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Page C-6 Montclair Film Festival Thursday, April 27, 2017 Inside the mind of the master
Documentary captures creative process of guitarist Lee Ranaldo
‘HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANALDO : ELECTRIC TRIM’
by LINDA MOSS moss@montclairlocal.news
Former Township Mayor Jerry Fried is pleased to return to his roots as a filmmaker and to have a work he co-produced and edited, a documenta- ry on legendary guitarist Lee Ranaldo, premiere close to home at the Mont- clair Film Festival.
Fried and Fred Riedel produced “HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANAL- DO: ELECTRIC TRIM,” which chron- icles the creative process behind the musician’s new album.
“I’m just as proud as can be and hap- py that a film that I made with Fred, a film that we made together, is showing at the Clairidge Cinema, which is like a three-minute walk from my house,” Fried said. “I’m just really happy.”
Fried and his wife, Karen Niel- sen-Fried, knew Ranaldo long before
Friday, May 5, 8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6, 7:45 p.m.
Clairidge Theater, 486 Bloom eld Ave.
his rise to fame as a member of the experimental indie rock group Sonic Youth. They were all students at the State University of New York-Bing- hamton in the mid-1970s, studying painting together at that time, accord- ing to Fried.
“And Lee went on to become a rock ’n’ roll star,” Fried said.
“HELLO HELLO HELLO,” which took director Riedel about a year to shoot, depicts how electric guitar master Ranaldo worked with record producer Raul Fernandez, who is from Barcelo-
COURTESY FRED RIEDEL
Lee Ranaldo, left, a legendary electric guitarist and former member of the group Sonic Youth, was lmed working with record producer Raul Fernandez on a new album in Hobo- ken for “HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANALDO : ELECTRIC TRIM,” which was co-produced and edited by former Montclair Mayor Jerry Fried.
na, Spain, and novelist Jonathan Let- hem as well as other collaborators to make the album “Electric Trim,” which hasn’t been released yet.
The camera acts as a “fly on the wall” as Ranaldo and Fernandez passionate- ly and painstakingly experiment and try different approaches to the music, working with other musicians and la- boring over a mixing board. Ranaldo and Lethem also team up to write lyr- ics for the album, another process on view in “HELLO HELLO HELLO.”
Fried said that he’s pleased that the “festival appreciated the way the film shows collaboration, and partic- ularly artistic collaborations, in a very unique way.”
“It was just kind of a magical collab- oration where the three of them kind of put their egos aside and just were all-in on it, this work of art,” Fried said.
Riedel also knew Fried and Ranaldo from SUNY-Binghamton, and Riedel and the guitarist over the years re- mained in close contact as friends. Rie- del approached Fried about the film, and the editing process took about a year. Fried said he was also involved in shooting some of the scenes, traveling to Maine to interview Lethem, for ex- ample.
“It was one of the most fascinat- ing conversations I’ve had in my life,”
Fried said. “He’s a brilliant guy.”
In addition to his stint as Mont- clair mayor from 2008 to 2012, Fried spent 30 years in communications and advertising, in part editing commer- cials. He said he is glad to be back to filmmaking and editing following his forays into local government and on
Madison Avenue.
Riedel captured Ranaldo and Fer-
nandez working on the album in a studio in Hoboken, Echo Canyon West, that Sonic Youth has used over the years, according to Fried. Riedel wanted the studio footage to be nit- ty-gritty and have a “black-and-white look,” Fried said. Those sections are in contrast to colorful animated wave forms — similar to what one would see on Pro Tools digital-audio software, which is used for sound production and recording — that have been incor- porated into the film, Fried said.
“We really wanted to focus on the sort of gritty realism of the creative process and contrast that with ... ani- mated sections where there are almost sound paintings, which are based on the way music-editing programs look, ” Fried said.
Ranaldo is slated to attend the Sat- urday night screening of “HELLO HELLO HELLO” and perform several songs from his new album, according to Fried.
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