back into the past?
I didn’t think very clearly because I never write out the story. I think time writes it and then the editing writes it, but what was interesting to me is to navigate between past and present regularly and not identify it so that actually you would get lost. You would see differences, of course, with age and [having filmed for] 17 years, you do see a difference, but it’s so mixed that at the end, what matters is what it is rather than pinpointing 17 years before or later.
When you have 17 years worth of footage, is it easier to let go of things you want to put in there or does [the story] become clearer?
That part is never difficult for me, to let go of things. There are so many beautiful images you think would be wonderful, and then they’re really not fitting into the story, and you have to abandon them. That’s okay for me. It’s more about sound — it takes a lot to just listen for years of sounds to find the right word, the right story, the right emotion in the voice, the right environment, and it’s like a puzzle in the head. That’s more what is important to me.
From what I understand, in addition to what you filmed, Peaches had quite an archive herself. What was it like to dig into?
It was horrible. She had seven terabytes of archive, [which is] a nightmare for an editor because you get lost in archives, and seven terabytes is 58 years of archives. She’s always filming herself, so you have to be really focused on what you’re looking for. I had [what I wanted] in mind, so it was helpful with the editor to narrow the look so I wouldn’t get totally lost. I also know there was another film that was made at the same time, but it’s made of archives, and my film was not, so this was more [about] embracing a certain kind of storytelling and I just wanted a limited amount.
When you’re telling the story of another artist, was there anything that you found yourself wanted to express about your own experience?
It’s always a mirror of yourself when you make portraits of others. There’s so much part of your life in there. 17 years is very moving when you look at the footage because you also discover, “Oh, that was me 17 years ago in that footage. That’s my voice. I live in New York” — I don’t live in New York anymore. There’s many things that go through your personal life that time is a marker of and it’s a marker of all your your footage, but it’s a marker of your own story so it does reflect a lot.
“Peaches Goes Bananas” opens on December 3rd at Anthology Film Archives, the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine on December 8th, the Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall in Los Angeles on December 12th, the Revue Cinema in Toronto on December 16th, the Woodward Theater in Cincinnati on December 16th, the Arkadin Cinema & Bar in St. Louis on January 10th and the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle on January 24th.