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After a four year wait, the first glimpse of Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary has arrived.
The first trailer for Haynes’ The Velvet Underground dropped today.
Due out in October, the movie will be the Portland director’s first documentary. But it’s hardly his first movie about rock-‘n’-roll legends. Haynes’ acclaimed 2007 biopic I’m Not There tells the story of Bob Dylan’s career using seven Dylan-inspired characters, each played by a different actor. And his 1998 Velvet Goldmine partially follows a fictional glam rock star, played by Ewan McGregor, who’s a mashup of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
At just over two minutes, the newly released trailer previews previously unreleased archival footage and talking-head interviews with surviving band members (including John Cale, who recalls his first time visiting New York: “I was appalled. This place is filthy.”)
With quotes like Lou Reed’s assertion that he was “interested in communicating with people on the outside,” the clips set up The Velvet Underground as another triumphant outcast tale from Haynes.
After the film’s premiere in July at the Cannes Film Festival, early reviews suggest that The Velvet Underground isn’t exactly a straightforward nonfiction work, which definitely tracks with the rest of Haynes’ filmography. Variety called the movie “a hypnotic act of high-wire montage. You can tell that Haynes wants to take us as close to this band as possible, and if that means his entire documentary is going to have to be a kind of poetic sleight-of-hand trick, then so be it.”
The Velvet Underground is due out in theaters and on Apple TV+ on Oct. 15. Watch the full trailer below.