I almost didn't go !

This is post is going to be a long-winded way of saying that the new Brian Eno film "Eno" is amazing, but also to remind myself to Always Do The Slightly Crazy Thing.

On Saturday, The Slightly Crazy Thing was jumping on a train to go and see the premiere of the world's first ever 'generative' documentary. So why was that crazy ?

Well, London is a fair way to travel to watch a 90-minute documentary, even in a venue like the Barbican Hall – and with tickets plus train fare the cost soon mounts up. Especially when it was such a spur-of-the-moment decision – I'd only known about the event for a couple of days. "Never mind", I thought – "it's a birthday treat, so provided I can find someone to keep me company, I'll go".

Except I couldn't. There were plenty of friends and contacts who would have liked to join me, but none were able to at such short notice. But several of them insisted I should go anyway, and eventually I decided… what the hell. And I'm so glad I did !

Partly because this was the UK premiere of the film, including a live Q&A with the film-makers and Eno himself afterwards (and famous faces like Peter Gabriel wandering around the lobby) – so it had only ever been shown a handful of times before.

But mostly because this screening of the film would be genuinely unique – as have all the others – because of that word 'generative'. So what does that mean ?

In a nutshell, just like many of Eno's recent music app projects, the film is never the same twice. The overall structure is similar, but the exact content is generated randomly just before you watch it, and the version you watch will never be seen again.

(Actually that's a very tiny exageration - according to digital artist Brendan Dawes, who worked with filmmaker Gary Hustwit to create 'Eno', there are 52 quintillion different possible versions of the film (that's 52,000,000,000,000,000) so it's not impossible you'd see the same version again – just very, VERY unlikely.)

Which is a cool, interesting concept in itself, and very "Eno-esque" – but honestly I wasn't 100% convinced it would be that interesting in practise. After all, we'd have no idea which bits are in every version of the film and which are random (or what we're missing)… plus I imagined the random aspect might make the result disjointed and dissatisfying.

Thankfully, I couldn't have been more wrong. The generative programming was extremely clever and successful, and the result was fascinating, cohesive and enjoyable. Having said that it was also a little frustrating, since it was clear how much we weren't seeing. I'd read reviews of showings that included Eno in the studio working with Talking Heads on 'Remain In Light' for example, which I would have loved to have seen, and there was nothing about his work with Roxy, U2, or James… but there was footage of him working with Bowie, the recording sessions for "My Squelchy Life", recording Robert Fripp's unique guitar solos, looking through his old diaries and so much more.

And what we saw in our version was so interesting and enjoyable, especially having read David Sheppard's biography 'On Some Faraway Beach' and Eno's own 'A Year (With swollen appendices)' diary. It's quite something to see actual footage of events and moments you've read about years before.

In our version (2.5) of the film on Saturday, there was a wealth of footage from the over 500 hours (!) in Eno's library: of him working in the studio; wandering through London in the post-Roxy years; discussing the genesis and development of the "Oblique Strategies" cards (which is something I assume is included in some form in every version of the film, but presumably with different edits, footage and emphasis); experimenting with looking at the world through a TV turned on it's side and then turning those TV sets into hypnotic light-installation 'ziggurats'; dancing like no-one was watching on multiple occasions; playing 'unwelcome jazz' with the key instrument from 'Deep Blue Day' from the 'Apollo' soundtrack; telling a great funny story about Duchamp's infamous 'Fountain' sculpture…

(In fact one of the best moments from the Q&A was when editors Maya Tippett and Marley McDonald said how sorry they were we hadn't got to see the Duchamp segment, only to realise we had and they'd missed it because of a toilet break…! Eno's delight at this coincidence was obvious.)

The film-makers also talked about the challenges and frustrations of creating content that they know might not be seen, and viewed in an entirely different order than they imagined it - the need to surrender their control of these aspects of the film. But for me, this was exactly the thing that made it so interesting and enjoyable. We're used to watching documentaries and being presented with the film-maker's personal opinion about their subject. But this is exactly what Eno says he dislikes, and why he hadn't agreed to a documentary project before this one.

Instead of a single, set-in-stone narrative, we get a fluid, unpredictable mix, and have to make our own connections, draw our own conclusions – which might be very personal, based on our own experiences and taste both artistic and musical. And probably quite different if we saw the film again on a different night ! There was even, entirely by chance, a segment showing Eno giving a talk several years ago at the Barbican, in the same venue where we were watching the film – added to which Gary revealed that the night's Q&A was being recorded and would be added into the 'pool' of possible clips for future screenings.

And finally to round off the evening, I made an enjoyable chance connection of my own. When I'd posted on social media asking if anyone else was going to the premiere, Elif Yalvac and Mike Bearpark had replied. I suggested meeting up for the train journey back towards Cambridge to talk about the film, and as it turned out Peter Chilvers was also with them - he's the musician and software designer who has been working with Eno for over 15 years on the Bloom, Scape and Reflection generative music apps, all of which I love. I regularly listen to 'Reflection' for hours on end while I'm writing blog posts just like this one…

Which made for some great conversations on the way home ! Mike and I talked about the film, vintage synths and Neve hardware, while Peter revealed he'd been quite nervous watching the film in case the interview he'd done for it was included in our showing. (As it turned out there was just a brief moment where his name appeared in a piece of software – this time.) And when I asked Elif, Mike and Peter about their favourite moments from the film, a clear theme emerged from all of us: Brian's sense of humour. As well as the Duchamp anecdote, there were several other laugh-out-loud moments in our version, including the time an interview was cut short because Eno's recent undertaking to always have a 'late breakfast' had left him ravenously hungry; that while working on 'Moss Garden' he and Bowie had picked entirely conflicting Oblique Strategy cards (and in one early take of 'Heroes' Bowie hadn't quite found the right character to sing, deeming it "a bit too lumberjack"); plus the revelation that until quite late in his life Eno had been entirely unaware that his father was a drummer. "He never thought to tell me he was a musician - maybe because he didn’t realise I was one!"

Talking about 'our' version of the film like this added a whole extra layer of depth to the event, and the more I think about it the more I want to see this film again, and again, and again – ideally with another unexpected group of interesting, eclectic people to discuss it with ! And the more strongly it confirms one of Eno's core ideas. Complexity can and will arise from just a few, simple rules - and a liberal dose of random chance. I recommend you try and see it, too.

And meanwhile, note to self: always do The Slightly Crazy Thing. Brian Eno would !