'Don't Stop Believin': A documentary follows Journey's new lead singer
'Don't Stop Believin': Arnel Pineda was homeless and sang rock covers until he became the new Journey front man.
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The film was followed by Q&A, featuring director Ramona Diaz, producers Josh Green and Capella Fahoome. Washington Post music pop culture critic Chris Richards, moderated. Diaz, who is Philipina described how she discovered the story. “I’m plugged into the community and get all of these emails. And someone forwarded me an email from the immigration officer that gave Arnel Pineda his visa [to come over for the audition],” she explained. “I knew someone had to make this film, but I thought ‘ that’s a lot of work.’ The music was expensive. The logistics.” She called their manager and suggested he find someone to make the film. The manager, convinced Diaz was the right filmmaker for the job, called Journey’s manager. Journey’s people were skeptical, but finally granted permission for a one-day shoot. From that footage Diaz and her team cut a five-minute trailer and sent it to the band. Journey’s manager called back almost immediately and invited them to come on board.
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“It was so exciting,” Diaz recalled, “but we had no money. It was 2008, the market had just crashed and no one was funding films.” Farhoome explained that the team “charged up our credit cards” and Green said that he “lost track of how many corporate videos and commercials Cabella – and Ramona too – did to keep this going.”
Another challenge was access within the access. While the team had permission to film, it took them a while to earn the full trust of the band. They were allowed around with the cameras, but not yet allowed backstage. “Arnel was really open but the other guys had been around the block before,” Farhoome explained. Diaz was the first to score the coveted all-access pass that allowed her to go anywhere. Passes for the crew soon followed.
Timing was also key. The crew got in with Arnel on his first tour with the band, before he had an assistant or his family traveling with him. The crew became his entourage. ”We were alone in the dressing room, we became his conscience,” Green explained. The intimacy of this relationship comes through in the film and the viewer really gets a sense of Pineda’s almost childlike joy, his near-crushing anxiety and fear of failure – all uncensored and uncut.
As to the filmmaker’s relationship with the band now, Green says they’re still in close touch. “They’re about to go on another monster tour, and they just closed CMT awards with Rascal Flatts, which was huge. We’re going to do a theatrical run later this year so they’ll hopefully be there for that.”
Aside from the obvious challenges - “money, money and money” – the filmmakers had to both literally keep up with the band and keep up their own stamina. “It was not glamorous at all,” Diaz explained, “It was tiring.” She went on to explain how her team followed Journey’s two big tour buses in one mini-van that housed Diaz, the producers, and the crew. “We’d chase the buses and then they got to where they were going, the band would sleep and we worked filming load-in and set up…we were just following them around the country in our little mini-van hoping you’re getting something good. ”
Other big challenges included culling through 500 hours of footage from the road and scouring the globe to identify and secure archival footage. “It was like special ops getting footage out of all of these countries,” Green said.
Diaz said she was inspired by other rock documentaries, including “Metallica, Some Kind of Monster,” but at the end of the day, Pineda’s is a unique story all his own. “It’s a feel good film. It takes a different road than other rock films. It had to be about Arnel.”
Erin Essenmacher blogs at The Film Panel Notetaker.
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