Radiohead
Meeting People Is Easy
somany minutes running time

Big time fan-dork-ness sets in as the vhs tape slides its way into my vcr. This is the Radiohead movie. Don't get it confused with 7 Television Commercials, which they released a while ago, a tape that compiled seven of their music videos (which i'm gonna point out now, are some of the best videos ever made). First let me give you a little background on the situation... for the month before I received the tape all I'd been listening to is Radiohead. Well, that isn't completely true, but it would be Radiohead, then Radiohead, then a little more Radiohead, and change it up with maybe a Radiohead bootleg, and then some other record, and then Radiohead again. It was getting to the point of being kinda of sick. People at work were starting to get annoyed, etc. So then in the middle of this surge of Radiohead fancination, I get the movie. After viewing the movie once (mind you i've seen it more times than tickets were sold to the new Star Wars movie), it only got worse. I want to be in Radiohead. If they ever have tryouts, i'll be there. Meeting People Is Easy is shot in the same Radiohead fashion as OK Computer was made and everything else this band has done. Which in metaphor translation means, it's well done. Shots of planes, highways, escalators, people, interlaced with interviews, live shots, more interviews, and soundtracked by the seemily fantasy music of the band, including two brand new songs. Interviews with the same questions after same questions. In the studio. Huge crowds of people losing their shit to the hits. Excellent manors for rude people. More interviews. Press. Cameras. Photo shoots upon photo shoots. Depression. That sums up Grant Gee's film, Meeting People Is Easy, which is basically a year on the road with Radiohead. The film-maker says it's about "a bunch of articulate, essentially shy people who... find themselves in the strange/insane/seductive world of end-of-the-century celebrity, with thousands of cameras and microphones constantly siphoning little bits off them." And it is. It's a documentation of what Radiohead is, and a documentation of the wake of their success, and a documentation of all of these media fools following them around the world with microphones, tv cameras, mini recorders, etc. I really can't put into words very well how good this film is so I'm just gonna stop now and probably get a D minus from my english teacher for stopping whatever flow i had going. I just think it's is something you need to see not read about.

Travis Keller

Buddyhead
06.99