Just shoot me

>> Radiohead on the road-life in the documentary Meeting People Is Easy

by CHRIS YURKIW

Radiohead are being shuttled from Radio Station X to Concert Hall Y in City Z, and the band's tour manager is on the cell phone explaining to someone or other why bassist Colin Greenwood is out of sorts: "It's just been a day of bizarre occurrences."

It's a scene from director Grant Gee's documentary film Meeting People Is Easy, which follows the British group not only on the road during the world tour for their breakthrough album, OK Computer, but also on the path to megastardom.

Of course, the point of the film is to isolate the repetition of daily events that such touring musicians and media commodities must endure--endless interviews, inane questions, gimmicky photo shoots, tedious pre-show soundchecks, tepid post-show handshakes with local record company reps--and to say that these are all "bizarre occurrences." It fits pretty snugly with Radiohead's musical message that life in the age of advanced capitalism, media super-synergy and celebrity-slut culture is soul-destroying, and fans of the band will surely empathize.

And like Radiohead's work, Gee's is none too subtle. There's a quick-cut sequence of photogs' flashes bouncing off leader Thom Yorke's twinging face, but we've already seen such clips of Diana--in real time, no less--where the cameras seem to shoot her like guns. And what of Gee's own camera that also shoots the band? Radiohead can only fight the media firestorm with fire (given that this film seems as much an authorized documentary as Madonna's Truth or Dare)--hire their own camera to get their own mediated message out. There is no escape from the game.

The point is made most poignantly in the scene which shows the shooting of the video for "No Surprises," which was also directed by Gee (how's that for media super-synergy?). Watch the video and you'll see Yorke sing the lovely ballad while a line of water slowly rises on the screen to submerge his head. In the shoot we see that this has been accomplished by putting an actual fish tank/helmet on Yorke's head.

This is where the band and the film fuse: rather than just sing about figuratively drowning in the late 20th century, Yorke acts it out literally for the camera--in some apparent danger. The world is killing Thom Yorke, and he'll risk dying to tell you.

Meeting People Is Easy opens Friday, June 25 at the Cinéma du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes