In the chick of it

Cecilia Peck jumps to her feet when she hears my accent. Having spent many of her formative years in Dingle, she falls somewhere between Hibernophine and honorary citizen, and she’s not afraid to get emotional about it.
Inevitably, childhood memories lead the conversation back to Gregory Peck, her father. His granddaughter is playing nearby. I’m slap bang in the middle of one of Hollywood’s great dynasties.
‘I was so glad I got him on camera before the end,” Cecilia says tearfully. “Not for the film, (Conversations With Gregory Peck) but just so we could go through his life from start to finish. You never really think to do so with the people you love unless you happen to be making a documentary.”
Though being Her Father’s Daughter would be enough of an accolade for most, Cecilia Peck has truly struck out on her own. She has, by her own account, always been involved in the industry. “It’s just in the blood, I guess,” she smiles. “I grew up on film sets. I hardly knew anything else. It just felt like home.”
She worked in production on The Boys From Brazil before graduating into the family guild with roles in movies such as Wall Street and Killing Zoe. Though keenly aware that acting was not really her bag, it took a meeting with Academy Award winning documentarian Barbara Kopple to figure out where her destiny might lie.
“I ran into Barbara about 12 years ago in Canada,” she recalls. “And it just clicked. I had always had the feeling that I’d like to make my own films, but that’s when I decided to do something about it. I moved house so I could work with her and make the tea and learn from the bottom up.”
In 2002, Cecilia and Barbara, both fans of the Dixie Chicks, hit upon the idea of making a documentary about these loud-mouthed gals in a conservative industry. They were dismayed to learn that a team of filmmakers were already following the Chicks with the same intention. But just as they were writing the idea off, fate stepped in.
Natalie Maines, the endearing firecracker who fronts the band, was simply passing pleasantries with a London audience during a 2003 gig when she uttered words that would soon be heard around the world – “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”
It was an off-the-cuff remark, she thought, what harm could it possibly do? After all, the Chicks had been North America’s highest selling band for eight years straight, with a sold out tour and a single at the top of the charts. But with America poised to invade Iraq, her words were reported as being dangerously ‘unpatriotic’.
“It was a simple thing,” says Cecilia. “Natalie was introducing her song ‘Travelling Soldier’, which is a really beautiful song and very sympathetic to the plight of a soldier. So she said “We’re on the good side with y’all. We don’t want this war. We don’t want this violence.” These women weren’t at the forefront of political activism. It wasn’t pre-planned. They were simply trying to find common ground with their audience and entertain them.“
They may not have been looking for a fight but they got one. Country radio stations boycotted them. Fans publicly burned their recordings. Natalie even received death threats. By now, the Chicks needed friends and offered Barbara Kopple and co-director Cecilia Peck unprecedented access to track their fire-fighting efforts.
“We knew we wanted to tell the story,” says Cecilia. “But it took them a little while to process everything that was going on. They went from being the biggest selling female artists in the US to having their records destroyed on the streets. They weren’t thinking about a movie at that time. So a little while later when they took time out to have babies and record the album that came out of that experience, they finally said ‘let’s talk’. Then in true Chicks style they asked ‘Who in hell is going to want to see this?’”
Well, most right-thinking people should at least be curious. The fascinating results of Ms. Peck’s efforts, Shut Up And Sing, start out as a conspiracy film before building a touching portrait of the Chicks as musicians, as mothers and as friends.
“It should have passed unnoticed,” says Cecilia. “But instead it blew up into a political firestorm and one of the biggest ever controversies in music. It could only have happened in a post 9/11 climate in which the government really took advantage to silence all voices of dissent. There was a tacit approval on a government and corporate level – through the actions of the big radio conglomerates – to silence the Dixie Chicks.”
Bloodied but unbowed, we follow the Chicks through the kerfuffle, then pick up the story two years later as the band work with legendary producer Rick Rubin to write and record their first album since the incident. It becomes abundantly clear however, that those millions of fans are not coming back while new found liberal admirers are not going to purchase country records.
“Well, I think they’ve worked really hard to address that,” says the director. “The direction they’ve gone with Rick Rubin is radically different from what they were doing before.”
Watching the creative process in action is always compelling but Shut Up And Sing is primarily a sly critique of America’s selective endorsement of the notion of free speech.
“I think we’ll look back on this period and feel ashamed that an artist was censored for her beliefs,” says Cecilia. “Freedom of speech means that as an American you have the right to say something that other people don’t want to hear and not get persecuted for it. The entire country was founded on that principle.”
Just to add insult to injury, we finally see George W. Bush complaining that the Dixie Chicks have no right to have “hurt feeling”.
“Dumb fuck,” comes Natalie’s inevitable response.
We’ll drink to that, sister.