Documenting a Musical Outsider

30 Century Man takes you on that journey with a guidebook, and despite its iconoclastic subject, is itself an accessible and beautifully structured film. It has received wide critical acclaim and is wowing film festival audiences around the world. Regardless of the film's success, however, Scott Walker, the musician, will be a tough sell.

That's nothing new for Walker. The slick, cynical marketing of musical talent didn't begin or end with the Backstreet Boys any more than the commodification of gay identity begins or ends with Abercrombie and Fitch ads. Even more today than when he first turned his back on mainstream success, Walker 's refusal to be sold — or even be made salable — is extraordinary.

"That's what really inspires me about Scott," said Harold. "He made a decision not to be commodified. He had a true artistic vision, and he made the choice to pursue that. He walked away not once but twice from fame and commercial success to pursue his art and his truth, on his terms. To be the person that he is."

Kijak, whose next project is a horror movie about a haunted East Village bedroom, said much the same, but pointed out that art and truth don't pay the bills. "I've done two documentaries in a row that are really low budget, and I'm just a broken man," he said, laughing. "These films have destroyed me. So I figure, let me try to do something a little more mainstream. And I'm sure Scott would be totally ashamed of me. If I was following his example, I'd go off and do another weird documentary. But I'm not. I'm not that strong."

Kijak has found it particularly hard to find a market for his work in the gay community: "This is why sometimes I feel like, how do you sell yourself? How do you sell yourself to 'the gays' when you feel excluded from them in some ways?"

It's not that Kijak hasn't made a gay project. "My first film [the Outfest award-winning Never Met Picasso in 1996] was a forgotten movie," he said. "We tried to sell it to here! television, and the woman actually said to me, 'Well, it's really not gay enough for our network.' I said, 'Did you actually watch it? It probably couldn't be gayer.' You've got a lesbian, a freaky transsexual, Alexis Arquette, hello, who defies categorization. Alvin Epstein, legend of the theater. All the characters. Craig Hickman. It wasn't gay enough for gays; it was too gay for straights."

Given the obstacles Kijak faced, how did a relatively unknown, queer American filmmaker get access to one of the most reclusive figures in music? It wasn't easy, he said, acknowledging what he calls Walker's "Garboesque reputation," but it was, in fact, his very outsider status that gave him both an insight and an edge.

"I think what they liked was that it wasn't the establishment," he said. "It wasn't the BBC; it wasn't British; it was just someone coming and saying, 'Let's do the Scott Walker story without all the baggage of having known his fame in the '60s, the screaming girls and the Walker Brothers and all that.' So [ Walker ] says, 'This is great. A young American looking into this story with a different, fresh perspective.' That appealed to them. And he's a crazy film buff, and he loved my last film. I sent him Cinemania. And he somehow felt some complicity with these people and liked the compassionate approach we took to a view of people on the fringe, to real outsiders. I think he felt like one of them in a way."

Visit our Video Picks page for a clip of Scott Walker's work.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man screens at Hot Docs: The Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto April 21–22 and the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on May 2, 3, and 5. For more information, visit www.scottwalkerfilm.com.