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1) We’re very excited to be speaking today with acclaimed musicians and film producers extraordinaire, Greg Richling and Jonathan Sheldon; greetings and salutations, gang! Before we deep-dive Q&A-style down the celluloid and quite musical rabbit hole, how is the freshly-minted holiday season of 2023 treating the two of you?
Greg: Very well, thank you. Looking forward to an endless parade of tacky sweaters! Jonathan: Turn, turn, turn!
2) Major congratulations on the upcoming new documentary Immediate Family which is set to hit theaters this December 12! Greg, can you talk with our ever-inquisitive readers about what inspired this winning and heartfelt music documentary?
Greg: Jonathan and I wanted to work with Denny Tedesco on a film, as like many music fans, we loved his documentary, The Wrecking Crew. One day in 2019, I was expressing this desire to my friend, the late PR maven Lisa Roy, and Lisa had the idea of doing a film on the legendary 70s band The Section which consisted of Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Craig Doerge. We talked for quite a while that day and the idea morphed into doing a film about the 50 plus year friendship and working relationship between Danny, Russ, Leland, and guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who currently play together as Immediate Family, but also worked together on countless records and hit songs for most of the legendary singer songwriters of the 70s and beyond. And we knew we could incorporate the story of The Section within that broader, career-spanning story.
3) Sheldon, what made Denny Tedesco of documentary The Wrecking Crew fame the perfect and only choice as the director for Immediate Family?
Jonathan: Denny is a studio musician’s son and a filmmaker who had made a musician oriented first picture that was charming and successful. You’re not going to do better than that for a director of a picture on the next wave of studio musicians.
4) Greg, Immediate Family at once feels both of the here and now as well as being something of a paean to an earlier era of the singer-songwriter. Was that a deliberate choice, to have a hand both in the past and in the present?
Greg: Yes, that was definitely deliberate. We wanted the film to be a story of inspiration. One that shows how fulfilling life can be if you find your passion and work at your craft over a lifetime like these musicians have done. Denny set up a great device within the film to plant us in the past and the present at the same time by having the musicians playing their iconic parts in the studio with headphones on and then fading in the classic song they’re playing along with so the audience can discover their role in it. It’s the classic case of getting a more impacting result if you can show, not tell. But what it cleverly reveals is these are the guys behind this music, vibrant as ever, still here, creating, and taking a moment to honor the past.
5) Sheldon, were Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel, and Waddy Wachtel very open with sharing with cameras not only the highs but the lows of their time in the music industry?
Jonathan: Denny was able to get the whole band to open up and tell their tales. They were comfortable giving us the ups & downs. One of my favorite moments is Russ reflecting on how much family time he lost on the road and he takes beat and says “you can never get those moments back”, and that is an example of the sacrifices these guys made to be players.
6) Greg, was there ever anything which was “off limits” question-wise during these candid artist interviews, or subject matter which had to be tread upon with utmost delicateness? Or was everything fair game?
Greg: Nothing was off limits. It’s more that we are not interested in the salacious, TMZ style of storytelling. We are interested in careers, the craft of creating songs, the process. I think our subjects were very open about their lives and the trickier sides of the business. But keep in mind, these guys are still first call writers, producers, and session players. They’ve weathered many a storm and have maintained great relationships with all the artists they’ve worked with, and kept themselves in great shape mentally and physically over 5 decades.
7) Sheldon, watching Immediate Family, one gets the sense of Time and the ever-marching drum beat of the years and how it affects Danny, Leland, Russ and Waddy. This question sort of dovetails with the one above, but was there an intention to make Time and the passage of the years another character in the documentary?
Jonathan: Yes. We worked with the editors to get the flow of the decades to work like Acts. Time Compression is tricky and I think that’s one of the highlights of the film, covering that much ground in less than two hours.
8) Greg, Magnolia Pictures is doing the releasing honors for Immediate Family this December 12! What makes Magnolia Pictures the perfect home for this quirky and beautiful doc?
Greg: Well, Magnolia Pictures has an all around amazing team who work really hard and care about the films they choose to distribute. They were behind the Wrecking Crew and did a fantastic job with that film so it makes perfect sense to partner with them on the follow up. They get this subject matter and love it as much as we do.
9) Sheldon, can you give us a hint or three as to what you and Greg have up your sleeves regarding future music documentaries?
Jonathan: Pfonetic is a music-centric media production company, meaning it has to have a core of music that interests Greg and me. We push to make projects that feel the way the music we came upon as kids at the record store made us feel, and so a large component of Pfonetic is saying no to things that are outside of our interests even if they’re commercial and financed. Some of the ones we’ve green-lit include:
• ”Restless – The Bob James Story” – Music doc on the legendary jazz musician, with Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen directing.
• “Singers Night” -with executive producer Jeff Gaspin (“Rhythm + Flow”), a singing competition from small clubs, searching for the best singer in the world.
• “Here To Eternity: Collective Soul” – the ’90s rockers reflect at Elvis’s home in Palm Springs on their rise from the religious South and highlights from their 30-year career.
• Untitled Roger Nichols film – Documentary on Steely Dan’s brilliant recording engineer, who rose from nuclear scientist and inventor to the trusted audio wizard for Becker and Fagen, some of the most sonically perfectionist artists in recent music history.
• “Like a Rolling Stone”- Feature-length biopic on overlooked black record producer/label executive Tom Wilson, who produced everyone from Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel to The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa. 10) Greg, at the end of the day what do you hope viewers walk away with after taking in a showing of Immediate Family this holiday season? Greg: As I said before, I hope it’s inspiring to people to see how these players have turned their passion for music into a lifetime of making great, lasting art and deep, meaningful friendships cultivated through those experiences. I also hope that they learn things they didn’t know about how their favorite songs came together. And hopefully we turn a new generation onto this classic music, as well as, The Immediate Family’s new songs! They are a pretty fresh new band and have a lot of great new rock and roll music out. Their new album Skin in the Game drops February 16th, 2024! Check that out in addition to the film!
10) Greg, at the end of the day what do you hope viewers walk away with after taking in a showing of Immediate Family this holiday season?
Greg: As I said before, I hope it’s inspiring to people to see how these players have turned their passion for music into a lifetime of making great, lasting art and deep, meaningful friendships cultivated through those experiences. I also hope that they learn things they didn’t know about how their favorite songs came together. And hopefully we turn a new generation onto this classic music, as well as, The Immediate Family’s new songs! They are a pretty fresh new band and have a lot of great new rock and roll music out. Their new album Skin in the Game drops February 16th, 2024! Check that out in addition to the film!
