The familiar raucous guitar riff of Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, a late career hit for punk poets the Clash, opens the new documentary Young@Heart. It's not an unusual choice, as far as movie-music selection goes, but the singer - 92-year-old British war bride Eileen Hall - is not at all what you expect.
The humour, poignancy and shock value of the scene perfectly encapsulates the overall mood of this quirky, entertaining musical documentary about old age, which began as an hour-long doc for British TV and has now exploded into a YouTube phenomenon (pirated clips are getting major hits) and highly anticipated theatrical release. As London director Stephen Walker explains, the scene is similar to the moment he knew there was an utterly original film waiting to be made.
A couple of years ago, Walker and his wife, producer Sally George, were searching for an idea for their new production company. George came home with a flyer for a show by a "bunch of old people from America" - the Young@Heart chorus - happening at a prestigious West London theatre and a hunch it might be something worth attending. Walker was skeptical but went along; it turned out to be the evening of their lives.
Walker, a music fan in his mid-40s who has made 23 films for the BBC and Channel 4, including the Emmy-nominated Hiroshima: A Day That Shook The World, was immediately struck by two things. "The theatre was packed, which is a tough call in mid-London, with people of every age group you can image, a fantastic spectrum," he recalls. "The second astonishing thing was, when the lights dimmed, seeing a 92-year-old totter up to the microphone and sing Should I Stay or Should I Go? It was blatantly obvious she was singing about life and death. It was terribly moving.
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"All these songs they were singing - from Purple Haze to David Byrne's Road to Nowhere - felt completely different; the lyrics took on a whole new meaning. And the performance was not in the least amateurish."
Walker and George left the theatre in a state of high excitement and, after securing financing from Britain's Channel 4, began to plan the filming with some valuable input from Young@Heart chorus director Bob Cilman, whose "day job" is executive director of the Northampton Arts Council in Massachusetts. The charismatic Cilman, in his early 50s, has been directing the Northampton-based chorus of two dozen 70- , 80- and 90-year-olds since 1983.
"They don't do covers," says Walker, currently "on tour" with Cilman and members of the chorus as the film rolls out across North America. "Bob always does something fresh and original with the songs, like his transformation of Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia" - rehearsals of which are shown in the film.
Cilman also suggested bringing back two "retired" chorus members for a one-time performance and helped to organize one of the film's most emotional scenes. "A local prison had wanted to book a concert, and I thought if the chorus can win over a bunch of prisoners - which they did - it will really say something about their inspirational quality," Walker recalls. "What we didn't know, of course, is that right before that concert somebody in the chorus was going to die. I thought they were going to cancel, but they went on with the show."
Walker, who expanded the film from its original British TV hour after a North American distributor picked it up, didn't set out to make an inspirational film. "But of course that's the spirit that comes out," he says, adding with a laugh. "They are all role models and show-offs."
Young@Heart screens through Doc Soup on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. at the Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor St. W. (http://www.hotdocs.ca). Walker and members of the chorus will be in attendance. It opens in Toronto theatres April 18.
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