TORONTO – In the feature film about her life, Stevie Nicks wants Reese Witherspoon to play her.
This is one of many revelations found in In Your Dreams, the documentary about the making of Nicks’ 2011 solo album of the same name, co-directed by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, who also helmed the record with Glen Ballard.
On and off, over the course of a year, Stewart shot 50 hours of footage of the now 64-year-old Nicks, most intimately at her mansion high in the hills above Los Angeles. The resulting film features cameos by Witherspoon, Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham, Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and, of course, Stewart, who is a bit of a character himself.
When he’s not belting back the occasional martini, he’s got either an acoustic or electric guitar or camera in his hand.
During one funny moment, Stewart is filming Nicks and she looks up and says: “Oh, that was you the whole time. I’m going like, ‘Who’s the chick in the white outfit that’s filming us?’”
One genuine surprise? That until writing with Stewart, Nicks had never ever written a song with another person in the same room before.
“I don’t like to be told what to do,” she says at one point.
In another scene, she is seen arguing with Buckingham over tense changes in her lyrics.
“Would you say that to Bob Dylan?” Nicks asks him.
And when Stewart tries to insert some “too siren-y, too weird” guitar effects into a song, Nicks says bluntly: “Don’t quit your day job.”
No pushover is Nicks. And she’s honest too.
She admits to ending up with a demo reel of 23 Campbell tracks in the ’80s after visiting Tom Petty and stealing one — Runaway Trains — for a Fleetwood Mac song until Petty got wind of it.
“All I could hear was Tom screaming,” she says to the camera. “I was so busted.”
The movie is certain to appeal to fans of Nicks, whose gypsy persona, fashion style and throaty voice made her an icon.
And for those who aren’t devotees, the behind-the-scenes music-making with some of rock’s top musicians will fascinate.
In Your Dreams: Stevie Nicks is at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Monday at 7 and 7:30pm, with Nicks conducting a Q&A afterward.
Jane Stevenson / Toronto Sun / Sunday, April 14, 2013 08:02 PM EDT
Dave Stewart: Co-director, Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams
By Susan G. Cole Now Toronto
Monday, April 15, 2013
Dave Stewart put on every one of his musical hats – producer, guitarist, songwriter – for Stevie Nicks’s 2011 disc, In Your Dreams. He adds feature film co-director to his artistic resumé with this documentary tracking the album’s creative process and probing Nicks’s personal history and inspirations. He talked with NOW about that collaboration and why it worked. Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams screens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox April 15 to 18.
By Sarah Kurchak Spinner
Tuesday, April 16th 2013 4:40PM
Jason Merritt, Getty
Toward the end of In Your Dreams, Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart’s documentary about the making of their album of the same name which opened at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox last night, Stewart muses about the magic that he experienced in that year of writing and recording with the rock ‘n’ roll legend and his hopes that a piece of that comes across in the film.
“I hope it brought you a little closer to Stevie’s heart,” he says in his closing narration.
The film certainly lives up to Stewart’s expectations. The result of the producer and former Eurythmics member’s almost obsessive need to film and document everything in his life, “In Your Dreams” takes viewers deep into the year-long creative process behind Nicks’s 2011 album — her first solo release in over a decade — and just as deep into the heart of its co-writer and co-director.
With his omnipresent camera essentially becoming part of the gang, Stewart documents almost every detail of what happened from the time that Nicks asked him to produce her new album to the assembly of her band and crew (including superstar producer Glen Ballard and her Fleetwood Mac bandmates Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham) to the videos the crew made to accompany each song on the disc.
Obviously comfortable with her creative partner, Nicks opens up about almost everything. Her family, her early music history, her sometimes rocky history with Buckingham, and her current inspirations are all covered. She even waxes poetically on her love of the “Twilight” films, which were the inspiration for the song “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream).
“I was taken with this movie because what happened to Bella absolutely happened to me,” she says about Bella’s post-Edward heartbreak in “New Moon.”
The result of this intimate and open atmosphere is a documentary that actually does make you feel like you’re part of the action, as cliched as that phrase may be. And, as it turns out, the film was only really the opening act for people who attended one of the two screenings and Stevie Nicks Q&As last night. In the flesh, the rock star was even more personable and charming.
Clad in one of her trademark flowing outfits, Nicks amiably sauntered on stage after the screening, settled into her seat and started regaling the sold out crowd with a story about the genesis of the “In Your Dreams” film, and how her own personal insecurities almost destroyed the project before it even began.
Stewart, she explained, original brought up the idea of filming the whole process when he first agreed to produce the album for her. Nicks wasn’t big on the idea, as it stood in the way of all of dreams of recording and home and dressing as a complete slob.
“That means serious hair, makeup and clothes,” she said, in mock horror.
In the end, though, it was Running Down a Dream, the 2007 Tom Petty documentary, that convinced her to give the camera a shot.
“I remember the footage from Tom Petty’s very, very long four-hour documentary, which I personally loved, every minute of it,” she said. “But there was a part on the Traveling Wilburys that was so brilliant and it really showed the five of those guys like they were in the James Gang or something. And we got to see them for a half-hour really be who they were and just looking so handsome and playing this amazing music and then, within minutes, it seemed, two of them died. And if they hadn’t have done that, what a shame that would have been.”
This got her reevaluating her own priorities.
“What a shame it would be if you, Miss Vanity, said no to this because you don’t want to spend a half an hour doing makeup and picking a uniform,” she continued. “What if we come up with something that’s really great and we don’t film it? And then how are you going to feel a year after that? You’re going to go ‘Wow, now you really can admit to the vanity of women because you lost out on something really brilliant.’ So I said ok.”
Soon, she said, her appearance wasn’t even on her mind.
“It’s amazing how easy the process becomes because of the people involved.”
Taking questions from the crowd, Nicks indulged the audience in questions about making the classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours (“It wasn’t a very pleasant experience,” she quipped before embarking on a more philosophical reflection on the romance and the drama behind those days), and opening up about the death of her mother.
She also talked about how the promotion of In Your Dreams really forced her to adapt to the new realities of the music business. For someone who came of age in a wildly different music industry, it hasn’t always been an easy transition.
“The music business has turned to stone,” she said. “I can’t expect anyone to help me.”
She also pointed out that record companies just don’t have enough money to invest in bands for the long term anymore, using Fleetwood Mac’s post-Rumours career as an example.
“If it had been now and we had done Rumours and had that success and then we did Tusk, the double record from Africa? Warner Brothers would have said ‘Get out and take your African tusks with you!’ It’s such a different age now.”
Nicks credits her fans and their support or allowing her to tirelessly tour and promote “In Your Dreams” and help her make it the modern day music business success that it is. As such, she pointedly thanked those in attendance for their part in it.
“I’m not going to worry about record sales anymore and I’m not going to worry about what people think,” she said. “Because what really matters is what I think, because if I’m thinking good and I’m thinking happy, then what I do is going to turn around and make you feel good. So we just bounce off of each other. I throw the dreams out there and you throw them back at me. And that’s how we make this together. This is not anything that is done by one person. It happens because we’re a team. And you’re my team. You are. I mean that.”
Stevie Nicks is on tour with Fleetwood Mac right now.
As a member of Fleetwood Mac as well as a successful solo artist, Stevie Nicks is undeniably one of music’s true legends. Her wild past of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are the perfect fodder for the big screen and the singer knows who she’d like to portray her in a biopic — Reese Witherspoon. Her choice makes sense — Reese did, after all, win an Oscar for playing another iconic musician, June Carter Cash, in Walk the Line. But it seems it might be too late to make this movie magic happen, since Stevie says, “I’ve already told her she’s almost too old.”
True, Reese is no longer on the ‘edge of seventeen’ but too old? “I love her, but she’s like, ‘I could play your mother’ I’m like okay.”
We caught up with the Gold Dust Woman on the Toronto red carpet of her new film, In Your Dreams. The documentary chronicles the making of Stevie’s first solo album in 10 years, of the same name, In Your Dreams.
Filming the process was her producing partner, Dave Stewart’s idea. “He’s totally insane and fantastic and he films everything,” Stevie says of Dave, who himself is a member of one of music’s iconic groups, The Eurythmics. “When he suggested it I was like ‘oh please, you’re not serious, right?’” Stevie eventually agreed to let the cameras in, but assumed the footage would end up being a personal memento, not a full-length feature film! “I thought a few people would see it and love it and it would go back on the library shelf,” she explains. “They say good things come to people who wait… I think good things come to people who don’t expect anything!”
Stevie walked the red carpet just over 24 hours before a reunited Fleetwood Mac are to take the stage for a nearly sold-out show at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre.
Clad in her trademark head-to-toe black, Stevie admitted that, even after all these years of performing she still gets nervous before a big show: “I said to Lindsey (Buckingham) it’s disturbingly big because you’re putting on your shoes and all of a sudden you’re walking on stage in front of 16,000 people and you’re like, ‘is this really happening?’”
The incomparable Stevie Nicks thrilled fans (including more than a couple gay men) at TIFF Bell Lightbox ahead of the Canadian premiere of her new documentary, In Your Dreams. The doc, created with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, takes a behind the scenes look at the making of her 2011 album of the same name.
Nicks is also playing a Fleetwood Mac gig on April 16 at the Air Canada Centre. Fleetwood Mac hit the big time in the 1970s. Their 1977 album, Rumours, had four number one hits, including “You Make Loving Fun,” “Go Your Own Way” and “Don’t Stop.”
Nicks has maintained a rock star status through the years and has had a successful solo career with such hits as “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back.” A recent episode of Glee introduced a new generation to Nicks and Fleetwood Mac.
In the below video interview with Xtra, Nicks talks about today’s music industry, including her favourite new artist. The documentary In Your Dreams plays at TIFF April 16-18.
Stevie Nicks: Nicks In Your Dreams is an affectionate documentary about the Fleetwood Mac singer co-directed by Eurythmics Dave Stewart.
By Linda Barnard Toronto Star
Monday, April 15, 2013
Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams
*** (3 stars out of 4)
A documentary about the making of Stevie Nicks’ album. Directed by Nicks and Dave Stewart. 100 minutes. Screens April 16-18 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. G
Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams shows devotion to its raspy-voiced rock goddess subject immediately, with a montage of concert-goers professing their love for the poetic Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter who went on to solo success.
Musician Dave Stewart co-produced Stevie Nicks’s In Your Dreams album and co-directed the subsequent film. (MLW/SolarPix Inc.)
By Brad Wheeler The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Sunday, Apr. 14 2013, 4:00 PM EDT
Billed as an “intimate portrait of one of rock’s most enduring and legendary artists,” In Your Dreams, a documentary on the making of Stevie Nicks’s 2011 album of the same name, runs the risk of being too intimate for its own good. Musician Dave Stewart, who co-produced the album, shared directorial credit on the film with the singer herself. We spoke with him about a documentary being too close to its subject.
Part video diary and part artist portrait, In Your Dreams chronicles the birth of Stevie Nicks’s latest studio offering. (Weapons of Mass Entertainment)
By Katherine Monk O Canada
Thursday, April 11, 2013, 6:35 pm
Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams **1/2 (Two and a half stars out of five)
Starring: Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart
Directed by: Dave Stewart
Running time: 100 minutes
Parental Guidance: coarse language
They say the creative process can be like riding a rabid bull, eager to gore you in a moment of distraction one minute, and likely to stampede in a rush of inspiration the next.
Unpredictable, fiery and completely random, creativity can reduce the bravest, most decorated left-brained soldier into a puddle of nervous mush.
For singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, this seems to be a natural state — a lacy palace of romantic thoughts and swirling melodies that complements her actual abode, a sprawling mansion with a mega-rotunda in suburban Los Angeles.
The house and Nicks’s ephemeral creative muse are essentially the two stars of In Your Dreams, a new documentary from multi-hyphenate producer Dave Stewart.
Part video diary of the production process, and part artist portrait, In Your Dreams chronicles the conception, gestation and eventual birth of Nicks’ latest studio offering, which shares the same title as the movie.
In many ways, it feels a lot like a generic outing from the folks at VH1 or MuchMusic — a slick collage of music videos and talking head interviews cut within an inch of looking like a straight commercial.
Yet, for all the generic filmmaking device, In Your Dreams is not a generic experience because Stevie Nicks is not your average pop star.
Easily one of the more compelling figures to occupy a stage at the height of the arena-rock era while a member of the record-breaking, iconic act Fleetwood Mac, Nicks always smacked of difference.
With her black cloaks, spinning dance moves and sulky, notoriously nasal voice, Nicks became a cryptic sex symbol, and part of the pop culture soap opera as the world followed her affairs and heartbreaks with the likes of Lindsey Buckingham and others.
Rumours of everything from substance abuse to witchcraft were also thrown into the cauldron of talk, and while In Your Dreams doesn’t exactly denude the singer’s quirky personal curiosities, it does bring the icon into clearer focus.
And frankly, that’s not always a good thing.
On the up side, we are given unprecedented insight into how Nicks creates her signature tunes. Without the structure of a formal musical education, Nicks simply sits at the keyboard and plinks around on the keys until she finds the right sounds to fit the melody in her head.
As the musicians in the room make abundantly clear, she breaks the rules of music all the time, often changing the number of beats in a bar, the time signature and the verb tense of the lyrics.
At times, we hear expert production staff tell her “she can’t” do something, to which Nicks responds in a perfectly diva-esque drawl, that “of course she can” — because it’s art, after all, not a term paper.
Her self-possession is obviously one of the big reasons why she became as successful as she is, but we also hear how success created fear at the bottom of her creative well, making her dread the possibility of fabricating a complete dud.
Stewart helps her get through all these creative traps because he not only understands the musician’s headspace and the female mind (having worked with Annie Lennox as the other half of Eurythmics), he’s a natural observer.
At the top of the film, Stewart tells us he’s been a man with a movie camera ever since he found a gold chain on the street, turned the corner to find a pawn shop, and traded the chain for an 8mm consumer model. He loves making movies, and we can feel his passion behind the frames as he completes a two-pronged project: the record, and the movie about making it.
The best parts come after the midway point, once Stewart has established Nicks as a serious artist worthy of icon status, because once he’s dispensed with her legacy, he can get down to brass tacks — and offer up the real face of the Phoenix-born daughter named Stephanie Lynn Nicks.
This stuff all feels a little too self-indulgent to spur feelings of sympathy, but it’s undeniably real and speaks directly to who Stevie Nicks really is.
Conjuring a feeling somewhere between nutty cat-collector and esteemed oddball sculptress Louise Nevelson, we hear Nicks tell us she was so moved by the plight of Katrina victims she “needed to take action.” So she wrote a poem.
She also tells us: “If my father were still the president of Greyhound, he would have had every bus in the country” converging on the deluged bayou to help move people.
These are lovely sentiments, and writing a song for the suffering is a nice gesture. Similarly, she tells us how much the Italians are going to love the ballad she wrote about Italy because it’s “the most romantic song (she) has ever written.”
And then, she talks about how much she loves Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series because she feels a soul connection to the fictional Bella Swan — because she, too, fell in love with a beautiful boy at 16 who eventually dumped her.
This stuff all feels a little too self-indulgent to spur feelings of sympathy, but it’s undeniably real and speaks directly to who Stevie Nicks really is: A well-intentioned, high-minded woman who feels great waves of empathy for others, but also has a healthy sense of ego to ensure she never feels like a wishy-washy waif.
Stewart captures the woman in fits and spurts, but he’s a rather random director and for all the technical prowess he brings to the booth, the songs feel overproduced. In fact, one of the most illuminating moments involves a demo track for an old unrecorded song that was found on the Internet.
The song is so cool, they decide to record it with all the bells and whistles. Yet, it doesn’t take a thick-rimmed music geek to realize the track sounded better as a haunting acoustic number. Stewart seems to turn everything into a Sting solo album, which may be manna to some people’s ears, but make mine hide under the bed.
As a slice of L.A. life, In Your Dreams succeeds beyond caveats because it captures all the ego and chandelier crystal of the fame-enabled lifestyle, but as a music doc and straight biography, In Your Dreams feels a little bleary-eyed.
Stevie Nicks participates in a Q&A session at the screening of In Your Dreams at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, April 15.
By Susan G. Cole Now Toronto (Canada)
April 11-18, 2013, Vol. 32, No. 32
STEVIE NICKS: IN YOUR DREAMS (Dave Stewart, Stevie Nicks). 100 minutes. Opens Monday (April 15) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For venues and times, see listings.
NOW RATING: NNN
When someone co-creates a cinematic love letter to herself, you can’t expect an edgy portrait complete with flaws.
So In Your Dreams, a chronicle of the recording sessions for Stevie Nicks’s 2011 studio release of the same name, offers few deep, revealing insights into the rock diva, but it does have some surprises.
Due to overwhelming demand, Stevie Nicks In Your Dreams will continue to screen at US theaters throughout the month of April. Promoters have added new dates and theaters. Don’t miss your chance to see the incredible new documentary!
