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When pioneering producer and filmmaker Kirsty Bell set out to make a film about legendary American musician Eddie Cochran, she didn’t want to merely chronicle his brief career. Looking back at the musician’s work, who
died while touring the U.K. in 1960, aged just 21, Bell felt she needed to “bring him back to life.” The result of that mission is “Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me,” closing this year’s Raindance Film Festival.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s U.K. premiere, Bell says it was her producer, Ben Charles Edwards, who first brought up Cochran’s name as a possible subject for her next film. At the time, seasoned producer Bell had just taken a major step in her career by directing her feature debut, 2021’s “A Bird Flew In.” “That film came from my brain and my heart, and I knew I wanted to link these two things again,” she says. “I wanted to go on an emotional journey, because that’s how I get my best stuff.”
Bell, who founded Goldfinch Entertainment back in 2016, knew and loved Cochran’s music, but soon realized she knew very little about his life. “There were so many things that linked him to modern-day music,” she recalls. “I have this pad on my desk where I note down ideas and I just started scribbling thoughts around his name. Suddenly, this mind map of him appeared, linking him basically to everyone and everything that has happened in music after. That blew me away.”
Once Bell decided to tell the story of “trailblazer” Cochran, she knew she would not like to make “an ordinary documentary” just “talking to a bunch of musicians about Eddie’s songs they have covered.” “This is about legacy,” she adds, saying how she set out to work closely with executive producer Michelle Arnusch to secure a wide-spanning selection of talking heads that could reflect Cochran’s impact. One notable figure is actor Kiefer Sutherland, featured heavily in the film as a major fan of Cochran’s work.
“We wanted to get people who were either deeply influenced by Eddie or who knew him, and Kiefer is a great example because, through my research, I found out he was supposed to have played Eddie in a biopic when he was only 18 or 19 years old,” she recalls. “The film was cancelled, but Kiefer remained a fan. He has such a brilliant mind and is also a musician, so it was perfect.
Joining Sutherland is a roster of major names including Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, John Waters, Roger Daltrey, Cliff Richard and Yungblud. Talking about the latter, Bell says the young English musician “was always on her list,” recalling being at the Royal Albert Hall for one of his concerts before he became a major international star and being astounded by his fans. “All of them looked like they were part of a gang, like they knew something about each other. They were all dressed similarly, all bound together. Before Yungblud became famous, I remember thinking: This is a young Eddie. He’s got this tribe, and they support him wherever he goes. He’s a modern rock star.”
Seeing Yungblud’s fans led Bell to getting access to hundreds of fan letters to Eddie, which became a key component of the film. Form-wise, the filmmaker also knew she wanted to “bring Eddie back to life.” “The only way I could do that was by doing the reconstructions because there is hardly any video footage of him around the world.” She then cast Jack Harris to play Cochran onscreen, recreating key moments of the musician’s life as he went from a budding singer struggling to place singles on the radio to becoming the subject of an Elvis-like mania.
But none of it would have happened without the support of Cochran’s family, Bell emphasizes. Asked about her relationship with Eddie’s living relatives, the filmmaker says it was “very difficult to start with” because the team “didn’t know the pathway to them very well, and we knew other people had approached them in the past and they refused.”
Bell then approached famed U.S. entertainment lawyer Sindee Levin, “the Cochran family’s gatekeeper and Hollywood amazingness.” The two had an hour-long first meeting, which led to Levin introducing Bell to Patty Hickey, Cochran’s only living sibling. “We showed them a very early teaser we put together and were sending out to potential contributors, and she just burst into tears.”
Despite having a warm first welcome, Bell was still anxious to show the finished film to Cochran’s family. “I was terrified for them to watch the film because what if they felt I hadn’t portrayed something correctly? What if they thought I was being insulting or that it wasn’t good enough? That’s why we sent the film to them right away. And they made a family thing out of watching it. We had to wait, and when they came back to say how much they loved it, it was a huge relief because they are the only people I need to please.”
As for closing Raindance, Bell is “astounded” to be asked back five years after “A Bird Flew In” also premiered at the festival. “You think making a documentary might mean it won’t get to a wider audience, but to have someone see it as a bigger thing and to have it close a festival with two major screenings shows you that making independent films is about the product that creates appeal to the widest audience you can get.” The screening is also extra special as Cochran will receive a posthumous Raindance Icon Award, presented to Eddie’s sister and niece, and set to be displayed alongside his original Gretsch guitar and his other trophies at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
With “Don’t Forget Me” now making its way around the festival circuit, Bell is back thinking about what’s next. “I’ve written a script for another drama feature, but there are a couple of documentaries that have come my way and have interesting human subjects,” she says. “I obviously got Goldfinch and everything that comes with it, but directing-wise, the next step is to link what I did with ‘A Bird Flew In’ and ‘Eddie’ and see what I can produce that feels like a next level up from that. I am not going to be directing a film every single year, so I need it to be something that will build on both of those.”
“Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me” is produced by Goldfinch Entertainment in partnership with the Cochran family estate and Universal Music Enterprises. Fremantle handles international distribution.
