The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector

Jury Member Jim Browne to introduce
Phil Spector wrote and produced the soundtrack of America’s love affairs, creating the famously resonant mono recording style he called the “Wall of Sound” instantly recognizable in hits from The Crytals’ Da Doo Ron Ron to The Righteous Brothers You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. Until, after tabloid frenzy and two trials, Spector faced the music himself and was convicted for the second-degree murder of Lana Clarkson. Partly an ode to what Spector called his “Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for kids," and partly a stage for megalomania that alternates between charming and creepy, Agony is an always-riveting inquiry into a man and his music. Award-winning producer and director Vikram Jayanti continues a series of documentaries on larger-than-life people who are, in his words, “about something even bigger than themselves”. Granted an almost unheard of interview with the reclusive Spector at his suburban Los Angeles mansion during his first trial for murder, Jayanti pays tribute to Spector’s richly layered sound by crafting Agony from an analogous layering of images, commentary and magnificent renditions of Spector hits. John Lennon's Crippled Inside plays to Spector’s involuntary tics and twitches; we see Spector in court with the sounds of He’s a Rebel and hagiographic subtitles excerpted from a biography. Shot by the trail-blazing cinematographer Maryse Alberti (Happiness, Velvet Goldmine), in the end, as Jayanti says, Spector is “naked on-screen and he's weird [but] however complicated the film is in its view of him, it's also a love song to his legacy.” – Synopsis provided by New York Film Forum