The Telluride-premiering movie has Cook champion David Letterman as himself and Karen Allen, Susie Essman and Charles Esten in fictional roles.
“The Easy Kind” isn’t the easiest kind of film to describe for someone who is getting a first look, as audiences did in its premiere screenings at the Telluride Film Festival this past weekend. On first blush, it might appear to be a documentary of the esteemed country singer Elizabeth Cook, who enjoys a sizable following for an independent artist, between her nearly 25-year discography and her SiriusXM radio show. But soon enough, for anyone who didn’t see the “narrative” notation in the program notes, it’s clear enough that much of the movie is scripted. David Letterman, Cook’s biggest booster in real life, plays himself in one scene, but Karen Allen, Charles Esten and Susie Essum are doing character roles, and Cook herself is “EC,” who shares the singer’s exact career history but has some fictional romantic interests.
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But for an artist who might be characterized as country-rock, why stop at purely musical hybrids when there’s a director who’s interested in cinematic crossbreeding?
That filmmaker is Katy Chevigny, whose filmography consists of documentaries, many of them award-winning (including “Deadline,” which she co-directed with Kirsten Johnson, and such Sundance and SXSX-debuting films as “E-Team” and “Election Day”). For the purposes of getting at what it’s like to be an established female artist in mid-career, she took the position, perhaps unusual for such a dedicated documentarian, that maybe narrative film can be just a little truer than non-fiction … or that at least the blending of the two could work wonders. Anything but a standard “music movie,” in any case.
“It’s not one of those fan-based movies where it’s just for people who like the music,” says Chevigny, in the wake of the Telluride premiere. “I hope some people come to see it just because they’re like, ‘I’d like to just see a story about a woman artist finding her way… In general, I feel like it’s a shame if music movies just play for the fans of that artist; you want it to go bigger. But yes, of course it’d be great if the film brought more people to Elizabeth’s body of work, which is so amazing. but also, it’d be nice if the movie was just appreciated on its own terms, for the story. It can play on lots of levels — that’s s the hope.”
For Cook’s part, she says, “It’s just another way to tell a story. I’m so grateful for someone as esteemed as Katy plucking me out from the underbelly to be the subject of something like this. And then here we are at Telluride — it’s a dream.”
They’ll admit that, in the initial talking phases, at least, a pure documentary seemed to be in the cards. But Chevigny had sometimes been frustrated with the limitations to candor when doc cameras are rolling. “For me, the fiction format was really form-follows-function, in that I thought that we can tell maybe a deeper, more intimate story about what it’s like to be a woman in midlife making your way as an artist and trying to reinvent yourself if we do it in a fictional way. Because I could write scenes with Elizabeth’s deep collaboration that are true to life, but also the kind of thing that you wouldn’t capture in a documentary because they’re so personal… When you’re making a documentary in real life, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens when the cameras are turned off, always, because people let their guard down once you stop filming. Among documentarians, we’re always like, ‘Yeah, the best stuff happens when you turn the cameras off,’ because then people relax,. You know there’s gonna be certain things you won’t capture with your camera, like your subject and their boyfriend fighting. So, there’s that whole world of a fascinating person’s life that’s not in a documentary — unless they’re on drugs and not aware of what they’re doing.”
Says Cook, “When I start writing a song, I don’t often know what it’s gonna be about, so it’s just the exploratory nature and kind of going wherever the vibe leads. So when Katy started talking to me about doing some scripted scenes, I loved it. Honestly, it gives me a protective layer, from just being a straight documentary. … I mean, I’m pretty vulnerable and open in my writing and what I present to the world anyway. But you know, this business is so judgy and can be hard particularly on middle-aged women, it seems. So there’s a concern and a sensitivity to that. But in the end, that’s a lot of what we end up addressing in the film, which I’m proud of.”
Ironically, although Cook has chafed at some fans’ interest in her personal life, she relished the chance to do some decidedly flirty scenes in “The Easy Kind,” including several with a re-simmering old flame played by the “Nashville” TV series’ Esten.
“It’s funny too, to get to address that, because there’s always, it seems to me — and maybe it’s just my hypersensitivity to it — a specific interest in my love life around my career, which is just, you know… golly, can we just talk about the work? But it was fun to give people something about that aspect of it and to be able to be playful with it.”
The romantic elements are only a minor part of the film, though, against the overriding themes of what it’s like to be an artist in mid-career, facing the prospects of the ongoing exhilaration of creating art juxtaposed with the grind of how to keep afloat. Cook says she didn’t feel as protective about revealing that part of her daily existence.
“I’ve always been sort of a gloves-off storyteller, in song,” Cook says, “and this is just another format of telling a story. I’m not that good at self-reflection or seeing myself outside the fishbowl, so I don’t know if I have a ‘brand.’ But if somebody asked me if I do, I would say, Well, I’m sort of like, “no shame”.’ Because I come from a poor family where pride was the only thing we could afford, so we base our sort of self-worth on good work and hard work and trying to be good people in the world. And that’s not always rewarded in the classic American-dream ways. So, I always want to be truthful in everything that I present to the world — even if there’s a fictional, fantasy element of this film, there’s still a coming away of, like, you’ve seen something real.”
Chevigny was interested in portraying an artist in the middle — in the middle of life, in the middle of a career, and at an ongoing midpoint somewhere about halfway between fame and obscurity.
“Of course I’ve seen a lot of music documentaries as well as fictional biopics of musicians, and there’s an obsession with that path to fame in our culture and in Hollywood movies,” says the director. “And I was interested in doing something as a sort of counterprogramming to that with this — like, let’s not look over there. What’s going on over here? With all the talk about how the middle class no longer exists, most people might think that if you’re an artist, you’re either couch-surfing or you’re on your giant ranch, and that there’s no in-between. And there is an in-between, and I would argue that that’s where a lot of the best work is done. And it’s a struggle to stay in that zone, once you’re there, to continue to exist. There is a dogfight, and to continue to exist there as a woman, and as a single woman, I would say even more so.
“And then my other interest was this obsession with youth in our entertainment culture — I was also wanting to counter that because if you’re a stellar lyricist, as I believe Elizabeth is, and lots of people agree with me about that, it just gets more interesting as she has more experience in life, right? I don’t know if people talk about that that much: what is a 20-year-old gonna say and what is a 50-year-old gonna say about life? They’re gonna say different things. So of course as a middle-aged person myself, I’m interested in that. Are we getting more interesting as we get older? Maybe some of us, you know? Let’s look at that.”
Although Cook started out in country, with a mainstream major-label contract, she quickly found out her following would be more on the Americana side of things… as often happens for those who get pegged as too country for country. She has good company there, in a “genre” where careers aren’t measured in TikTok moments.
“I think of somebody like James McMurtry, who I think just put outone of his best albums,” Cook says. “Every time he puts out a record, every time Bob Dylan puts out a record, or Lucinda Williams, these are just artists that I’m gonna follow. Like some people follow the Dallas Cowboys, right? — you know, ‘They’re my team.’ That pop stardom cycle just seems to keep getting shorter and shorter, which also makes me proud of the rarefied air that I feel like on some levels I exist in.”
But there are humbling aspects to keeping a career going outside that system. As an east coaster who moved to Nashville in 2015 to be nearer to family, Chevigny discovered a flourishing East Nashville music scene that included Cook doing some small-club gigs to develop material — and she marveled at being able to experience a new favorite artist in such an intimate setting, while at the same time thinking Cook should be playing for much bigger audiences.
“She was workshopping an album by playing a residency at the Five Spot in East Nashville, and so on Wednesday nights I could just drive over and have a beer and watch her play some new songs that she hadn’t even recorded yet with her band, and I was just like, this is unbelievable. Like, why is nobody here? I just felt like I was watching something amazing unfold. she was so magnetic in her stage presence as well as her songs, but it was this very humble spot. And I had a little bit of that filmmaker feeling of ‘I feel like I’m in a movie, but nobody knows this is a great movie — and maybe I need to make this movie.'”
That modest setting comes to play in an amusing scene in “The Easy Kind” where Cook — or “EC” — does a one-song daytime showcase for an executive who has come out to the club for a sampling of the new material. There, she follows a performance of the new song by explaining to the exec all about the Margaret Atwood story it is based in… to his very evident but polite disinterest. That scene got a lot of laughs in Telluride, but is reflective of “the industry’s” real inability at times to get a handle on Cook, whether she’s channeling a famous dystopian novelist or not.
“I always say with these music executives, you know, they can’t decide if I’m like a dumb blonde or way above their head,” the singer says.
Chevigny figures Cook has revealed a real additional talent in the film. “I haven’t said this enough, but the film totally wouldn’t have worked — and worked in this format — if Elizabeth wasn’t actually a good actress. Some good performers are not good actors. We shot some test footage and it turned out she worked great with non-professional actors and professional actors in the scene. So we were like, ‘This will work, this wacky format that we’re trying to do.'”
Chevigny financed the film with investors and is looking to get it sold for distribution. “We’re just fresh little babies, right at the beginning of this journey of bringing the film to people. Of course we were very excited when the film was accepted into Telluride because it’s not an easy festival to get into. We don’t know where it’s gonna go or how it’s gonna get there, but the hope is that there’s a lot of different ways into the movie for different kinds of people.” For Cook, speaking as “somebody that’s been around the music business for a minute, it’s sort of a reinvention of an album release, for me — familiar, but a new world.”
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