And here director Davis Guggenheim thought he was venturing into an area totally unconnected to Washington.
The man responsible for “An Inconvenient Truth” takes a different direction with his newest documentary, “It Might Get Loud,” focusing on the lives of Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, as opposed to dying trees and melting icecaps. As he explained at a screening Monday, Guggenheim hoped to answer the question: “What would happen if one generation smashes up against the next one?”
But thanks to a guest at Cleveland Park’s Avalon Theater, the native Washingtonian learned that while filming Page in London, he was in fact connected back to his hometown.
In one scene, Page stands in a room filled floor-to-ceiling with records and CDs and grabs his “favorite record,” a song developed by accident right here in the Washington area – Link Wray’s “Rumble.”
Guggenheim explained how he was informed of the song’s Washington roots: On “Milt Grant’s House Party” TV show in Fredericksburg, Va., Wray failed in his attempt to cover The Diamonds’ hit song, “The Stroll” and wound up with the riff to “Rumble.”
“I didn’t know he was [from here]. Whoops, I guess I’m not a very good native,” Guggenheim joked.
Seemingly not true – Washington is set to play a starring role in his next feature. “Two of my next film’s characters are a kid in 1st grade at Anacostia and Michelle Rhee,” he told us about his next documentary on the public school system. “Rhee is a very interesting character … she likes to shake things up.”
