takin' a walk"Behind the Creators with Producer, Director, Documentary Filmmaker Spencer Proffer"
Join @thebuzzknight with Spencer Proffer, the legendary filmmaker responsible for some of the best music documentaries in music history, including "Chasing Trane", The John Coltrane Documentary, "Reinventing Elvis: The 68 Comeback" and "The Day the Music Died/ American Pie" the story behind the great Don McClean song.
In this special "Behind the Creators" episode, Spencer takes you behind the scenes to his 2026 project, which focuses on "Stand By Me", the iconic Lieber and Stoller classic.
Taking a Walk.
I think it's up to guys like us and Mangold and the Spielberg Scorsesees and to me, the real storytelling filmmakers, to take the work and bring it forward so that audiences all over could feel the essence of what was meant by the creator.
Welcome to the special behind the Creator's edition of the Taking a Walk Podcast. I'm buzznight, and today I welcome back a dear friend, a man who's a pioneer in American media. He can list on his vast credentials record producer, songwriter, book publisher, event producer, and documentary film producer. He's the CEO of Medior seventeen, his convergence media company based in LA and he's a three time returning Taking a Walk guest. He's going to take us behind the scenes of one of his many upcoming projects. Please welcome Spencer proffer to take it a walk.
Well, thanks, and given the fires out there, I ain't taken a walk, but I am taking a seat to talk to you. Nice to be back.
It's so great to be with you, and I'm glad that you and your family are okay despite the horrendous conditions that have been going out your way, so good to see.
You well, so I for sure your concern Boz psank you.
So before we talk about our behind the creators, look at your project for twenty twenty six, which is stand by Me, which is going to be an iconic look at one of our lifetime's most iconic songs.
I want to talk with you about.
One of our favorite topics, which is creativity. Everything I've observed about you sort of brings around this mantra of bringing the creative goosebumps to life, which I think is such a great way to put it. So who are some of the people that have instilled that in you and in your life?
Well?
Being a four immigrant kid and growing up reading and doing a deep dive in people who I emulated as a kid coming up, had the good fortune to work for Clive Davis, being the first real job I had as an adult when I got onto law school, and then moving on and doing lots of reading. I'm very, very enamored by the pioneers who built the media business. Guys like the Louis B. Mayors, who standard of the excellence was tops when he built MGM. People like Richard Branson who not only has charity in his heart and adventure and his soul, but a brilliant, talented human being who built a big company. Virgin I'm a big fan of Spielberg and George Lucas, two guys who marched to the beat of their own room. Very early creatively, I thought Vince Lombardi was my favorite football coach, with getting guys in the locker room and inspiring him like I try to do with my staff when we build our films. So I'm kind of that subject of being influenced songwriters who I love whose music has resonated deep in my heart, from you know, Bob Dylan, to Peter Gabriel to Paul Simon to you know Leberstolar funny enough, the authors of with Benny King, of stand By Me, Kat Stevens, Carol King. There have been some one Cole Porter and George Gershwin. There have been some fantastic tune smith's whose work I've emulated my entire journey. So I think to draw upon that and to make it my own is kind of the journey I've been on and I am on, which is to assimilate the best of what I think is great and turn it into something hopefully even greater, if not at least interesting for me to give me those goosebumps you write.
Bus Well, there's something also about the mantra, which I think is part of your company, which we're going to talk about that a bit you touched on it, which is putting work out that shines a light on the good and kind of unites people around the good.
So we'll talk about that.
But can you describe for a project like this, the creative process that leads into the work that will be stand by me in twenty twenty six.
Being inspired, being moved, being like when we did our podcast on American Pie, and I told you when I was a student at UCLA, I heard three minutes three turned into six when I was driving and I said to myself, when I grow up one day, to do something with that song. And I was very fortunate to meet Don McLean and to realize how brilliant he was then to work on Vincent with him now which my wife Judy is just on a brilliant children's book on Vincent Venko. It's really understanding the ethos of what the song does for me, or what the work does for me, And in the cases stand by Me. I always resonated to what those words meant first and foremost. Then when I heard the Benny King record back in Gosh, I was just a student coming up. I was even younger than I was when I heard American Pie for the first time, and I just really believe to stand next to your brother was a mantra that I really subscribed to early. My parents were refugees. They stood next to each other their entire life. I'm a believer that you stand next to your friends, your mate. I believe the mantro that the soldiers and the troops use when they stand by their comrades and the foxholes standing next to each other really speaks to me. So the song stand by Me hit me at that time when I heard it, it was a love song. But when you talk to Mike Stoller, God bless his soul, he's alive and well. He will tell you in his heart Sarah was a love song, but it means more to him, his son Peter, and the whole theme that's behind Liberstoler than just it being a love song. It means a lot about standing by, you know, by your fellow man, so.
You fuse together in such a way you bring it all full circle into the present, but you brilliantly in your work fuse.
It all together with the echoes of the past.
You did that with Steve Binder on the Reinventing Elvis documentary, which was so fantastic and it was such an honor having mister Bender.
On with you on the podcast.
And then you bring this international flare to things as well. And I know it probably helps that you just got that board appointment fairly recently at the Osgood Center for International Studies. That's not going to hurt to bring stand by Me to even greater international audiences.
I'm thinking, Am I correct on that?
Yeah? Well, what I'd really love to do. And I've been working with my attorney, Bart Fisher, one of my attorneys. I have attorneys to help me down different lanes on the highway. Bart is my international guy. We're thinking we want to premiere this at the United Nations because of the precepts of what the song speaks to. At the Osgood Center in DC and the Press Club in DC. I want to hold some screens there and go to the Kennedy Center or have had some good fortune to have some of the work that I've done lay before it goes out through a streamer. So yeah, I want this to go to the world, to not only Europe, but I've got some business interests in Asia. I'm a big believer what's happening with media in both South Korea and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and there are many territories where the spirit of stand by Me speaks. Whether or not you know the song, you know the feeling of it.
I want to mention I first met you in nineteen seventy nine at the Lee Abrams Superstars Convention in San Diego, and you and the artist that you were collaborating with then, Billy Thorpe, Remember that great song Children of the Sun. I think you created a precursor to the sort of multi media experience we see today at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Does that put a smile on your face decades later?
Well, what was cool was when Billy and I wrote the song and we saw it as a song visually, it actually pioneered what became laser Light Chosen Planetariums. When I met you, I was a guest speaker at the Brooke Card Abrams convention. I was just a punk kid I think I was twenty eight or twenty nine years old. Well, they're not punks at that age anymore. But you know, it's okay. My boys are a few years older and they're far from punks. They're really cool kids are cool young men. Anyway, I really loved the idea of taking the lyric and the spirit of the song and visualizing it with you know, we did a computer animated version of it. We premiered it. I remember when I met you at the Reuben E. Fleet Space Theater in San Diego. And Lee, who I've teamed up with, we're going to do will probably wound up doing another podcast on his project, Sonic Messengers. The role that music radio has played the evolution of music. Be a poper rocker, you know, all the very genres. But yeah, it was a visual experience. And now hearing it, I hadn't been to the sphere, but seeing that that's a totally immersive experience. Yeah, it still brings a big smile to my face because Stone of the Sun is one of the glory moments of my life. Took us eleven months to make the record. We enjoyed the process. I can't tell you. Lee s Clark played bass. Alvin Taylor, who had just finished playing with George Harrison, was our drummer. Billy was one of the finest guitarists. He was kind of like the Eric Clapton of Australia. This was his first record that we made in America, and yeah, it was a glorious experience. I wound up making four albums with Billy. But yeah, you know the reason I keep talking is you remind me of things that really light me up. So sorry to keep rambling.
That's the idea, my friend.
That's the idea of I'm winding you up and winding you up about good things.
That's that's perfect. So thank you as far as stand by me.
The way I know you think you, like I said earlier, you touch the pass and then bring it full circle to the present. So I know this is still a work in progress and you're given our audience a behind the creators look at it. But when you're thinking of the present and how you're gonna with various artists bring it full circle to the present. Can you give us a glimpse of a treat in terms of what you're thinking about?
Oh? Absolutely, well, wonderful artists through the decades have done their own arrangement versions. One of my favorites clearly the John Lennon version, which was his my favorite cover that he did after he left the Beatles. But between Bruce Springsteen and Sting and Luther Vandros and Bono and Lady Gaga, some John legend just did do it with Sam Smith on it. I'm very touched by the different approaches they've taken. But then there's hundreds more versions of the song done by emerging and you know, locally famous artists in different countries. What I'd like to do is get some current superstars who galvanize behind the song. I'm working with a wonderful talent, Steve Jordan, who is the current drummer for The Stones, but he's also a terrific producer, a ranger in his own right. I would like him to produce a new version of the song with a superstar talent that he's very close to. That will be announced later when we make the recording. But Steve and I have gotten pretty close and I think keeps the right guy to produce it all the exact produce it. Although I used to know how to make records after two hundred albums, but I would rather later the ball to guys who do it daily and regularly, and I'd like to do different versions of it in different for different cultures and have it exposed in a way to really show that it means much more, and the music will really be the propeller to the stories that ar tidally will look at different examples of how we've stood next to our brothers, be it politically, be it socially, be it culturally. I don't think it will just be a generic music video doc on the song. I think it will be a little cultural journey into what it's about and how we're going to portray it visually, decorated by the magic of the song.
And you bring a joy to it all too.
The way you put it together, I mean, reinventing Elvis was a joyous culmination that brought it all together, artists such as Darius Rucker participating, who was so marvelous. So the way that you make it all sort of come to life in the present time, I think, you know, puts this other spark.
And then the exposure to.
The global audience as well is a really cool aspect of things which I absolutely love so it is not going to be I could promise those listening it is not.
Just a documentary at all. It is much more than that.
The storyline gets evolved and is very deep. When you attack a storyline spencer and you sort of take, you know, the non typical approach and put your stamp on it, talk about your stamp and.
What it means to you personally when you do that.
Well, my stamp is just quality story retelling and bringing emotion from the children that were begot by the authors. I think that songs are a product of genius people who feel they're kind of prouding children. They feel what the words mean with mood strikes them when they create the music. At least the songwriters that I really emulate, the Lamont Doziers from his motown songs to the Cat Stevens to father and Son as a father, how that touched me at the time when I was a son. Now that I'm a father, I have my own boys, and so my approach is just to bring the essence of what I think was meant by the people who gave birth to the material, and my obligation is to help them take it to graduate school. They gave birth, they took it through elementary, through college to graduate school. Now I'd like to take it to Harvard, and not to Harvard actually, now I have a grandson whose mother is British, so I'd like to take the work to the Cambridge Oxford level. And I think it's my obligation to do that job on behalf of the creators, because when they've created the thing. I think that the new Bob Dylan movie was Timothy Challomant, and the way that that movie was made by James Mangold was a brilliant paying homage to the young Bob Dylan. And I think it's up to guys like us and Mangold and the Spielberg scorseses and to me, the real storytelling filmmakers, to take the work and bring it forward so that audiences all over can feel the essence of what was meant by the creator.
So when you go through this process and redo it and tweak it and edit it and then edit it some more, I know you well enough to know that is a painstaking process.
But only for caring about the body of work, right.
Oh, absolutely, I mean having good editors. The smartest thing a smart guy can do is surround himself with people smarter. So believe me, I work with some terrific editors and I direct like I work with directors. I like directing with the directors. Let them do what they do, let the editors do what they do, and let me weigh in. I know how to do that stuff, and the best thing I could do is let the real experts do their work and then let me kind of steer the ship to make sure it doesn't get a sink or crash.
Well, spencer and closing, I touched on this, I tease this earlier. Now, one of your company's core values involves, you know, helping others, spreading good words into our ecosystem.
We need it more now than ever certainly.
So when we talk about that and we talk about how you desire to have your projects make an impact on the greater good, can you elaborate on that.
I just hope that the work done in Like when Steve Jobs built Apple, he did the work in his garage and it got to the world. I would love the work that starts in my head, it starts at the pen of others, that's created, you know, by filmmakers and editors alike, can reach millions of people around the world. That is my dream. I've been a dreamer from the time I saw the Statue of Liberty coming over on a boat to Ellis Island when i was five years old, and I'm still dreaming. And I'm a couple of years older than five. Now.
My main man, Spencer prof we get a really cool behind the scenes look that will be out in twenty twenty six.
Can't wait. Stand by me, Spencer. You're amazing.
Thanks for all you continue to give us, and thank you for your friendship.
Sir, well, thank you, thank you, thank you for your show. I'd like the world to hear it. I think you've done your homework. I like the questions you've asked, and it's my pleasure and I'll see it soon when we finished the film. I'd like you to see it early and then we can talk about it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast.
Share this and other episodes with your friends and follow us so you never miss an episode.
Taking a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
