Interview with Brad Abramson creator of VH1 Rock Docs

Brad Abramson is vice president of original production and programing for US cable network VH1 and the creator of its series VH1 Rock Docs, which will be spotlighted at MOFFOM 2008. He is a special guest at this year’s festival, presenting the VH1 films The Night James Brown Saved Boston, NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell, Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, The Last Days of Left Eye, Sex: The Revolution and Lords of the Revolution: Andy Warhol. He will also take part in a producer’s workshop on “Music in Film.”

This interview was conducted by MusicFilmWeb (www.musicfilmweb.com), a new portal devoted to news, reviews and interviews on music documentary, and is used here with permission. A longer version will be published at MusicFilmWeb when it launches in October.

Your background is primarily in journalism, and you came to VH1 from CNN. What took you from “straight journalism” to music and pop culture chronicler?
Brad: I think it was probably writing one too many stories about the war in Bosnia. I’d gone to graduate school and got my degree and masters in journalism at Berkeley and I’d been working in “straight news,” and at CNN I did a whole lot of short pieces on the same subject over and over, but I always loved music and pop culture, and I’ve sort of always dreamed of doing long-form pieces in music. It was something that I had in mind back when I started doing pieces at graduate school. I didn’t really like the short-form stuff. I didn’t really like live TV. I tried some of that and got my feet wet in long-form and documentary production during my last couple years with CNN, and I found I loved it. And then it was only natural when I heard VH1 was looking for people to bounce up there.

Is that background an influence on the more issue-oriented focus in some of the VH1 films on things like AIDS in Africa and the diamond trade?
Brad:I do think so. People kind of look at VH1 and they shrug when they talk about Rock Docs because a lot people think of VH1 as home to Flavor Flav and some of the other eye-candy kind of shows. But I’ve always brought that news background and interest in cultural affairs and world issues to what I do, and I’ve always tried to not take the easy way, and to try to tell a story that’s interesting but also sort of complex.

The [Rock Docs] lineup does seem like a mix of more personality-driven films about an Elton John or a Courtney Love, and the issue-oriented docs and movies that have a lot of socio-political or cultural resonance, like NY77 or James Brown Saved Boston. Do you consciously set out to have that balance between these different types of films?
Brad:Yes, I think there is a definite attempt to have a mix of things. I think originally we were hoping we were going to do these things, and we were hoping we’d be able to get a [good] rating with them. The rating wasn’t something that was a demand from on high or necessary to green-light a Rock Doc. But after we started seeing that these things were rating really well, we decided we could have it both ways. We could have a show that was really critically acclaimed and something we thought very highly of as well as something that the audience liked. It’s been a deliberate attempt to have a mix of shows that we feel are going to have a rating, and some of them [where] maybe it’s a long shot but we like the project so much that we’re going to green light it anyway.

What are you looking for when evaluating a possible project? What in the filmmaker’s pitch is going to give you a buzz and what is going to kill it?
Brad: It has to feel big enough for VH1. You know, we’re a mass-audience [network]. It’s not like we’re this boutique, independent channel that can afford to do smaller topics, so I think it has to have either an iconic figure in the main titles or an iconic moment or story that everyone’s going to really gravitate to. We get a lot of pitches for Rock Docs, as you can imagine. We sort of avoid the smaller or lighter or wispier stories that may be great, but we just know right off the bat that they’re not going to work for our audience.

How do you find fresh approaches to those topics that get beyond just appealing to nostalgia?
Brad: We always look for stories that not only haven’t been told and are surprising to learn but are also relevant today. For example, the James Brown doc focused on a 1968 concert in which he helped prevent Boston from being overrun by riots in the wake of [Martin Luther King’s] assassination. It worked for us because it challenged the “crackhead” image that so many younger viewers have of JB, and it comes in a year when an African-American may well win the presidency. The Lennon doc [The US vs. John Lennon, 2006] was about dissent in the face of an unpopular war, and the government’s attempts to wiretap and stifle protest. Sound familiar? So it's not just a question of telling a specific story – it’s also a question of what that story says about us today, and why we need to pay attention.

At MOFFOM you’re doing a workshop on music clearance and issues like that. How big is an issue is that, especially for the more independent filmmakers who are doing some of the stories that VH1 is not taking?
They’re very expensive, music rights and footage rights, more so than they used to be. I think in the past they had better label deals, and you were able to get a lot of that stuff for free. Now you have to pay a lot of money for them. But I think that really makes the documentary in a lot of cases – having the right music, having great or different music, or footage that you’ve never seen before. Certainly we’ve done things that don’t have published music, that just have scored music, but I think to the extent that we can afford it in the documentary, it always seems to make a difference in the ratings.

In the last couple years it seems like you’ve become more active in theatrical distribution with some of these films, you’ve gotten very active on the film festival circuit.
Brad: Well, actually we’ve only had one theatrical release and that was The US vs.  John Lennon a couple years ago. I think it’s a tough time, as people are aware, for independent films in general, and for music docs in particular. That said, we’ve gone to a lot of the festivals for a number of reasons. One is to raise the profile of the brand Rock Docs, introduce ourselves to a lot of the filmmakers out there who might attend those festivals, and also familiarize the audience who goes to those festivals with our brand and our documentaries. It’s been great, because we’ve been able to have a life on DVD for a lot more [projects] than we used to. The James Brown thing is on DVD, the Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is on DVD. We have other deals in the works, and certainly that’s a big push for us, but it’s not always easy because DVD rights are 10 times more expensive than just TV rights for a lot of the music.  

Is there a rock doc out there that hasn’t been made yet that you’re dying to make, a particular story you really want to be the one to tell?
Brad: Good question. I’ve always wanted to do this Bob Marley story. We were actually talking to his family and his estate for a while about doing the story of when he was just starting out and for the first time getting involved politically in the government and elections in Jamaica and trying to stand up for his people and was shot by a guy who was trying to keep him out of the political arena. It’s a story that I talk about that no one’s ever heard of, but it was a story that sort of made him a legend in a way. He become this larger-than-life figure after that. I know that Scorsese was interested in doing something, I’m not sure if it was going to cover that exact territory, but I always thought that was a great idea for a documentary.