Frank Marshall, Nigel Sinclair on Doc Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes

The legendary singer/songwriter Pete Townshend of The Who has cooperated with a documentary feature about his colorful life and career, and specifically about a time that almost destroyed him and his band: when, shortly after the release of the album Tommy, Townshend and The Who tried to make a science fiction rock opera called Lighthouse.

Behind Blue Eyes, which was co-directed by Frank Marshall and Nigel Sinclair, is headed to multiple fall film festivals as a sales title. The film’s backers — it was produced by Kennedy Marshall Documentaries, White Horse Pictures and VICE Studios, and is presented by Sobey Road Entertainment in association with Spirit Music Group, Polygram Entertainment and Trinifold Management — hope it will land a buyer and a spot in this season’s awards race.

Marshall and Sinclair exclusively discussed the film with The Hollywood Reporter.

What was it about Pete Townshend’s story — and specifically the story of Lifehouse — that made you feel this was a film that needed to be made now?

FRANK MARSHALL It’s a fascinating story and very compelling as a film now because the world has finally caught up with it. In 1971, no one could understand what Pete was talking about and he thought Lifehouse had failed. The irony is, 55 years later, we’re living inside his story. 

NIGEL SINCLAIR And the other part of this is that Pete’s reached a point in his career and life where he is prepared to take a very intense look back at his creative process, with all its twists and turns; and that was captivating.

As you dug into this period of Pete’s life, what surprised you most about him or changed your understanding of the man behind the music? 

MARSHALL I was surprised by how intellectual Pete is, his art school background and how he was trying to describe the future with technology. His solution wasn’t destroying technology, but human connection. He wanted to connect to the audience and bring them together through music. And out of that apparent failure came “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “The Song Is Over” and other amazing music originally connected to Lifehouse.

SINCLAIR What surprised me was how self-aware he was from an early stage in his career. Discovering the link between his childhood torment and the character of Tommy was an extraordinary revelation. The other thing was the intense duality of his personality — the introvert and the extrovert, the rock superstar and the internal artist who wanted to be thought of as a writer not a rockstar.

Lifehouse emerged from a deeply personal crisis that nearly tore apart both Pete and The Who. How did you approach telling that story in a way that captures both the enormous musical ambition of the project and the personal stakes for Pete?

SINCLAIR Ironically, the enormous musical ambition of the project resulted in Who’s Next, which is easily the biggest album The Who released, groundbreaking, and often considered one of the top 10 rock albums of all time. In two days of interviews, Pete opened up his heart and explained how much Lifehouse was intended to reconcile the two sides of his personality, the rockstar and the artist. So its failure was heartbreaking then and, it appears so, now, as he tells it. So many of the later decisions Pete made about his career were so obviously driven by this “disaster.” And maybe from it came the wisdom that gave Pete a greater sense of fulfillment later, and made his relationship with Roger even more powerful.

What do you hope audiences come away understanding differently about Pete Townshend — and his place in music history — after seeing the film?

SINCLAIR Pete Townshend was one of the avatars who took rock and roll as a form of popular music and turned it into an anthem, a generational call to action, for then and for so many generations since. With Townshend, a select group — John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Ray Davies of the Kinks, and a little later David Bowie — gave the music, the lyrics and the performance of rock and roll the power to become an identity for millions and millions of people on earth. If Dylan changed the narrative with his The Times They Are a-Changin’ album, Pete turned it up to another level with the Tommy double album.