My final Toronto screening was Morgan Neville‘s Keith Richards: Under the Influence, which begins today on Netflix. It’s a warm, intimate, amiable portrait of where the 71 year-old Rolling Stones guitarist and co-founder is at today, but it follows what may seem to some like an unusual strategy. Instead of taking us back through Richards’ rich and fabled musical history with the Rolling Stones, which is why 99.5% of the potential audience would be interested in seeing Neville’s doc, it largely focuses on the rhythm–and–blues influences of the Stones’ first incarnation (’62 to ’65) when they mainly performed covers of blues standards.  The doc doesn’t exactly ignore the Stones after they began to fashion their own unique sound with Aftermath (’66) — the first real-deal, pulled-from-the-marrow Rolling Stones album — but it doesn’t pay a huge amount of attention to this period either.  Which, you know, has lasted for half a century. The doc also touches upon country-music influences.  A fair amount of footage is just jolly Keith in conversation, recording his new album (“Cross-Eyed Heart“), shooting the shit and picking guitars with musician pallies (including Tom Waits) and strolling around the grounds of his woodsy country mansion in Weston, Connecticut. It more or less reflects the emphasis that Keith created in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” which I respected and rather enjoyed. Richards’ net worth is over $300 million. He’s happy, makes others happy, does what he wants, etc.  

Here’s a fairly full recap of the “Sympathy for the Devil” recording studio footage from Jean Luc Godard’s 1968 film, which is also know as One Plus One.