Monday night in Los Angeles 15,000 fans packed the Hollywood Bowl to watch National Geographic’s stunning new documentary, Jane, on legendary animal activist and philanthropist Jane Goodall.
Despite her beloved status around the world, composer Philip Glass, who did the score for the film, was genuinely surprised the movie sold out the Bowl. “Well, we underestimated our subject I would say. And I think our subject underestimated herself,” Glass said.
It’s hard to underestimate a woman who has captured the world’s attention for her devotion to her life's calling for more than half a century. Goodall is understandably one of the most revered people in the world by millions.
Jane shows why. It is profoundly moving, inspiring, beautiful and, as Glass, says, a “very unusual film.” The uniqueness of both the film and the subject demand a musical score equally as compelling. Glass, an Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning icon in his own right, called “One of the most influential musicians of the late 20th century,” is the man for the job.
The pairing of Goodall and Glass is historic, which is how it felt watching them both onstage at the end of the night Monday at the Bowl as 15,000 people stood and celebrated the film. Before that I sat down with Glass to talk about what he and Goodall have in common and why he finds selfies so tiresome.
Steve Baltin: Had you met Jane before doing this film?
Philip Glass: No, I met her about two hours ago.
Baltin: After doing a film like this did it feel like you knew her?
Glass: Here’s the thing, this is a woman whose life was driven by passion, passion for knowledge about the world and nature and specifically animal life. It’s so similar to what a musician does. We don’t write music to make music or become famous. You can become famous and you can make money, but that’s not what gets you up in the morning. I’ve made money and become famous anyway, but the motivation is what counts. With her, when you see her and you meet her she just oozes integrity, it just pours out of her.
Baltin: How inspiring is it for you to get to do a project like this with someone, who as you say, oozes integrity?
Glass: None of us ever dreamed we would be at the Hollywood Bowl on a sold-out night. I said to Brett [Morgan], “How did we get here?” He said, “I have no idea.” No one expected that because documentaries are a closet world. It’s not in the general arena of entertainment life.
Baltin: But when you do what you do out of passion people can tell that as well and the accolades are just a bonus.
Glass: They’re not even a bonus, they’re a nuisance. I always say so.
Baltin: How so?
Glass: How many times a day do people want to do selfies with me? I can’t walk down the street and I’m not that famous. But you don’t have to be very famous, you just have to be a little more famous than your neighbors and you gotta get in pictures all the time. Selfies are the new curse of even mini celebrities like me.
Baltin: Are they more of a nuisance than autographs?
Glass: Autographs are easy -- boom, boom, gone. Selfies, “Just a second. Oh, it didn’t work, let me do it again.” I’ve done ten signatures by that point.
Baltin: How do you turn it down?
Glass: I have a hard time turning it down. Some of my friends just say no. But it’s so easy to just ease somebody’s desire in such an easy way that I often just do it. What I have done some times is when people say, “Are you Philip Glass?” I’ll say, No.” That’s when I really don’t want to do it. And they say, “Really?” By that time I’m gone. I’m not the first person to tell you this. The kind of intrusion into your private world is almost endless because we, as a society, worship celebrities. So you don’t have to be Cassius Clay or a big enormous star. You just have to be a little star and that’s good enough.
Baltin: I always say interviewing so many famous people I would never want to be famous, but when you start out you’re not imagining fame.
Glass: I thought I would spend my life moving furniture and whatever I did in the East Village would go on forever. It never occurred to me that by 41 I would be self-supporting. What happened to me, it’s hard not to believe that it’s just luck in a certain way. When Godfrey Reggio did Koyaanisqatsi it ended up at the New York Film Festival at Radio City Music Hall. It was a chance event, no one expected that to happen.
Baltin: So after all these crazy experiences you still get surprised to end up at the Hollywood Bowl?
Glass: And I’ve been there three times with Godfrey’s movies. But this is the first time it’s been sold out. Godfrey’s movies are wonderful, but somehow this climbed right past them. We did Koyaanisqatsi and we did Powaqqatsi here. I think we got up to eight or nine thousand, that’s huge. There’s 15,000 it holds and tonight we’re doing 15,000.
Baltin: I imagine when you do a film like this, even though you knew who Jane Goodall was, you discover so many new things about her.
Glass: This is a very unusual film. First of all, it’s a retrospective of a person’s life and the person’s there. You see her at 24, you see her at 84 and the 84-year-old woman is talking about the 24-year-old woman. There’s that and then who would have had the imagination to film all that stuff? National Geographic hired this guy, he went down there, they fell in love, they got married, that went on for years. A lot of odd things happened that when they made this movie, when they were shooting it, I seriously doubt they’d end up at the Hollywood Bowl 50 years later. That was a bit unthinkable and yet that is exactly what happened. So there’s a spontaneity in the life of this project that amazed them. And Brett will tell you the same thing. He said to me, “I never thought we’d be here.” She has a different picture of herself than what we do. I sensed that right away. She’s not so surprised, but I just think she’s lived a life drenched in celebrity for a completely unique activity. Not because she was the best swimmer in the world or the best golfer or the best poet or best actress in the world. But she was the only person who did that and she did it better than anyone could’ve done it.
Baltin: Is there another person you’d like to do the music for a documentary about them?
Glass: Those people have probably died a long time ago. My contemporaries are too much like me and I know them already. When they made a film about Allen Ginsberg I didn’t got see it. I knew Allen and I didn’t want to see a make-believe Allen playing Allen because I knew Allen playing Allen. So that takes care of a lot of people. I would go back to some really strange people, maybe [Samuel] Beckett, though we worked with Beckett, not closely, but I did a lot of music for his plays. I worked with him but I didn’t really know him. One of the filmmakers I was most interested in was [Martin] Scorese and I got to work with him. So that was fun. I met so many scientists, but it would have been fun to have met [Albert] Einstein, which I never did.
