You'll never see the version of 'Eno' that I saw

And I'll never see the version that you see.

Brian Eno has produced albums for David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and many more, as well as being a pioneering ambient/electronica artist on his own. And yet the most meaningful things he may ever make is music that no one else will ever hear.

Gary Hustwit’s documentary “Eno” firmly resists being a “pantheon” documentary that celebrates the cultural high points of a musician’s career. And it does so by rejecting the idea of “high points” at all in art, instead taking a novel approach to presenting Eno’s life and work that perfectly reflects Eno’s philosophy about making music. Eno is probably a little bit pissed he didn’t invent it himself.

I saw Hustwit’s film on Friday, Oct. 10 at the UW Cinematheque in Madison. I mark that because nobody who wasn’t in the theater will ever see that version of “Eno” ever again. Each screening uses a computer program that draws from hundreds of hours of archival footage and years of interviews with Eno to, selecting and editing scenes together into a different movie each time. “It’s the first generative feature film,” Hustwit says in an introduction. “I thought, ‘Why do films have to be the same every time you watch them?’”

So, in my version, we see Eno working with U2 in the studio on “(Pride) in the Name of Love,” providing feedback and suggestions as a somewhat shapeless piece of music is molded into one of the great rock anthems of the 1980s. In another clip, Eno talks about the challenge of creating the startup sound for Microsoft Windows 95, distilling a riot of adjectives and emotions into 3.5 seconds. And we see Eno and David Byrne trying to push the envelope of rock music with their album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” which used samples from talk radio in ways that rappers like Public Enemy would later acknowledge as an influence.

But there’s also footage of a present-day 76-year-old Eno at his country estate, observing nature or shaping sounds at his computer. “It’s happening,” Eno says of the music. “And I’m happening along with it.”

It’s that approach to creativity – as a process and a way of living – that “Eno” embodies so beautifully. So often we perceive a piece of art – a book, a movie, or a piece of music – as an inevitable end point of the process, the product of all the “right” decisions made along the way. By being different each time, “Eno” shows how it’s the act of creating that matters, more than the final result. The process of the film mirrors his “Oblique Strategies” card deck, which contain a series of creative suggestions, chosen by the artist at random, designed to nudge them out of their creative ruts and think about their project in a new way.

While Eno has a reputation through his music as an esoteric, perhaps chilly figure, in interviews he’s funny, warm and self-deprecating. He seems amusedly half-embarrassed going through old notebooks and microcassettes documenting his process from decades ago. And he seems to really care about the planet and art’s relationship to it. While “Eno” may be a generative film, he cautions about the consequences of rushing headlong into embracing AI. “I think it is part of history to keep blundering into things like this.”

I have to admit, “Eno” (or MY “Eno”) was such a wonderful viewing experience that in the back of my head I wondered if it was all a con, and that every screening was secretly the same. It just seemed too cohesive to be generated at random. (Hustwit has said in interviews that about 30 percent of the scenes are fixed, the rest selected by the program). 

There’s only one way to find out, I suppose – to go see it again, and again, and again, and be constantly refreshed and inspired by this artist, and the film that is so aligned with his spirit.