When you get that call about interviewing one of you childhood Idols, you take it. It all started after seeing the documentary of the Legendary Oscar winning Composer plus TV and Movie star, Paul Williams called "Paul Williams Still Alive" and I reached out to see if the director, Stephen Kessler (Vegas Vacation) was coming to the screening at SIFF. Indeed he was and the subject himself, Williams. I was nervous (I even told him this) about meeting Paul, according to the film he was initially distant about interviews (that was 4 years ago) but now he was was quite friendly and easy to talk to. It was obvious that Filmmaker and subject were closer than ever!
MK: I am super excited to be joined by Paul Williams. The subject of Paul Williams Is Still Alive. And …
PW: And proved.
SK: And he has proved that he is alive.
MK: And the traveling director who started this
whole project saying why, where has he been.
Where has Paul Williams been?
Steve Kessler who is a chubby little kid and has been clean?
SK: Yes.
Still in love with life.
PW: Lonely little songs, and my sad songs. He identified …He wanted to be me.
SK: I did.
PW: (Laughs)
SK: And now I’m constantly, we’re constantly
together, which is nice.
PW: You know, we were actually looking for
something to do together, something, you know, a film project, or something
kind of, you know, because we’ve gone from the arch of the relationship and
gone from stalker to brother. It was the first phone, the first year, a
year and a half of the relationship, where it was, there was this kind of you again? Every time you turned around there was a
camera in your face, to the place where in the middle of the Philippines, I
lived with this man hungry, lonely, terrified that Al Queda was going to get
him, and I went; I really love this man. You know what? He’s devoted all these years to like trying
to make a movie about me. I’ve just been
this, you know, I’ve been this ghost and keep disappearing and going nuts, and
I, you know, there are things that I did, that when I looked at the film, I mean
he had a film crew waiting to film me in San Francisco, and I wouldn’t come out
of my room, it was like …
SK: Well, you were a little hoarse.
PW: I was a small horse.
SK: Yeah.
PW: Yeah, I had …
SK: Laryngitis.
PW: But, you know, when I look back, and I
could’ve been much more generous with my time than I was, but I didn’t know
quite at that point who you were, or if I wanted you around.
SK: Exactly, because that’s the thing, is at the
beginning you were just like very, very standoffish. You just didn’t …
PW: Well, I didn’t know if I wanted, you know, I
was like, well, why would anyone want to make a film about Paul Williams? My life had a lovely balance to it. I had, you know, for me, in the ‘70s, and especially
like, in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, there was an element of, of, of notoriety,
or celebrity, that had become for me, kind of an addiction.
SK: Mmm.
PW: And it was running parallel to another
addiction that was blossoming; my addiction to vodka and cocaine. And progressively the addiction to the drugs
and alcohol outran the addiction to the celebrity, where all I wanted was to
hide. And they all, and suddenly, and
you go from doing forty-eight Tonight Shows and to a place where you’re, it’s
three in the morning and you’re peeking out the venetian blinds at the tree
police, because you know they’re out there.
And you’re sending your manager to tape meetings for you because you
don’t want to go see anybody because you can’t function. You’re just, you know, you’re a slave to the
chemicals.
MK: And I’ve been hearing a lot about, lately,
about how celebrity really does this to you.
PW: Well, I don’t know if celebrity does, I mean,
I think it was, you know, the fact is that celebrity addicts and alcoholics are
the ones who get written about. But, you know, for, you know, you know, for
all the, for all the romance of a rock and roll legend, you know, being found,
you know, dead from shooting heroin, there is an equal tragedy to a bored
housewife in Ohio drinking Listerine.
She is medicating her feelings, and her fear, and her loneliness with
that, that alcohol, you know, because there’s 18 percent alcohol in
Listerine. More than white wine. She’s medicating her emotions, and her, her,
her, her, her, her pain, you know, in the same fashion as this. Probably appearing to be very arrogant but
underneath it all a very frightened rock star. I think ultimately it’s about fear. You know, it’s like, you know, a the bottom
of Maslow’s scale is safety. And, yeah,
you go off to that, to the peak, which is self-actualization, which is, you
know, you’ve created a sphere of blossoming.
But if you ignore the very bottom, or if you ignore safety, if you’re
feeling unsafe, you know, one of the great misconceptions is that you keep the
rest of this tower alive, I’ll be able to medicate to make myself feel
safe. And it’s a false security, and
eventually the whole thing tumbles. And
eventually the whole thing tumbled with me.
And when I finally got sober, that amazing feeling of turning to another
human being and saying; I’m scared to death, I don’t know how to do this, you
know, can you help me? And having
another ordinary guy, off the street, who would walk the path before me, turn
to me and say; I’ll show you what we did, and let’s see if it works for
you. And the fact is that that was a
connection which made me feel, it’s kind of like the Rainbow Connection, that
was, in fact, for the first time in my life, I really felt like a member of the
family now, you know, where I – you know, I keep dropping idols I don’t
mean to – but where I just felt safe.
And at the end of this world, when I put my world back together, comes a
gentleman, you know, with, you know, with a camera, and let’s, let’s go, let’s
make this movie about your life. Let’s
have a, you know, and there’s never been anything more pathetic to me than some
little old man going; please sir, may I have another cup of fame? I don’t, I don’t ever want to be that. And the idea of a where are they now kind of,
you know, VH1, as fascinating as they are for me to watch other people, I had no intention of ever having anybody doing one
of those about me.
SK: (Laugh)
PW: And what is wonderful about the film that
Steve made is I think without having an absolute idea of the kind of film he
was going to make, he allowed the relationship, our relationship and the film,
to kind of morph into what it is. And I
think what it is, is a very, I discovered it as a combination of it being, of
an open crossing road picture and Celebrity
Rehab. It’s just, it’s, and I think it’s one of the,
you know, I sit with the audience and watch them laugh their butts off.
MK: That actually brings me to two
questions. One is the fact that it was,
one thing, it made me think of you as this sort of, it wasn’t just about you,
it was also about him too. And it was,
it was a self-discovery for you, and also a period of self-discovery for him
too.
Was that, you know, there was this guy that I
loved as a kid, but ultimately that wasn’t such, that was a story you had seen
before. The story of a star that had
everything and got into drugs. And
people who know that story. And I didn’t
really feel there was an interesting movie in that story. But where I did feel there was an interesting
movie was who Paul was now, this guy I was hanging out with once in a while
now. And even in the course of hanging
out with him I, it’s, he seemed while, I mean, not a perfect person, but he’s tender to me. It really made me start to question the
values in my own life.
PW: Exactly.
SK: So my necessity, you know, in order to make a
movie that, to me, was as honest as some of his songs were honest like, you
know, I won’t last the day without you,
day after day, so all the strangest
worlds that don’t belong and not that strong. I mean, that was a lyric that I hooked into
when I was eleven years old not even realizing why I was into it. But I wanted to make a movie that was as
honest as his writing was. And I
realized that to be honest, to show him honestly I have to show where I was
honestly. And that’s when it really
actually started clicking as a movie, as a, that’s when it actually started
clicking as a movie, not as a documentary, not as a rock documentary, or a
music documentary. It’s a movie that
people go into and have this emotional experience with.
PW: I don’t think it’s like any other documentary
that’s ever been made, and one of the reasons for that is his willingness. You know, you sort of stumble your way
through this process, what do I ask? You
know, what am I going to ask him while I’m telling this amazing, you know,
touching story about my dad taking me to a ballgame. He finally realized what he wants to ask me
about, these talent shows. I want to
interrupt and ask you about that time.
He kept interrupting this meaningful story about my dad taking me to a
ballgame when he was drunk. He asked
about a goddamn talent show? Wait a
minute, you know, put that in the
movie.
SK: (Laugh)
PW: And I loved the fact that he was willing to
pull his own covers. And so you see this
sort of assembling, you know, startings, and trying to get restarts, and trying
to figure out how is this going to fit in?
And, you know, my wife was kind of so sick of that camera in our
face. And me thinking I don’t want to
pull off the bear. I don’t want to go
wind up making a movie where all of the sudden I’m picking up Time Magazine
saying, another, you know, this has been a blah, blah, or whatever. I didn’t want to do that.
SK: Yeah, I mean …
MK: Now, there were certain things of the film
that, certain things that you said, no, don’t put that in there.
PW: Yeah.
MK: Where we can get in.
PW: No, but from the very beginning the one rule
was that I had, I had editing rights. If
I didn’t want something in, and …
MK: Oh, good.
So you got …
PW: So – well, sure …
SK: Can I just this say quick …
PW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SK: … [?] that he, he, I mean, he’s …
PW: I mean, I actually saw the footage of me
watching the Merv Griffin show when I’m so messed up.
SK: right.
PW: That, you cannot put that, I mean, you know,
I don’t want my daughter to see that, I’m joking about marital infidelity when
I’m on the road. I don’t want my
daughter to ever see that.
SK: Right.
PW: It was horrific, you can’t use it. And you know what he did? He put together the first cut of the movies
that had included that. And I, and I, so
I watched the movie to the end. And you
got to the end of the movie and you saw where my life is today and the amazing
opportunities I’ve been given as President of ASCAP and the way my world has
come together, and you know, the, what I’m able to contribute as an advocate
for recovery. And I went, you know what,
that horrible scene that I hate so much has got
to be in there. It works so beautifully
to show how far I’ve come. How far down
I got, and, you know, I, you look at that footage and it’s like, I ask him in
the film; why would you want to make a movie about that? That’s the most grandiose, backwards, shallow
little bastard, you know, why did you, you know, I hate that guy. And that was a one-time situation. All of the sudden now it’s been converted to
zeros and ones and the world is going to see it. There has to be a really big payoff for the
world to see something that despicable, despicable about my past, and I think in
the film there is. But at the same token
it’s not, this is not a, you know, a soapbox film about getting sober. This is a film about two guys trying to make
a movie, and in the end the movie, I think, in a lot of ways revealing itself
to us.
SK: And then to add to all his work.
PW: Yes, I mean, and …
SK: And becoming a film that has a great payoff.
PW: A movie about like a guy who doesn’t want to
have a movie made about him, and another guy who is … yeah, you know, it’s,
it’s, there’s a little bit of a, like ACME dog net, you know. There’s a little bit of Wile E. Coyote and
the RoadRunner in it. Me being the
RoadRunner and Steve Kesler being Wile E. Coyote. Always there with the camera.
SK: But it is funny that, you know, I did feel
like that, when I didn’t know Paul, okay, look, I don’t know him, he doesn’t
know me. He’s not really interested in
making, me making a film about him. And
so of course with a Director you never want to say to the talent; I’m going to
take out anything you don’t want. But I
just had this really intuitive feeling from when I was a kid that it would be
okay. And I, and I had this intuitive
feeling I think also because of Paul’s writing that he would want an honest
movie.
PW: Mm-hmm.
SK: And so I, and also, as you see in the movie,
a lot of times he’s telling me; no, put this in. No, don’t do that. No, don’t do this. And, and I just had, had this feeling that he
wanted this to be really honest because that would be the truest and funniest
portrait to find out what went on.
PW: That’s, going back to sobriety, but the fact
is a large part of recovery is about being rigorously honest. And I think that he did that. I think he created a film that is rigorously
honest from his participation and on mine.
You know, it’s like, that, that I, frankly if I’m, if I would ever, if
anything in my life turned to another human being and say; there’s proof that I
got a lot of courage, looking at that film would be what I’d give as an
example. Because there’s some stuff in
there that most people would’ve said; no way, you’re not going to put that in the film.
SK: You know, as, like as I traveled around with
him, and I would meet different fans, like me, people who connected with him
because they were people who were like in their own world. They were outsiders, they felt like they
didn’t fit in places. The very things
that he wrote about, you know, like Rainy
Days and Mondays Always Gets Me Down.
I mean, I realized that I didn’t want to make the kind of film where
great singers and songwriters talk about a great songwriter and tell you why
he’s so great. Because really what makes
Paul great as a songwriter is the way ordinary people who feel lonely or
disconnected felt some community in his writing.
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