The first Apple TV+ trailer for the upcoming film The Velvet Underground — director Todd Haynes’ first documentary — takes you on whirlwind tour of the history and milieu around the avant-garde rock band as it rose to become a major influence on music and culture.
The music doc will make its debut on Apple TV+ and in theaters on October 15. You can watch the trailer below.
A fast and quirky tour
“We have this chance to combine music and arts and films all together,” legendary artist and Velvet Underground manager Andy Warhol says in a moment from black-and-white rock ‘n’ roll history near the trailer’s opening. “We’re sponsoring a new band. It’s called The Velvet Underground.”
And off the trailer goes for about 2 minutes and 15 seconds. It careens through head-shot interviews and a few scrap books’ worth of still photos from the era.
Viewers get a sense of the film and how it tells the story of the New York City rock band fronted by a not-yet-legendary Lou Reed. Warhol made the group the house band for his art collective and studio, The Factory.
The band, active in the late 1960s and early 1970, never hit it big. But it became a huge influence over time with other musicians who certainly did, like REM and Patti Smith.
Well received, perhaps not ‘definitive’
Film critic Owen Gleiberman called Haynes’ film a “dazzling historical collage, but not a definitive portrait” of the band in Variety‘s review of the documentary. In part, that’s because there isn’t much footage of the band in its time. Haynes created his rendering mainly through photographs, Warhol films and interviews.
“A scrapbook of images that moves, ‘The Velvet Underground’ immerses you in the band but still leaves them slightly out of reach,” Gleiberman wrote.
Director Haynes is known for Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, on musical themes, as well as Far From Heaven, Carol and Dark Waters, among others.
