Focus Features

As a filmmaker, a public artist, I think a lot about Lou Reed - he is a master entertainer. He can get dark dark, and disquieting, and proudly emotionally desperate, AND he brings a piece of the showman along in his tunes and lyrics and his whole presence. Sometimes it seems to me that the more unseemly was his story, the shinier the box he made to put that unseemliness in. Like some kind of counter-cultural downtown vaudeville performer, his darkness wasn’t complete until he pulled you in with entertainment; his message wasn’t to his shoes, it was to you and he wanted you to have a cathartic experience with him – very much like filmmaking.