Sean Eden on Tell Me Do You Miss Me

Sean Eden on Tell Me Do You Miss Me

With the premiere of the Luna documentary Tell Me Do You Miss Me only weeks away A Head Full of Wishes took the opportunity of harassing the former members of Luna and director Matthew Buzzell with an email questionnaire. Over the course of the next few weeks, in the run up to the film premiere, I’ll post their replies here.

New Yorker’s should head to the Tribeca Film Festival website to buy their tickets to one of the five screenings the film will receive - the rest of us will have to drum our fingers and wait for the Rhino DVD release in June.

#3: Sean

A Head Full of Wishes:Do you think the film shows the band as they really are? Do we get to see the dark side of Luna? Was there a dark side of Luna?
Sean: I think there are parts of the film that do show things “as they really are”, although I think they are open to wide interpretation, even by the people in the film…! Yes, you do see some of the dark side. And there were times when the camera was not running (Matthew the director, was away for portions of the tour) that the darker side emerged, too, probably because the camera wasn’t on.

AHFoW: How different was the last tour different from previous Luna tours? Did the fact that it was the last one make it easier/harder?
Sean: For me, it was harder for a few reasons. There was more work to be done because it was the farewell tour and we were filming it. Matthew stayed on my couch in New York and also in my hotel room sometimes on the road, and I helped with the audio recording of the shows and oversaw the merchandise, so I probably took on a little more than I could easily handle. And inevitably we ended up going out quite a bit, too, especially in Spain…I experienced more than the usual amount of sleep deprivation. Also, I was sometimes dealing with the after-effects of a serious head and eye injury (I had to have surgery about 10 days before we went to Japan), and that was pretty stressful for me at times. But, the tour was certainly a lot of fun a lot of the time. I think I probably enjoyed touring in general a little more than the rest of Luna. It was indeed strange and sad at certain venues, realizing that was the last time we would play there. But we were so busy on the farewell tour that the approaching finality of it all wasn’t on my mind that much until after it was over.

AHFoW: Did you get used to having the camera around? How long did that take?
Sean: I got used to it fairly quickly, but you never completely forget it’s there.

AHFoW: What are your favourite rock films and ‘rockumentaries’?
Sean: There are so many, and a lot of them are also funny in bizarre ways. A few of my faves… Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop, Dig, Rust Never Sleeps, Cocksucker Blues, The Decline of Western Civilization, If You Only Knew (Matthew Buzzell’s film about jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott, The Kids Are Alright, The Song Remains the Same, Don’t Look Back, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, and of course, Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

AHFoW: Who’ll play Sean in the forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster of the Luna story?
Sean: The band would talk/make jokes about this over the years. The most-suggested for me was probably Tim Robbins…

AHFoW: What next?
Sean: I’ve been recording some new songs out at my friend Ray’s studio (I also sometimes play with his band, Elk City), and have been rehearsing a band to play live, and I will start playing out later this spring. I will also occasionally be seen playing and recording as a guest with other bands. I produced a record for a singer-songwriter named Courtney Saunders in 2005, and also co-wrote some of the songs. That record should be available in a couple of months. I’ve also produced a couple pieces of music for commercial entities, and am hoping to do more of this work so that I can keep financing the artistic endeavours. I plan to do more record-producing, and soundtrack music and scoring, and also hopefully some more acting and voice-over work, too.