Director Todd Haynes will examine the history and the impact of The Velvet Underground in his first-ever documentary, a trailer for which is available now. The Velvet Underground will hit theaters and Apple TV+ on October 15th, following the U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 30th.
The I’m Not There director will go beyond the band of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker to examine the societal environment that birthed the Velvets, including Andy Warhol‘s “Factory” enclave. Using never-before-seen footage—including some shot by Warhol himself—and new interviews with Cale and other players including Danny Fields, Moe Tucker, Jonathan Richman, and others, Haynes has crafted the first-ever proper documentary on the pioneering art-meets-garage rock band.
“I wish it could happen again,” Haynes said of The Velvet Underground at the documentary’s premiere at Cannes in June. “But I think it’s a product of a very unique and specific decade that has been well-described for that kind of creative vitality, spanning all genres of music and all kinds of recording artists during the 1960s. But it also was further intensified by the locale and this geographic concentration of New York itself. And that’s the part that I find hard to find a parallel to today, in a very dispersed Internet, digital culture that doesn’t concentrate people and places in the same physical way that happened so distinctly in the 1960s.”
The Velvet Underground will also be joined by an official film soundtrack, curated by Haynes and the film’s music supervisor, Randall Poster. Out with the film’s premiere on September 30th, The Velvet Underground: A Documentary Film By Todd Haynes – Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack will include rare live versions of both classic and often-overlooked Velvet songs including “After Hours”, Nico‘s “Chelsea Girls”, “The Ostrich” from Reed and Cale’s pre-Velvet Underground band The Primitives, and more.
Watch the trailer for The Velvet Underground below and scroll down to see the film soundtrack’s full tracklist and album artwork.
The Velvet Underground — Official Trailer | Apple TV+
[Video: Apple TV]
[H/T Deadline]