Meeting People Is Easy is a 1998 British documentary film by Grant Gee that follows the English rock band Radiohead on the world tour for their 1997 album OK Computer. It received positive reviews and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Film at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2000. It sold more than half a million copies on VHS and DVD.

Summary

Meeting People Is Easy documents the promotion and tour for Radiohead's third album, OK Computer, which began on 22 May 1997 in Barcelona, Spain. It comprises footage of Radiohead working on music, filming music videos and promotional material, giving interviews and performing. It includes footage of the filming of the "No Surprises" music video and the failed studio session for the song "Man of War", and a performance of "Karma Police" on the Late Show with David Letterman.

The documentary captures the band members' stress during the tour, The journalist Alex Ross described the film as "a kind of counterstrike against the music press, recording scores of pointless interviews with dead-tired members of the band". The singer, Thom Yorke, said the goal was to dispel myths about the glamour of being in a rock band.

Production

According to the director, Grant Gee, Radiohead sat in hotel suites for days giving interviews. To record each interview, Gee "[ran] around, leaving a microphone in one room, going and filming something in another". He placed surveillance cameras in the band's dressing room, which he said foreshadowed the rise of reality television such as Big Brother: "We were doing it in a slightly more arty way, but it's the same ... Radiohead Big Brother is what I think of that film in a way." In the US, MTV broadcast a premiere of the film on 16 May 1999, and the Sundance Channel broadcast it nine times during May 2000. After Radiohead's new record company, XL, purchased their back catalogue from EMI, Radiohead made Meeting People Is Easy available to stream free on their website along with other archived material.

Reception

Meeting People Is Easy sold more than half a million copies on DVD and VHS. It was nominated for the "Best Music Film" category at the 2000 Grammy Awards. It received an average rating of 6.5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, giving it a 71% "fresh" rating. The reviewer Jessica Brandt of theshrubbery.com gave five out of five. Troy Patterson, a critic for Entertainment Weekly, gave it B+, calling it "an expressive mood piece creepy with cosmopolitan paranoia and bracingly somber bombast".

Kevin Archibald of IGN gave Meeting People Is Easy eight out of ten. Bart Blasengame gave it four out of five, writing: "Instead of taking the usual tour documentary approach and dwelling on individual concerts or behind-the-scenes banter between the band, Gee's film focuses on the absurdity of being an important rock band in the current musical landscape—the shallow marketing of the band, the endless stream of redundant interviews, the blinding photo shoots and awkward television appearances." The drummer, Philip Selway, said the film was the result of how Gee perceived the period, and that other times on the tour were "much lighter".

References

  • Meeting People Is Easy on the Radiohead Public Library
  • Meeting People Is Easy at Kudos Pictures