The original song "I'm Not Going to Miss You" from the Glen Campbell documentary "I'll Be Me" is a frontrunner for to win an Oscar this year. It's just one of the spectacular things about the James Keach-Trevor Albert produced film about the music legend and Campbell and his family's battle with Alzheimer's disease
Keach, who produced the 2005 film based on Johnny Cash's life, "Walk the Line," directed the documentary.
"I was introduced to Glen by Julian Raymond, who produced Glen's last two albums," says Keach. Raymond was working with Keach's son, Johnny, who had been opening for the band Cheap Trick, and Keach had some equipment from filming Cheap Trick's tour.
"So he said, 'You should meet Glen. He's getting ready to do his final tour and maybe you could just go out and film a few of the shows."
When Campbell made his public announcement about Alzheimer's and decided to embark on a tour, he wanted filmmakers to come along.
The five-week tour turned into a 151-show, two-and-a-half year "journey" that amounted to 1,400 hours of film.
"As a guy that has been in narrative filmmaking and someone who has wanted to be a storyteller my whole life, this is something very special I realized early on," says Keach. This is a story that this man wants to tell and personally I fell in love with Glen and his family. "
Keach says "I'll Be Me" is Rocky with a guitar. "It's about family, faith, love, laughter, friendship, loyalty, interacation, and oh, by the way, the guy has Alzheimer's. It's a music film about a music icon. That's the film I wanted to make. I didn't want to make an Alzheimer's film."
In 2011, at the age of 75, Glen and his wife, Kim, decided to go public with Glen's diagnosis.
Glen's wife, Kim says, "when Glen got the diagnosis and decided to go public, it was because he wanted fans to know what was going on in case he exhibited odd behavior on stage, like repeating a song or forgetting what key it was in. He just wanted them to understand."
The film captures some incredible moments during the final concert tour, especially a bittersweet scene where he plays the song "Dueling Banjos" with his daughter, Ashley, who is on tour with her father.
The movie is almost as much about Kim, Campbell's fourth wife (they celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary in October and have three children together, who make up the Campbell Family Band) and the rest of the family as it is about Glen. The Campbell Family Band are on tour with Glen during the film and include Ashley, and sons Cal and Shannon.
"The movie is the story about caregivers, too. The journey that they have to go on. So often, these people are the unsung heroes. We always feel bad for the guy that's sick, but the people that are taking care of the guy that's sick, they are suffering right along with them. The disease is a journey for everyone," says Keach.
Keach was able to enlist some heavy hitting musicians and A-listers in the film to talk about Glen's musicianship and their own experience with Alzheimer's: Bruce Springsteen, U2's The Edge, Bill Clinton, Steve Martin, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban, Jimmy Webb, Jay Leno and Paul McCartney.
The director says he didn't have to do any coercing to get any of the celebs to speak on camera. His producing partner, Trevor Albert, is best friends with U2's The Edge; others just wanted to be part of the film.
"There are so many people that are huge Glen fans. They wanted to talk to us. It really became a community effort." When Keach took his cameras to Nashville, he was able to talk to many musicians.
Out of the thousands of hours of film footage, he also has many of the musicians singing a song to Campbell.
There is other footage that Keach has plans to use where he interviews experts that answer the question: "How does a guy with Alzheimer's play music?"
In another "chapter" of the film, Glen and Kim sit in a room watching a reel of the music legend's past play out; it's mostly personal footage, but also some of his appearances on shows where he appears with Johnny Carson and his own variety hour, which ran on CBS from 1969 to 1972.
Keach explains that rather than constantly asking Glen if he remembered this or that, he decided to put together a film reel of past memories with the help of Kim.
"I put together a film of Glen's life and got a screening room and put cameras in the back. Kim knew the cameras were there but Glen didn't and then they started watching. He got a kick out of watching his kids and his mom and dad. And he could remember some things and some things he could not. That was the frame of the movie to show Alzheimer's disease not in a clinical way."
To record the song "I'm Not Gonna Miss You," the director enlisted members of the Wrecking Crew, a group of studio musicians whose session playing was unmatched during the 1960s in Los Angeles; Campbell was one of the session musicians.
Keach says it was challenging recording the song, but "when the guys started talking about the old days, there was a spark."
Campbell's last show was at the Uptown Theater in Napa, Calif., on Nov. 30, 2012.
In the film, it is here where the signs of Campbell's Alzheimer's decline really begin to show its devastation.
"The first 15 to 20 minutes were a train wreck," says Kim in a first-person story she wrote for Fox News online. "He was having difficulties. His guitar wasn't loud enough. It didn't have the quality he wanted. He became agitated on stage. He kept turning his back to the audience. His band was very uncomfortable. It was a tough show. But the audience cheered for him; they loved him unconditionally."
Keach says the movie is a testament to the human spirit.
"I'm totally convinced if Glen had hung up his guitar and went home he wouldn't have had the longevity he did. The conversations that he had each night with the audiences meant so much to him."
Campbell currently has stage 6 Alzheimer's; when the film was made he was in stages 2 to 4, according to Kim. Stage 7 is the final stage. In April 2014, at the recommendation of his doctors, Glen was placed in a memory care facility near the family's home in Nashville.
There isn't only Oscar buzz about the original song, but about the movie, too.
Currently, it's showing in Miami at the Regal South Beach. Don't miss it.
