Rolling Stone‘s website has posted two clips from Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony & The Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Clip #2 — an explanation by Spector of how his crazy-ass Jewfro came about — is especially entertaining. I’d watched it smiling a couple of times on disc at my home, appreciative but silent, but when I saw this portion at a Film Forum showing last Thursday, people were laughing uproariously.

After posting the embed codes I discovered that the videos automatically launch. The hell with that. I posted one of them on the jump page.

From Daniel Kreps‘ Jayanti interview piece:

“Spector is known as a notorious recluse who avoids the press, but Jayanti tells RS plans to interview Spector in his mansion — the scene of the murder — came together in mere days. ‘The few things he’s done in public with a camera on, he was doing a schtick. I didn’t want that, I wanted to have real people and get very direct and close,’ Jayanti says.

“Ultimately, Jayanti and BBC Arena simply FedEx-ed a one-page letter to Spector’s mansion, asking for permission to speak to him. ‘It said, ‘Dear Mr. Spector, I make films about larger-than-life characters, often geniuses, at a moment of tremendous stress in their lives.’ And he wrote back two days later with an e-mail, and he said, ‘You sound like an interesting person, I know you’re a good filmmaker, come to the castle.’

“Jayanti and his crew planned to spend five days interviewing Spector on camera. Their first session lasted three-and-a-half hours, covering topics like the birth of the Wall of Sound, Spector’s tough childhood, and anecdotes of his time with John Lennon. But that would be the last time the crew got Phil on camera.

“In the days that followed, Spector’s legal team stormed the mansion in preparation of the first trial, which ended in a hung jury, and Spector kept delaying the remaining interviews. Finally, a judge’s gag order prevented Spector from speaking to Jayanti until the conclusion of the trial.

“Jayanti says he hopes his doc is a ‘Wall of Film’ that mirrors Spector’s own layered and revolutionary ‘Wall of Sound’ technique: At its most intense moments, the movie creates a gripping harmony of sound and images by overlapping Spector’s rare interview footage and scenes from the first murder trial with the complete recordings of 21 of Spector’s most beloved songs and critical text on each track by biographer Mick Brown, who wrote Tearing Down the Wall.

“‘I felt it was crucial to get the audience to listen really hard to the music, with new ears…as if they hadn’t heard it before. And also with Phil describing how he produces them, I wanted them to be able to experience the entire production as Phil intended it, which meant from beginning to end. There’s so much darkness underlying those happy, boppy, teenage-yearning songs,’ Jayanti says.

“In addition to providing interviews, Spector also allowed Jayanti to use his music free of charge in the film, and although no written contract on that point was ever produced, the laws of fair use ensured The Agony and Ecstasy could use Spector’s music legally and liberally.

“Spector vividly recalls his lifetime in music, but many of his memories are exaggerated reinterpretations of his past. The producer is infamous for overstating his role in some of his greatest works, from his contributions to Let It Be to allegations he added co-writing credits to songs he had no hand in crafting.

“He says in the film ‘my father blew his head off’ and he was five or six at the time. In fact, his father gassed himself with a hose in the garage, and Phil was nine or 10 at the time,’ Jayanti says. ‘People say to me, ‘Why didn’t you correct him at all these misstatements?’ I keep saying, that’s not my interest. I wanted to see what happens if I let Phil be Phil, and I think the result was I got a very accurate psychological profile, a very intimate one.’

“In the end, The Agony & the Ecstasy of Phil Spector is a rise-and-fall tale fitting of one of the greatest and [most] innovative producers of all time.

“The film amply demonstrates the megalomania, and grandiosity and ego but at the same time, inside each of those things there’s a kernel of quite insightful truth,’ Jayanti says. ‘He did do an extraordinary thing — he was [there at] the birth of the revolution and he was a big, big part of it. Although he overstates it a great deal, that’s because of the quirks of his personality.

“‘I want the film to be part of the discourse of in the future how Phil is viewed. Not just a footnote of a producer who went to jail for murder, but also as a person who gave a soundtrack to a generation.'”