GLEN CAMPBELL: I'LL BE ME (2014)
Directed by James
Keach
PCH Films/Virgil
Films 671075
103 minutes, PG
* * * *
Toward the very end of I'll
Be Me, we see Glen Campbell in a studio crooning the lines to the very last
song he ever recorded: "I'm Not Gonna Miss You." There could hardly
be a more poignant title; Campbell suffers from Alzheimer's disease and both
stage and personal lights went out shortly thereafter. Campbell sounds great on
the track, but he only got through it because one of his closest crew
members—whose name Campbell could no longer recall—stood beside him at the
microphone pointing out the words for him to sing.
I'll Be Me is
simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking. In 2011, Campbell got his
diagnosis. We see he and his family at the Mayo Clinic, where he jokes about
the fact that he can't recall four simple words or the name of first president
of the United States, but there's nothing funny about the MRI scans or his
prognosis: advanced Alzheimer's. But rather than roll over, Campbell set off on
a farewell tour that lasted nearly a year—buoyed by a crew of longtime
associates and employees, plus his wife, Kim, and three of his children: Cal,
Shannon, and Ashley—a Julia Stiles lookalike who is an amazing musician in her
own right. It began on a high note with a spot on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and ended in Napa, California, on a
bad night made tolerable only by a very forgiving audience. In between there
were shows in dozens of towns, an appearance before Congress, and a spot at the
Grammys.
A performer of Campbell's stature certainly earned some
slack: solid sessions work, a stint as Brian Wilson's stand-in for The Beach
Boys, multiple Grammys (including his 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award), film
credits galore, his own TV show, decades of good-as-gold shows, and enduring
hits such as "Gentle on My Mind," "By the Time I Get to
Phoenix," "Galveston," "Wichita Lineman," and
"Rhinestone Cowboy." (None of which he wrote, by the way.) One of the
more remarkable things about the film is how well Campbell managed on the tour,
as long as technology worked. At no less august place than Nashville's Ryman
Auditorium, the teleprompter failed and he simply couldn't go forward until it
was rebooted. Still, aspects of Campbell's stage persona confounded much of
what we thought we knew about the brain. Campbell couldn't remember words or
faces toward the end, but he remembered how the tunes were supposed to go. Is
melody more powerful than language? It's hard to say, but body memory certainly
is. Put a guitar in Campbell's hands and the notes simply flew off the strings as
if they bypassed thought altogether.
Keach's film is filled with cameo tributes from legions of
performers: Sheryl Crow, The Edge, Steve Martin, Kathy Mattea, Paul McCartney,
Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton, Chad Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Urban, Jimmy
Webb…. There are also political tributes, including one from fellow Arkansasan
Bill Clinton. Some of the praise would seem mawkish were it not for the fact
that many of Campbell's admirers were there because Alzheimer's has also
ravaged their families. Brad Paisley delivers one of the more poignant lines.
After informing us that his family has been hit several times by this
horrifying disease, he turns to the camera and says simply, "I'm next. I'm
41, so let's figure this out, okay?" Kudos to Keach for not sugarcoating
the story.
Campbell was no saint in his heyday. He was, in essence, a
Southern good old boy—with all its virtues (charm, corny sense of humor, good
manners) and its vices (Baptist faith preached but not practiced, chauvinism,
rightward political drift). He has been married four times and, by his own
admission, was often an absentee father to his eight children. He battled both
cocaine and alcohol addiction, and was such a carouser that he took up with
Tanya Tucker when she was 21 and he was 44. Much of his life followed the
all-too-familiar celebrity-behaving-badly arc. That we feel great sympathy for
him despite his shortcomings is another measure of Keach's documentary skills.
And we should feel sympathy.
As inspiring as the tour was, the story cannot end well and
does not. We see Campbell spiral into paranoia and witness his social graces
dissolve one by one. The tour was the last hurrah and things have gone down
hill since. The 79-year-old Campbell is now in a long-term facility and, as a
final tragic footnote, several of his children have sued Kimberly, accusing her
of isolating him. Alas, this too is a predictable story arc. You should watch
the film, drink in its brief triumphs, and then contact your representatives to
tell them to take up Brad Paisely's challenge.
Rob Weir
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