Placebo on bringing David Bowie and Robbie Williams together in their “honest and vulnerable” new film
Placebo have discussed how their all-star, warts-and-all new documentary movie paints a bold new picture of the band, driven by “the desire to break the form and to do something new”.
Frontman Brian Molko and bassist–guitarist Stefan Olsdal of Placebo took to the stage at the premiere of their new documentary film Placebo: This Search For Meaning on Thursday night (October 3) to discuss the themes of the film – including addiction, mental health, gender politics and the film’s rare and unseen footage following the band’s relationship with David Bowie.
The film – directed by BAFTA winner Oscar Sansom and set for cinematic screenings throughout October – features revealing in-depth interviews with the band alongside CCTV-style contributions from celebrity fans including Benedict Cumberbatch, Robbie Williams, Yungblud, Garbage‘s Shirley Manson and IDLES’ Joe Talbot, alongside live performances of tracks from the band’s 2022 album ‘Never Let Me Go’. As well as touching on the band’s history, it delves deeper into the core meaning, purpose, philosophy and impact of Placebo over the band’s 30-year lifespan.
“Our reaction was like, ‘OK, but we really can’t make just another bog-standard documentary’,” Molko said in discussion with 6 Music’s Matt Everitt following the premiere screening at Leicester Square’s Vue cinema.
“’What are you going to do, Oscar? How are you going to subvert the form itself? How are you going to stop everybody from being bored? We can’t just have a series of talking heads here’. I think it’s a testament to [Sansom’s] imagination and your desire to break the form and to do something new.”
Sansom added: “I’m not interested in making a predictable narrative structure. I wanted to make something more exciting. You said ‘is this gonna be a piece of art that we’re making? Because I’m not interested in making a feature length promo’. And immediately we were on the same page.”
The film includes candid archive ’90s footage of the band at their onstage best and offstage worst, some of which was so raw that both members of the band took breaks from the screening.
“[Sansom] pushed us to be daring and to be quite naked, and to put things in the film which were embarrassing and maybe a bit humiliating,” Molko said. “But [he] gave us the courage to tell the most honest story that we could. It took a bit of courage, because there were some moments in the film which are extremely uncomfortable, and we could have sanitized it, but I think [he] really wanted to show us as human beings and we needed to discover ourselves through watching all of this.
“It also gave us a bigger understanding of who we are and a better understanding of the past 30 years. You need to get a bit of distance to it. When you’re in it, you don’t know what’s going on.”
Olsdal agreed: “The honesty and the vulnerability, I think that’s almost pathological in what we do. So for us to do something like this and not open up, I don’t think that would have been a possibility somehow.”
The film also includes the band and their celebrity contributors discussing key themes brought up by the band and their music, such as the free expression of gender and sexuality, the pitfalls of addiction that plague the touring musician and the modern approach to mental health.
“Socially, what’s happened with the way that we discuss mental health today is really, really different to how it was in the mid-90s when we started,” Molko said. “It just wasn’t a conversation at all. In the early 2000s it was just, ‘Get your shit together, get on stage’. What we do can make your mental health very, very fragile.
“I’m happy that more artists are making decisions based on protecting their own health whereas before, from the birth of rock’n’roll until maybe 2010 or something it was just live fast and if you die, you die – ‘Good, we’ll sell more records!’”
Key to the film is the plentiful footage of the band’s interactions with David Bowie, who championed the band in the late-90s, toured with them, and appeared on their 1999 single ‘Without You I’m Nothing’.
“It just shows you what a fantastic person David Bowie was,” Molko said of the footage, “because he always spoke to you on your level. It wasn’t like you’re dealing with somebody on a gilded balcony in an ivory tower. You’re dealing with somebody who really, really was very interested in you and was extremely genuine.”
The band claimed to be surprised at the calibre of celebrity fans who agreed to appear in the film, which also included Self Esteem and contemporary artist Stuart Semple. “There are surprises for me,” Molko said. “Getting Benedict Cumberbatch to be in it was a real coup. That was somebody that we discovered through mutual friends was a big fan. So it’s great to be surprised that way.
“One of my favourite moments is when David Bowie asked the question, ‘What is it that motivates a musician to do this extremely asocial thing?’ He asked the question, and Robbie [Williams] answers the question. That is a good example of how we’re trying to do something which plays with the form.”
The band also confirmed they were planning on making another album, after a break following three years of recording and touring for ‘Never Let Me Go’. “We need to get some distance from ourselves and from Placebo in order to come back to it with enthusiasm and joy and purpose,” Molko said. “There has to be a reason to continue. ‘Never Let Me Go’ feels like a creative resurgence for us, it feels like a new wave. So I’d like to buy a surfboard.”
Placebo: This Search For Meaning is screening worldwide throughout October. Visit here for more information.
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Mark Beaumont
NME
