Details

Subject(s)

• Composers—Canada—Interviews [Browse]
• Zen monasteries—California—San Gabriel Mountains [Browse]
• Mt. Baldy Zen Center [Browse]
• Cohen, Leonard 1934-2016—Interviews [Browse]

Interviewee

• Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016 [Browse]

Filmmaker

• Brusq, Armelle [Browse]

Publisher

• Qwest TV [Browse]

Library of Congress genre(s)

• Documentary films [Browse]
• Feature films [Browse]
• Interviews [Browse]

Summary note

Leonard Cohen, the celebrated Canadian poet-singer-songwriter, lived a profoundly unorthodox life in his later years. He died after a fall in 2016. Some say his last words were: "I suppose I will never lead the ordered life my father led. And I'll never live in the kind of house he lived in, with its rituals, its dignity, the smell of polish." After bouts with depression, social turmoil and alcoholism, Cohen sought a new existence that transcended "creating in the midst of slime and despair." In 1994, he joined the Rinzai Zen Monastery on Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles. He called this 18-hour life of meditation and chanting a retirement from the throes of being a superstar entertainer. Filmmaker Armelle Brusq follows his daily life in the monastery as well as trips to a recording studio. She interviews him in his L.A. office about the travails of his life and his scarred joys. He's morose at times and deeply philosophical. Throughout the film are pockets of his poignant songs, including "A Thousand Kisses Deep," "Democracy," "The Future," "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Closer to Me," with a short snippet of "Suzanne." At the end of the revealing film, Cohen invites the filmmaker into his car and plays his compelling song, "Never Any Good," sung by Billy Valentine, because the songwriter felt his own version didn't work. So he sits there and quietly sings along with the recording which ends Brusq's revelatory story. Post script: Cohen was ordained a monk in 1996, and he left the radical form of Zen Buddhism in 1999.

Source of description

Title from title screen (viewed July 03, 2025).

Participant(s)/​Performer(s)

Leonard Cohen, interviewee.

Language note

In English.

Other title(s)

Leonard Cohen : spring 1996

OCLC

1535936886

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