SXSW Review: Foo Fighters: Back and Forth

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Foo Fighters: Back and Forth

I have a confession to make: I really enjoyed Foo Fighters: Back and Forth, a new documentary by director James Moll that played SXSW this year.

Foo Fighters: Back and Forth traces the story of the band Foo Fighters from their start in 1995 to the recording of their current album. For those of you who don't know the Foo Fighters, it's the band David Grohl founded after the tragic death of his Nirvana band mate and friend Kurt Cobain.

One of the things I really liked about this documentary was how the story was told. Where a lot of documentaries are told using narration, this documentary was told using interviews of current and former band members. I really liked hearing the stories of the band from the people that actually lived it. I can imagine that Moll's background doing interviews for the Shoah Project has something to do with this.
 
Foo Fighters: Back and Forth starts from the beginning of founding member Grohl's career as a member of one of the biggest bands in history: Nirvana. After Cobain's death in 1994, Grohl worked on creating his own music and decided later that year to record some of it. It didn't take long for that music to gain the attention of the music industry and Dave formed the initial band with founding members Nate Mendel, William Goldsmith and former Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear.

After the founding of the band, Foo Fighters began their epic climb to music fame and fortune starting small in clubs, eventually making their way to live performances in arguably one of the most prestigious venues in the world: Wembley Stadium.

One of the things I found great about this documentary was its honesty. Sometimes in the creative process difficult decisions are necessary when when personal changes are necessary. This is by far one of the highlights of this film. Moll managed to convince current and former members of the band to discuss the difficulties when asking members to leave the band or when band members found it necessary to leave on their own accords. In each case you feel empathy for all of these people.

Another quality of this documentary is the humanity that it illustrates. A lot of the most powerful feeling of this documentary came at the end. The last act of the documentary illustrates the creation of the new Foo Fighters album: Wasting Light. This portion of the documentary takes place at Grohl's house where they recorded the album.

Two parts stood out in my mind. The first was the reunion of Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. Krist is Dave's former band mate in Nirvana. Dave invites Krist to play on a song on the new album. From this reunion you can feel old wounds healing. The second part that I found expecially touching is when Dave's daughter comes in and tells him, "You promised to take me swimming" and this "rock god" has to get out of music mode and do what all good dads do: go swimming. Being a father myself I can relate to his fate and a good fate it is.

If you enjoy music and/or the process by which it is created I highly recommend you catch this documentary. Foo Fighters: Back and Forth will screen in theaters around the country on April 5, including Galaxy Highland here in Austin. For more info, check out the movie's website. Here's a photo of the band during the Q&A after the film's SXSW screening at the Paramount.

Foo Fighters at SXSW