Piece by Piece is a unique cinematic experience that invites audiences on a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams.
Told through the lens of LEGO animation, documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville turns up the volume on imagination as he displays the evolution of one of music’s most innovative minds.
As the feature gears up for its Australian release (you can read our review here), Peter Gray spoke with the director about dazing Pharrell with his own creative process, what surprised him the most about his subject, and what he hopes audiences take away from such a story.
I know that Pharrell Williams has said that he’d seen your work in 20 Feet From Stardom. Did you feel any pressure knowing he was a fan of your work and that he had such stipulations on this film being made in the LEGO format?
I mean, he’d seen a couple of my films (that) I’d made. Another film called Won’t You Be My Neighbour?, about Mr. Rogers, a very famous children’s television host in America, Pharrell has the same kind of energy. Gentle and creative and deep and spiritual. I wouldn’t say I was intimidated. It felt like we were going to go on a big, crazy, creative journey together and figure out whatever that was going to mean. And he’s great because he understood that I was the storyteller. “You figure out what this story is. You figure out what the music is. You do all that. I’ll just be a subject.”
We did that for more than a year and a half, of me interviewing everybody in the film. I did more interviews of many more people, too. We talked to Pharrell many, many times. I picked all the songs. I put it all together. And then I played it for him when whole cut was done, and it was interesting because I think all his reactions were about the music, because I picked songs he didn’t expect. There are a number of songs that I love, like the songs from N.E.R.D, that are maybe more personal songs. In that way, he thought I was going to use a certain song, but I like to use (songs) in a very different context from how he wrote it. I think he was trying to wrap his mind around it, and then he’s like, “Oh, I get it.” It just took him a minute, but his mind was blown and he was able to kind of see his story through my eyes. That was part of the feedback loop, which is unusual. I mean, it’s like a musical in that way that he’s writing to the book I put together, and then those songs go back into the story. It just really became an organic thing at that point.
I’m going to say, as someone who is a Britney Spears fan for life, the fact that “I’m A Slave 4 U” got put in there, and we had a LEGO version of the video? I was very, very happy with that. So, thank you for choosing that song. As brief as it was.
I know it was very quick, but I wanted to get a little bit of that in there.
Did you have any preconceived notions as to who Pharrell was? Was there anything that surprised you the most about his life when you were researching everything?
Pharrell, for me, was somebody who popped up in usual places. In the cultural mind, it’s like, “Oh, he’s doing a clothing thing in Japan. Oh, he and The Neptunes are doing this thing. What’s this N.E.R.D. project that he’s doing? Or, wait, he’s doing “Happy”? He’s just somebody who was interesting, but it didn’t make sense to me. It was these random puzzle pieces. So when I started (Piece By Piece) I had to figure out who is this guy who has these things? He’s a bit of a Wizard of Oz. Like, a man behind the curtain. And he likes being a little removed sometimes. It’s hard to get a beat on him. But when I started to get into it, the part that really resonated with me was his childhood, because I didn’t know anything about it. It was so obviously formative to everything about how he saw the world and how he saw the world creatively.
The whole experience of growing up in a housing project in Virginia in the United States was a deeply creative one, and the relationship his parents had with him, and they were incredibly supportive. He had incredible luck having a giant music producer open a studio next to his high school. But also this little community he had, like Chad Hugo, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Pusha T…I mean, they were all kids around Virginia Beach and Norfolk, which is kind of incredible that they were all in the same age group and they all knew each other.
If you didn’t know it was a true story, you’d almost think it’s made up with how much collective talent were together. It seems too good to be true. Looking at the creative process, it’s such a celebration of Pharrell’s music. How did you find Piece By Piece as a contribution to the deeper understanding of his artistic journey?
I don’t think a lot of people understand all the places Pharrell’s life and creativity have gone, and so the film puts it into a narrative, but it helps it make more sense. But by making sense of it, I think we’re also trying to embrace the kind of imagination of it, you know? That imagination is a huge part of what Pharrell has done, and I feel like the film is almost a song of Pharrell’s. It’s taking things that don’t necessarily fit together, (like) a hard beat with this pop melody, and then having a singer come in. I mean, that’s kind of been Pharrell’s thing in music. Taking stuff that you don’t expect to go together and making it work, I feel like the film is like that. “Is this gonna work?” It’s this crazy idea to do a film like this, but it’s exactly reflective of his own imagination.
Going off that, now that you’ve made this documentary in the style of LEGO, are you thinking how much that opens your brain up to the way you could do documentaries in any sort of what you see fit? The sky’s the limit in terms of creativity…
Yeah, absolutely, I learned more creatively doing this film than any film I’ve ever done, because we were painting so many new waves of storytelling. It’s got me really excited about other things to try. In this film, I don’t even know if this film is a documentary, it’s become another thing because it’s based on those techniques, but I don’t think it plays at all like a documentary. It’s a creative conversation with Pharrell, and him adding music becomes this new type of movie. That’s the thing that’s been both the blessing and the challenge. What the hell is this? How do you describe the film? But the great thing is when people come out of it, they can’t imagine this film any other way. That’s the thing I want people to take away from it, and, yes, for me, I’m so inspired by it. So we’ll see where it goes.
Piece By Piece is screening in Australian theatres from December 5th, 2024.
