If you are someone who is trying to make it in the arts or had once made it and is trying to get back, watch this movie. This is the ultimate example of why you should just keep hanging in there; just keep making what you are making, and it may all pay off someday. While that attitude will sell a lot of cat posters to hang in your office (almost wrote cubicle), it is hard to believe unless you have an example like this in front of your face. It really can happen, folks; just ask Mr. Fields.
So, the choice Ansary and Mishaan made to introduce Fields only with a live song in the opening and then drop us cold into his childhood turns out to be brilliant. Not having a background on Fields is assumed so that when the excitement starts building up later in his career, the audience gets swept by a warm tidal wave of long-coming triumph.
“…such a stark image that thoroughly demystifies the hedonistic aura that clouds performing.”
Lee Fields: Faithful Man opens with the documentation of the most unusual occurrence filmed in a musician’s hotel room. No, it isn’t sex, drugs, or dropping the TV out the window. It is Lee Fields ironing his outfit before a show. It is such a stark image that thoroughly demystifies the hedonistic aura that clouds performing. Seeing someone dropping all pretense to show the real nuts and bolts is an unheard-of treat.
Fields has some excellent advice in the film on this very subject. Fields stresses that the persona that is cultivated onstage must be folded up and put away when not performing. He points out that a lot of the problems musicians have is due to them trying to act out a stage persona in real life. This simple philosophy could save thousands of musician lives, which are still being obliterated by a Quixotic quest to meet the standards of what is cool. Marvel as Fields makes responsible decisions in relation to his artistic dreams and supports his family. This is the example hopefuls should set their north star by, instead of the who can drive a car into a swimming pool while overdosing contest. Lee Fields: Faithful Man shows that this planet is an even groovier place than we thought. You sometimes just need to hang in long enough to find out.
"…the audience gets swept by a warm tidal wave of long coming triumph."
