I was brought into the project by someone whom I had worked with as an editor on a few films in the past. It was a bit of an unusual arrangement in that the film had been started by another director, Lauren Lazin, who directed the reunion concert portions. She had been editing with her team for a while but the producers and Andy Summers wanted to take the film in a new direction. So when I came on board, I went back to the drawing board by crafting a new script from the text of Andy's memoirs and directing the film in the edit room around this new script and the countless hours of archival material at my disposal.
The trickiest part was incorporating the reunion tour into the story since Andy’s book starts and ends in the early 1980s when the band broke up. In the end I think we came up with a great way to balance past and present to really tell this story of an amazing musician and his crazy journey through rock and roll. Andy Summers has lived a life that has to be seen to be believed.
At the core of it, this film is about second chances. We all hope for them, we wonder in the back of our minds, we feel anxiety about the possibility of it manifesting, etc. In Andy’s case, he gets to relive one of the highest points in his life, one that by any standards is surreal, and which was suddenly taken away some 30 years earlier....who doesn't want to have a second chance at that?
Before working on this project, I was not a huge fan of the band, which gave me some distance to craft a story for those people who didn’t know everything about the band’s history. In the process, I definitely found a new appreciation for their music. There really hasn't been a band like The Police before or since: the intricacy of sound these three guys were able to create together, merging genres and coming up with a totally new thing that really resonated with people. It is pure pop perfection in every way. If I had to choose a favorite song, I’d probably have to go with “So Lonely,”…or “Message in a Bottle,”…or…there are too many great songs to choose from to choose one!
-Andy Grieves