I Need You: 53 years of The Band America is a new film that chronicles the decades of touring, recording, and enduring friendship of one of popular music’s most iconic and surviving bands.
As the film journeys through U.S. film festivals, it will have its Bay Area premiere as the Centerpiece feature at the DocLands Festival presented by the California Film Institute on Saturday, May 3, at the Rafael Theatre in San Rafael CA. Producers and directors Dustin Elm and David Breschel will be in attendance.
The three members of America, Dan Peek, Gerry Beckley, and Dewey Bunnell, first met as students at a high school in London, England. At the time, each members’ father was stationed in England for the U.S. Air Force. They regrouped after graduating high school and secured a recording contract as America with Warner Bros Records UK. By 1972, they had their first hit “A Horse with No Name”.
KALW’s Janice Lee spoke with filmmakers David Breschel and Dustin Elm ahead of the screening at DocLands. The two first met at USC in Los Angeles in graduate film school and have since worked on many projects together. I Need You is their first project as co-directors. Speaking with them, they spoke in tandem while also adding to and completing the other’s thoughts and ideas. There exists a kindred creative spirit between the members of the band America, with the filmmaking team, and through to the final film.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What did you learn from making this film?
Elm: I think the biggest takeaway – I’m just speaking for myself - it was very interesting to see how much love they still have from their fans. Working with them could not have been a better experience. They are that type of person who is so honest and open, and loving. The experience with them I honestly think could not have gone better with two nicer people. It was a very fortunate situation for us that they were so open, lovely and wonderful. It was the easiest, best experience is what I’m trying to say.
Breschel: I’d say for me – everybody knows the songs. It’s part of the fabric of what it means to be a human at this point. When we started working on this project, when we asked around, we found that everybody knew the songs, some people knew the name of the band that made the songs, and nobody knew the guys. The people who, one day these songs didn’t exist, and the next day they wrote the song, and it was out there and now a part of all of our lives.
I appreciated the prominent feature of the legendary photographer, Henry Diltz, in the film. How did you get all that great vintage footage?
Breschel: For the most part, we were extremely lucky on this film, that’s usually the hardest part of making a movie like this. The band has an archivist, Jeff Larson, who was already keeping track of everything – it was all well-organized. We still went out and did more research, and it did not include Henry Diltz’ archive, which he opened up to us. Henry has his own archivist, Gary Strobl, who is actually in the movie. Diltz has a lifetime of photos with the band, almost like a fourth member of the band. The guys – especially Gerry – were extremely happy with how much Henry was featured as he really is a big part of the story. Also, a lot of the footage is the band’s home movies.
Elm: When Henry would shoot these album covers, he would be shooting with a photography camera, but he would carry an 8mm home movie camera with him. In between the photos, he’d be filming. This was when we realized we could show more than the photos, we can see them on this journey to making the album cover.
Music documentaries can sometimes have a certain angle, maybe more of an exposé than documenting. What was your experience with this film?
Elm: Before we started, we didn’t know the guys all that well. We had met a few times, but then when we started shooting them, we realized very quickly they’re not really dramatic people. They don’t have a lot of baggage, or disdain. They’re not weathered in a negative way. They are truly, genuinely happy, nice people. We shoot all this, we do all these interviews, and we’re trying to see if was there any of this or that, and it just literally wasn’t there. They only had the nicest things to say [about] themselves. And it became this realization that this is clearly a story about this beautiful partnership. It’s about two guys who have lived this incredible musical life together. Once David and I realized this was really the backbone of the entire movie. It became a lot easier to arc the rest of the movie out.
Tell us about the process of working as co-directors.
Elm: It starts with a respect, and I have full confidence that David’s decisions are going to be really good, and honestly, maybe better than mine. With 53 years, there’s so much history, research, and so many songs, so much time to compress down – there’s the amount of research, detail and preparation before you even go to direct. It was super-helpful to have a partner, to have someone to bounce things off of. It was so much history for just one person to do.
In post-production and editing, I think it made the complexity of trying to tell this long story a lot simpler. Working together as a team made the conversations more fluid. What do you think David?
Breschel: I think that’s a good way to describe it. On-set vs. in the edit were two very different things. One thing that helped is that we know each other so well; we went to the same film school, and we have a lot of the same language. With making a doc, you can’t predict exactly what will get to film. We knew there was a story to tell, we had a lot of the same visual references, and could picture what the movie could be before we made it. I don’t think we ever had an argument, though towards the end, there were a couple editing decisions; where there was some bartering – like you give me this, I’ll give you that.
With Dustin’s love and knowledge of the music from the 70’s - and that we had wanted to do something like this together anyway - it was the perfect first project for us to co-direct.
I Need You: 53 years of The Band America
DOCLANDS Documentary Film Festival
Rafael Theatre
1118 4th St. / San Rafael CA
Saturday, May 3, 2025 @ 6:00pm PT
For more info. and tickets:
https://www.doclands.com/film/i-need-you-53-years-of-the-band-america
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Sign up for screening/viewing updates:
https://www.theamericadoc.com/
David Breschel, Jack Piatt
https://highwaywestent.com
Dustin Elm
https://www.dustinelm.com/
https://mustachebash.com/
America the band / Official Home
https://venturahighway.com/
America Hearts the album
Celebrating 50 Years!
1975 - 2025
https://venturahighway.com/album/hearts/