Filmmaker Joan Tosoni on Documentary ‘Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind’

It is a major compliment that he didn’t screen the documentary first! That’s very rare. You were speaking about the tough decisions that had to be made. I imagine it is hard enough to make those decisions as an individual, but you are co-directing this. What was the decision-making process like with your partner, Martha? Did you delegate certain responsibilities to each other that one person had sole control over? 

We made the film in a relatively short amount of time. The day we stepped into the office to the day we finished the film was eleven months. That included all of the interviews and everything except for that one shoot that we did five years earlier which was also seen in the film. But Martha and I tend to agree on things, but when we didn’t, we have some fights. You let it sit for a while then you re-discuss.

I don’t want to put an actual percentage on it, but 90% of the time we agreed anyway. We shared up duties, like she’d go in and edit one section and I’d go in and edit another one. We’d give each other notes, pare it down that way. Also, our editor Alex Shuper was very, very, very much a part of our process. He’s actually a head banger, and didn’t know that much about Gordon Lightfoot which we found to be an advantage because he brought a set of fresh eyes to it. He put things in it that we wouldn’t have chosen that ended up being very wonderful parts of the film. I call him Super Duper Alex Shuper because he was the editor on the film, Super Duper Alice Cooper.

I do also want to mention our executive producer John Murray. He was very helpful in the edit with that set of fresh eyes, as well. He would be pretty blunt with what he thought wasn’t working or was working. Also our executive from CBC, Lesley Birchard, same thing. You want these other sets of eyes because sometimes you can get too close to it. Somebody else’s take on it helps you see it in a different way.

To your point about having that distance from the subject matter, I think it does pay off. I’m from New York and I didn’t know that Gordon Lightfoot is like this sort of god in Canada. I see him being this equivalent to Bob Dylan here in America. Especially as a music fan, I was stunned that his Canadian legacy was not something I was aware of. To that end, being so close to the material, do you think there were any shocking or interesting responses to the material that surprised you when people saw it?

Martha’s and my favorite screening was the one for the members of the men’s club Gord belongs to where he goes to the gym six days a week. He’s been a member of that club for a long, long, long time. He’s one of the guys and the guys from the club just howled at everything that he said! I think that’s what really made Gord appreciate the film because the guys were loving it! Right from the time he says, “I hate that fucking song.” He has this wry sense of humor. He’s not a laugh-a-minute guy, but he makes you laugh. That was somewhat surprising and very delightful…that people were actually able to see some humor in him and in the film. You don’t want something like this to be all praising and “Oh, he’s the greatest.” We wanted it to be about the music as well. 

Some of the reviews have criticized that it doesn’t go enough into his personal life, but that was a conscious decision on our part because that can be a whole other film. The reason that Gordon means so much to Canadians is his music. The words to the music, the way the music sounds, and the way it kind of permeated their lives. They feel like it’s a bit of a soundtrack of their lives. So that’s the important thing about Gordon Lightfoot to me and Martha and that’s how we decided to sort of structure the film around the music itself. Of course, we couldn’t put in every major song. You put in what’s in the budget and put in as much as you can pay for. Some critics have complained that famous songs, for example, “Rainy Day People” or “Carefree Highway” weren’t in it. But we don’t really have good versions on tape of those songs. That’s another decision you make. There’s a great concert done by the BBC in the 70’s and it was really well shot. He did a full-on concert so we used several excerpts from that because it looked so good and sounded so good, but when you can’t find a good version of “Carefree Highway”, you just don’t put it into the film. It’s a visual medium.

I feel like if you’re a fan anyway, the absence of that song isn’t going to ruin your day if you have everything else. On the other hand, if you didn’t know much about Gordon Lightfoot, you don’t know what you’re missing out. There is so much to chew on and the film makes you want to find out more about him. It actually led me to do some research which turned out to be very fascinating and surprising. But to what you were saying about finding that angle, I think that’s really interesting that you said critics were complaining because I thought this structure was refreshing in a way. 

Our reviews were almost universally favorable, but a couple of critics said, “Why didn’t you deal with the fact that he nearly died? Why didn’t you deal with more of his family life and his wife?” Without that stuff, they think it makes a shallow film. A totally different film would have been made by other directors and producers. A filmmaker brings their own take to the film and it’s not going to be what someone else would make or necessarily want to see. 

But one of the things you said, that the film made you look up things about Gord, Martha has always said when interviewers ask, “What do you hope people take away from the film?”… her first hope was always that it would get people to go back to Gordon Lightfoot’s songbook and listen to his work, and find stuff that they weren’t so familiar with. Of course, that would be one of Gord’s goals, too. In fact, universally, we found that that happened. So, so many people who have responded to the film have said, “I’ve been listening to Gordon for days now. I didn’t know that was his song!” The film has really spurred people to want more of him.

Same here. I’m listening with new ears as well. I say to myself, “Oh, this song means something a little different because now I know about his relationship with Bob Dylan or this song takes on a new meaning because of what he said in the documentary.” It becomes a whole new experience. Besides that, the reason why I enjoyed the film is because of its fresh take on the rock documentary. In the last few years, documentaries have become so, so hot. Then there’s all these rock documentaries and rock biopics that wind up following the same kind of trajectory. Your documentary is very intimate. I felt a rather untraditional closeness to Gordon when he spoke as if I was right there speaking to him.  That’s what I really appreciated about it. When you were making the film, was there ever a point where you thought it was ever becoming too intimate? As a filmmaker, do you know where to draw the line given you already knew that you wanted to make it more about his influence than his personal life?

That’s a good question. I think Gord was willing to go further than he had. He’s been interviewed many, many times in his life, but I think he wanted people to see more of the real him than they have in a lot of the interviews. I think Gord knows where he wants to draw his own line. And he is a very private person, but I think also we didn’t want to probe into those personal details with wives and children because again it’s too broad a subject. To me, it may have taken away from the music and maybe it was a wrong decision. Martha did the interviews and she’s really excellent at that and with researching, but I don’t think we wanted to probe too deeply into those specific areas.

Because this is an Italian outlet, I do want to close in mentioning the great anecdote in the film about Frank Sinatra throwing down the sheet music to one of Gordon’s songs because it was too challenging for him to perform! I think that says a lot about Gordon’s genius.

‘Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind’ is now available on VOD.