Movie review: The Secret to a Happy Ending.

“The secret to a happy ending is knowing when to roll the credits…
it’s good to be alive…”
—A World Of Hurt by Drive-by Truckers

When talking about Rock and Roll films, there are three types that come to mind immediately: documentary, concert and dramatic. The latter would include films like The Buddy Holly Story or even Purple Rain in that a story, whether true or fictional, is being told. The documentary and concert styles overlap quite often, but to mixed effect. It’s great when it works but sometimes it’s frustrating. The Beatles’ Let It Be is an almost painfully dull film of a band collapsing on itself, at least until the rooftop show. Dylan’s Dont Look Back contrasts riveting performances with tedious in-jokes and dull backstage moments, while the later No Direction Home remedies that with Bob himself talking (somewhat!) about what life was like for him in the early 1960s.

In Barr Weissman’s 2010 documentary, The Secret to a Happy Ending, there’s great balance between live performance and revealing interview. The subject this time is not a blockbuster band that’s topping the charts or selling out arenas and stadiums on their mammoth concert tour. The band is called Drive-by Truckers, and they’ve most likely played a blistering live show within a reasonable driving distance of wherever you are right now. This film about them is without a doubt a new addition to the pantheon of great rock and roll films.

Six years in the making, the film documents a band that has slogged its way out of Alabama in the late 1990s out to clubs across the globe, finally breaking into the Billboard Top 40 Album charts in the late 2000s. What’s great about the way the film is organized, though, is it’s not just a travelogue or chronicle. It’s divided into sections that let you get to know the people on stage, where they’ve come from both in terms of upbringing and family, as well as the stories behind a great catalog of songs. Drive-by Truckers tunes tend to be story songs. There are three different songwriters in the group, and their catalog stands up and compares favorably to the best efforts of Bruce Springsteen, Warren Zevon, Neil Young and Tom Petty. Yeah, I’m a fan. If you’re not… this movie will at least convince you to pick up one of their albums.

The core of the band is a long-running friendship between guitarist/songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Cooley gets one of the best laughs in the movie with his line, “When we started, the Stones had been together 20 years. And we thought that was ancient. Now we’ve been together as long as the Stones were when we started… and it’s still ancient.” Drummer Brad Morgan comes off as the level-headed calm one in the band. Guitarist Jason Isbell and bassist Shonna Tucker, who both came into the band around the time of their 2003 album, Decoration Day. They got married, but divorced around the time of recording 2006’s A Blessing and a Curse album. This led to Jason splitting from the band while Shonna stayed on. While the film does focus on meeting each of the members as people, it doesn’t dwell luridly on the behind-the-scenes personal lives. This was a conscious choice by director Weissman, and it works. What was interesting about that choice is… in this era of celebrity overexposure, I didn’t miss it at all. It was obvious that whatever happened was private and between them only, and came off as very respectful. You do meet Patterson and Mike’s kids briefly, and there’s a sense that maybe some of the wildness of youth has been tamed by the responsibilities of parenthood.

Rooted in the story songs of the DbT catalog are a whole lot of real-life people and adventures. You get to meet Patterson’s great-uncle, George A., for whom they wrote the song The Sands of Iwo Jima: “I never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima,” as the song goes, when George talks about his actual experiences there. A lot of Patterson’s family is in the film including briefly his mother, the subject of the song 18 Wheels of Love. There are stories about Gregory Dean Smalley, for whom the song The Living Bubba was written - a guitarist dying of AIDS, pushing himself to keep going: “I can’t die now, ‘cause I got another show to do.” Mike Cooley’s tune Uncle Frank and Jason Isbell’s song TVA are discussed with the background of a brief history of the Tennessee Valley Authority bringing electricity to some of the poorest parts of the south. These may seem unusual subjects for rock songs that have the power of Neil Young and Crazy Horse going at full tilt, but they make for great narrative songs.

It’s not all rock and roll, though. There’s the usual discussion about the tedium of the road, which - while a staple of rockumentaries - has got to be fair game for a band like this doing hundreds of dates a year. They’re not doing it in airplanes or under giant stage sets or in glamorous accommodations either. The film shows how hard this band works doing so during the kick-ass, stomping live footage shot at various venues across the U.S. These guys and gal bust their asses getting it done, and there’s some sense of what it’s like to be an album-oriented band in the post-FM radio and post-CD age. They’re working with smaller independent labels and paying a significant amount of attention to crafting an “album” as opposed to just a collection of songs. The care and loving of the LP and CD packaging is shown in segments with artist Wes Freed, who creates the the album covers and show posters dating back to 2001’s double album Southern Rock Opera. His unique and haunting images square up just fine with the darker aspects of the songs they bring to the stage. Wes also created the poster for the film.

The title of the film comes from the band’s song A World Of Hurt, and the film at one point was going to end with the group weighing the prospect of splitting up for good. Changes in lineup were made, and the band prevailed upon director Barr Weissman not to end the story there and let it go on a little further. It does, and you see how all parties came out on the other side.

The Secret To A Happy Ending is utterly a love letter to rock and roll, this terrific band that creates it, and just some of the true stories behind their songs.  If you love this kind of music, if rock music makes your life worth living, you owe it to yourself to see this movie, pick up one of their records, or see them play out live.

After the screening there was Q&A with the band, director and some of the other folks in the film; this will be covered in the next posting here at Playmixt, with more photos.