Pharrell Williams’ musical evolution is reconstructed with Legos in ‘Piece By Piece’

Pharrell Williams is a hitmaker for himself and a string of other stars. Now his story is being told on film with Lego bricks. It’s certainly not your usual approach to documentary filmmaking, but it’s the latest from one of today’s leading documentary filmmakers, Morgan Neville. Jeffrey Brown discussed more with Neville for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
Geoff Bennett:
Pharrell Williams is a hitmaker for himself and as music producer for a string of other artists from Jay-Z to Justin Timberlake.
Now his story is being told on film with LEGO bricks. It’s certainly not your usual approach to documentary filmmaking, but it’s the latest from one of today’s leading documentary filmmakers, Morgan Neville.
Senior arts correspondent at Jeffrey Brown spoke with Neville for our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Pharrell Williams, Musician:
And I love music, like everybody loves music, but I’m realizing I had a different kind of relationship with it.
Jeffrey Brown:
Early in the new film “Piece by Piece,” Pharrell Williams looks back at his childhood and how music would utterly mesmerize him.
Pharrell Williams:
I didn’t even know that I was mesmerized. I just thought that’s what all Black kids did. I thought we all just stared into the speaker, like, whoa.
Jeffrey Brown:
Pharrell, as he is best known, heard and saw music as explosions of color and light, a sensory phenomenon known as synesthesia.
How to capture the excitement, strangeness, the journey Pharrell would take from housing project in Virginia Beach to pop culture fame, that was the job of filmmaker Morgan Neville. And even he is not sure what he has made.
Morgan Neville, Director, “Piece by Piece”: How do you explain what the film is? That has been the challenge of this from the beginning. It doesn’t conveniently fit into any box we are used to.
Jeffrey Brown:
You have had time to figure it out.
Morgan Neville:
Yes.
Jeffrey Brown:
How do you describe it?
Morgan Neville:
You know, it is a docu-bio-musical in animation, whatever that is.
So, what would you be wearing in this interview then?
Jeffrey Brown:
One thing it is, a story told with LEGO pieces, traditional documentary-style interviews turn into animation, other scenes conceived and built as animation from the start, all to creatively capture the mind and works of a hard-to-categorize cultural figure, who, as performer, music producer, and beat maker working with many of today’s megastars, including Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, has helped transform the sound of today’s music.
Telling the story in LEGOs was actually Pharrell’s idea, a moment captured in the film, along with Neville’s initial puzzlement.
Pharrell Williams:
You know what would be cool if is, like, we told my story with LEGO pieces.
Morgan Neville:
Seriously?
Pharrell Williams:
Yes.
Jeffrey Brown:
But he came to embrace the challenge of a new way of documentary storytelling.
Morgan Neville:
I actually think that the LEGO allowed me to get more inside his mind than I could have in a normal documentary.
Jeffrey Brown:
Really? Because? Because?
Morgan Neville:
because I could see what he was seeing. The fact that we can illustrate his synesthesia, which means he sees color when he hears sound and music, or that we can physically manifest the beats that he’s making, is something you can’t normally do. So, in that way, I felt like the LEGO animation allowed me to be inside his imagination.
Jeffrey Brown:
Once you’re playing with form, once you’re playing with animation, with LEGO, once you’re constructing scenes in a different way, once you’re playing with all kinds of things, I would think, is it still a documentary?
Morgan Neville:
I think it is. People may disagree. Call it creative nonfiction.
Jeffrey Brown:
Creative nonfiction?
Morgan Neville:
Yes. Documentary comes with a rule book, and this film is not about the rule book. It’s — but, to me, it’s a deeply truthful film about who Pharrell is based on documentary technique.
Jeffrey Brown:
Neville has built a filmmaking career creatively telling the stories of other creative people who’ve built their own unusually creative careers.
Steve Martin, Actor:
How many of you applauded because you thought I was dead?
Jeffrey Brown:
Major cultural figures like Steve Martin in “Steve!: A Documentary in 2 Pieces.”
Anthony Bourdain, “Parts Unknown”: Hey, what’s up, man?
Jeffrey Brown:
Anthony Bourdain in “Roadrunner” in 2021.
Child:
Mister Rogers?
Fred Rogers, Host:
Yes?
Child:
I’m going to tell you something.
Fred Rogers:
What would you like to tell me?
Child:
I like you.
Jeffrey Brown:
And Mister Rogers in 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
Woman:
My life has been all about trying to make a success.
Jeffrey Brown:
His 2013 film “20 Feet from Stardom” about the backup singers whose voices help shape musical hits and memories, but never quite reach fame on their own, won an Oscar for best documentary. Film after film, it’s been a long-running look at how creativity itself works.
Morgan Neville:
Creativity always feels a bit like magic to me, of trying to understand it. It’s never the same way — done the same way twice. It’s idiosyncratic. And when it happens, true originality, it’s utterly unpredictable.
And the other thing is that I have made films about culture. And culture, to me, is not just art and film and music. Culture is how we define ourselves and how we define other people. And I’m always interested in that, because these are the questions I ask of myself as a creative person. So I want to know how other people navigate those things.
Jeffrey Brown:
One thing Neville has never done before “Piece by Piece,” appear in one of his own films, and certainly not as a LEGO figure or minifig.
Morgan Neville:
Being a minifig, a mini-figure in LEGO lingo, we worked on this film for more than five years. And I designed my character four years ago?
Jeffrey Brown:
Yes.
Morgan Neville:
It took so long.
Jeffrey Brown:
You were making your — designing yourself.
Morgan Neville:
Yes. So working with them to say, what am I wearing and what do I look like? It took so long that my hair went from salt and pepper to just salt.
(Laughter)
Morgan Neville:
That’s how long these animated movies take.
Jeffrey Brown:
As you make more and more films, are you looking for ever new creative ways to do it?
Morgan Neville:
Absolutely.
Jeffrey Brown:
Yes.
Morgan Neville:
I mean, there’s — this was the biggest swing I have ever done in filmmaking in my career, because that’s what’s interesting at this point. And what you get to do as a documentarian is, you get license to investigate the most important things in people’s lives. They trust you with those things and then you get to share them with the world.
I mean, it’s an incredible responsibility, an incredible power. And it’s something that I never take for granted.
Jeffrey Brown:
“Piece by Piece” is now in theaters around the country.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York.