If Neil Young’s upcoming movie strikes you as artless and a bit avant-garde, that’s intentional. “You can’t find a film that looks cheaper than Greendale,” says the ornery godfather of grunge, describing his first cinematic effort in more than 20 years. If, however, you think it looks amateurish, don’t blame Young--blame Bernard Shakey, his occasional alter ego and the film’s nominal director. “He’s responsible for all my mistakes,” says Young. “He’s like a pincushion. I blame him for everything that goes wrong.”

 

Based on his 2003 album of the same name, Greendale (which begins its multicity run on March 12) tells the story of the Greens, a fictitious California family whose tranquil existence rapidly unravels when Cousin Jed is busted for drug possession. The movie was initially conceived as a living document of the album's recording sessions, intercut with dramatizations of the songs, but, says Young, "That really sucked. We liked being in Greendale, and we were bored with seeing the musicians. It was a whole lotta nothing." So the in-studio sequences were scrapped, and, over a period of about two weeks, Young shot Greendale in coastal cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, cast mostly with friends from his recording and road crews and filmed entirely on a Super 8 camera designed for underwater use. Needless to say, the end result is a little weird, but it's also a sad and sprawling denunciation of almost every modern American institution, from faceless utility companies to the mass media to the Bush administration. "I can't help but say what I want to say," says Young, who has pissed off everyone from Richard Nixon to MTV in his 35-year career. "But what can they do--put me in Cuba? I think somebody would notice that."

Greendale is also easily the most coherent film in Young's catalog (which includes his contemplative self-portrait Journey Through the Past and the indescribably bizarre Human Highway), but viewers can decide for themselves when these cinematic curiosities are released on home video. "Eventually, everything's gonna come out on DVD," says Young. "Bernard Shakey won't rest until every coin has been collected."