Anonymous Club marks a few firsts: it’s Danny Cohen’s first feature film, and the first music documentary to be made about Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett.
You’ve collaborated with Courtney Barnett in the past, where did the idea to do a full tour documentary come from?
It was an idea I came up with to help Courtney open up and share how she’s feeling without the pressure of the camera on her. She tends to seize up in the limelight, which is totally natural, especially when people are expecting you to say something profound. So I gave her a Dictaphone and told her to record anything she wanted – it could be like, ‘Danny, I need a haircut!’ or ‘I played a show tonight and it was great,’ and that would be it. But sometimes, if she felt like it, she would just keep chatting. Some entries ranged from 30 seconds long to an hour long – she would just sit there noodling on the guitar and chat in between. That then became the backbone of the whole film.
