Russell Crowe enjoyed an enthusiastic response to his bio-doc meets concert film What Love Builds as it premiered Out of Competition to a 1,400-strong crowd at the Venice Film Festival on Friday evening.
The documentary sets out to show that music has been part of Crowes’s life long before he decided to move to Sydney from New Zealand in the late 1980s to pursue an acting career, busking on the streets initially to make ends meet.
It charts Crowe’s early musical endeavours from his teen years performing at an Auckland music hall under the stage name of Russ Le Roq, to his 415 performances as Eddie/Dr Scott in a New Zealand production of The Rocky Horror Show.
Crowe delves into the creation of his first major band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts in 1992; its prophetic The Photograph Kills EP, and his abrupt decision to disband it as his acting career took off and he felt his fame was muddying the waters. He suggested a pushy offer verging on the vampiric from then Sony head Tommy Mottola to sign the band had been the final straw.
In an example of how his love of music has fed into his acting, Crowe reveals how a line in Gladiator from his character Maximus in which he tells Emperor Marcus Aurelius that he has been away for “2 years, 264 days, and this morning” had been written at his request and taken inspiration from the “It’s been seven hours and 15 days” lyric in Prince’s track Nothing Compares 2 U.
Later, he recounts how on 2010 Robin Hood, he had been able to influence the casting of the merry men to bring in actors who were also musicians. These would include Scott Grimes who would go on to become an occasional member of his current band Indoor Garden Party alongside the likes of Les Misérables actress Samantha Barks and Canadian folk rock musician Alan Doyle.
Crowe also digs into lows of his career such as his arrest in New York in 2005 for assault for throwing a telephone at a hotel employee; “the pain” of being pursued by paparazzi, to whom he says he is ironically also grateful for capturing some of his favorite pictures of him with his children, or the ridiculing of his work as a musician and songwriter as his fame took off.
Footage from the band’s performances intercut throughout film had the Venice audience clapping as if in a concert, with a cover version by Crowe of Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet causing the Sala Darsena theater to erupt into full-scale applause.
As the credits rolled at the end, spectators clapped to the beat of the final track while a visibly happy Crowe laughed and smiled at the reaction.
Crowe, who wrote, directed and produced the documentary, told a press conference earlier that it had been 15 years in the making.
“I thought it might take me a year, but as I was doing it, things would come up that I was going to be doing shortly with the music, so I kept waiting for that, and the next thing, and the next thing. By the time we sat down to cut it we had an extensive 18 feet of film,” he said.
“It was massive undertaking to try to chip away at the narrative, but I knew what my intention was, and my intention was to answer the question I get asked probably most and that is to define the difference between music and acting. The film attempts to explain the two things are completely intertwined for me,” he said.
Crowe said Venice had been his target festival for the documentary and revealed he had contacted Italian director Gabriele Muccino, who directed him in Fathers & Daughters, to help connect him with Artistic Director Alberto Barbera.
“As we’re coming towards the end of the cut, I said out loud, the most amazing thing would be if I could get to screen this in Venice. I’ve been to a lot of film festivals, but the most fun film festival is Venice, and there’s depth in the appreciation of the audience,” he said.
“I couldn’t have had a better result as a filmmaker. This thing was just extremely personal, and this is the absolute perfect place.”
