Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones is a mostly fascinating and occasionally frustrating documentary, profiling one of the more interesting figures of modern popular culture. That's the mostly fascinating part. The frustration comes from director Ellen Weissbrod's insistence on making a new kind of documentary, constructed in a choppy, non-linear, mosaic-like fashion. It sometimes works, and certainly makes for a unique viewing experience. But a little of it goes a long way.

Listen Up was originally released in 1990, when Jones was enjoying a bit of a renaissance thanks to the critical and commercial success of his Back on the Block album, where he assembled a roll call of musical legends and up-and-comers. The Block sessions were filmed for this documentary, and many of the parties involved agreed to sit down for interviews (even those who seldom did so). No disrespect to Jones, but this is the film's primary point of historical interest nearly two decades later; many of these legends have left us, so it's terrific to not only hear their words, but to see them at work.

Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn sit down to chat, as do Frank Sinatra and Dizzy Gillespie. We see Miles Davis and Ray Charles in the studio, and I'm sorry, unless you just don't understand great music, that gets to you. Their interviews are also entertaining--Davis confirms his notoriously prickly personality, while Charles has some fun with the entire process (Weissbrod attempted to eschew on-screen captions and therefore had interview subjects introduce themselves for the camera; Charles cracks, "Say who I am? I've never had to do that!").

The recording sessions provide a counterpoint throughout the film, as Jones revisits his long life and considerable achievements. He visits his childhood home in Chicago, and discusses his troubled youth in detail. His musical education gets just the right amount of screen time before we go full-scale into his work as a bandleader, film composer, and legendary producer.

Throughout the film, Jones (and the film) is remarkably candid. His disclosures about his shortcomings as a husband and father are honest and unvarnished, and his daughter Jolie gives strong, sometimes discomforting voice to his flaws (she notes, without a trace of bitterness, "You can't do a career like he's done a career and be a perfect father"). He is also remarkably open about his health troubles and the occasional career stumbles.

What's nice about Listen Up being made when it was is that it allows an-almost storybook resolution--his health is tip-top, his family life is under control (we get a quick glimpse of his daughter, The Office's Rashida Jones, as a charmingly gawky teenager), and he's just released a hit album. Some of the interviews are less timely than others (there are quite a few sound bites from now-forgotten collaborators like Melle Mel and Al B. Sure), but everyone provides at least a nugget of insight (even a pre-scandal Michael Jackson, who of course asks to be interviewed in the dark).

A word about the style. The editing of Listen Up is clever--sometimes too clever. In addition to the structural conceit of jumping back and forth from the Back on the Block sessions, the interviews are edited in a jumbled, kaleidoscopic manner; two (or more) interview subjects, riffing on the same topic, may be intercut, overlapping words or seeming to cue off each other's thoughts, followed by a blast of a relevant lyric or clip, a few words from another interviewee, and so on. It's not as off-putting as it sounds, and sometimes it's quite effective (Roger Ebert's 1990 review compares this style to freeform jazz). But it does start to wear a little thin by the second hour; when Jones starts getting into heavy matters of family and health, you wish the filmmakers would tone down the ADD.

But this is a minor complaint. The music is great, Jones is a terrific subject, and in addition to the now-departed legends, there are also thoughts from such modern icons as Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, and, um, Flavor Flav. More than anything else, though, Listen Up is a valuable document--a moving and brutally honest tribute to a remarkable man, and the amazing people he touched.

Video:

Shame on you, Warner Brothers. The packaging for Listen Up contains the following disclaimer: "Standard Version: Presented in a format preserving the aspect ratio of its original television exhibition." Well, plainly speaking, this is a damn lie. Listen Up was not a television film; it was released in theatres domestically in October 1990 and internationally the following summer. It was rated by the MPAA, it was reviewed in major newspapers. And when it played in those theatres, it screened in its 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The full-frame presentation on this DVD is a crop job, and they're trying to pretend like it's not.

What's worse, the 4:3 image that we get is an awfully mediocre one. There's dirt a-plenty, particularly for a film this recent, and the occasional video cutaways (from Jones' Chicago visit and the interview with daughter Jolie) are horribly noisy and ugly, even by analog video standards. The deep blacks of the stylized interviews hold up well, but the rest of the video image is pretty poor.

The 2.0 audio track is adequate, with interviews audible and music cues loud and clear. But if there was ever a documentary that cried out for a 5.1 mix, this is it; the multiple layering of the interviews and the vibrant music simply aren't done justice by this cut and paste job.

Warner Brothers may have slacked on the video and audio, but they've put together a pretty decent platter of bonus features. The best of the bunch is "Q: The Man" (35:43), a new featurette that serves primarily to bring the film up-to-date. New interviews with Jones are interspersed with tributes from newer artists like Bono, The RZA, Terrence Howard, will.i.am, Chris Tucker, Alicia Keys, and... Brent Ratner? The featurette doesn't attempt to emulate the convoluted editing structure of the feature, playing out in more conventional documentary terms (though with some nice use of three-dimensional moving stills).

Two shorter featurettes follow: "Quincy Remembers" (4:19), a too-brief series of interview snippets with Jones, and "Hangin' With Quincy and Gilberto Gil" (6:08), a charming (if meandering) reminiscing session with Gil, a musical legend and Brazilian Minister of Culture (according to the captions). Finally we have a Theatrical Trailer (2:28), showing how Warners tried to play up the rappers in the film to sell the documentary to younger audiences; the trailer also confirms that, yes, it debuted in theatres and not on television.

Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones is an important portrait of a truly fascinating man. It also captures a host of musical legends in action, many of whom have unfortunately left us since its release. It is some problems, yes, but its virtues outweigh its flaws; it's a shame that its long-awaited DVD release is marred by shoddy video and audio choices. Recommended for what it contains, if not for how it's presented.

Jason lives in New York. He holds an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.