ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Hailed as rock’s “Next Big Thing” in 1980, New York rocker Willie Nile walked away from a predatory music business. Now 78, revered by rock royalty and critics but still largely unknown, he’s making the most vital music of his life.

SYNOPSIS
In 1980, New York singer-songwriter Willie Nile signed with Arista Records, opened for The Who across North America, and was hailed as "The Next Big Thing." Two years later, disillusioned by an industry that seemed to feed on its artists, he walked away, returned to his hometown of Buffalo, and raised a family. In his mid-fifties, he decided to give music one last shot. "Willie is like Benjamin Button," says former MTV executive Bill Flanagan. "His career has been totally backwards."

Since his return, Willie has released a string of albums championed by critics and outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. He is revered by fellow artists including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams and Kiefer Sutherland, all of whom appear in the film, and adored by a devoted international fan base. Yet at 78,, he is still largely unknown to the wider world and still working hard to make ends meet.

ONE GUITAR has followed Willie Nile over the past decade. We see him give everything on stage, stop on Greenwich Village sidewalks to talk with neighbors and people living on the street, and return again and again to Buffalo to be with his 108-year-old father, the man who has anchored his whole life. As time presses in on both of them, Willie is left to reckon with what endures.

ONE GUITAR is a film about what it means to keep making art when fame remains elusive, and about aging, loss and the bonds that outlast us. It is a portrait of an artist who believes one guitar can still change the world, and who plays it every night as if it might.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Lukas Maurer
PRODUCER Susan Margolin, Lynnette Gryseels, Lukas Maurer
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Jeff Rosen
EDITOR G. Anthony Svatek

ID: 708