Sam Jones made a film about Wilco.

BOB MOULD SAID OF ZEN ARCADE before its recording that "...it's going to be big--bigger than punk rock." And although fellow Midwestern band Wilco's 2002 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn't a hardcore album to be recorded in a one-take session followed by a 40-hour mix marathon, both records share some commonalities: Skeletons of folk-like ballads and pop sing-a-longs treated with sonic dissonance--Husker Du with beautiful fuzz and bath bands with other arts of noise. The songs on these are as infectious as anything you've ever heard, and upon release both were hailed "record of the year" by many.

The similarities almost end with the music industry Zen Arcade was released on the primarily independent label SST in 1984 (the Huskers would end up an Warner as well one day), and although a double album wasn't the most cost-effective, SST was happy and proud of it. But when Wilco delivered YHF to the Warner-owned Reprise... Silence on the other end. Unlistenable, unmarketable. Changes please, asked Reprise. Wilco wouldn't budge.

ENTER SAM JONES: Skateboarder, musician, photographer, director, music fan who wanted to make a movie about Wilco's record from beginning to end. He captured the entirety of the YHF story, from the loss of band members to the drop from Reprise, to the eventual ironic signing to Nonesuch (another label under the Warner umbrella) for three times the money. The film is l Am Trying To Break Your Heart, out on DVD in April. It's the story of David and Goliath played out to some very pretty noise, a recent history that will be told for a long time. --Ryan Henry

In your journal on wilcofllm.com you mention that you used to be really into skating.

Yeah, definitely. I lived in Fullerton growing up and one of my best friends was Neil Blender. There was a ramp in Fullerton--Lester skated there, a bunch of people from that era. That was my life for a long time, then I got tall and started hurting myself.

What was your first set-up?

A Dogtown Wes Humpston with Kryptonics, probably Trackers. Then I had a Steve Alba Santa Cruz, that yellow and black one, and a bunch of Neil boards. I had a Christian Hosoi, remember the first one with the Rising Sun on it? I don't have those anymore, but I do still have a funky Neil proto-type.

Did you get into photography because of skateboarding?

I did. Nell was into photography and I rode motorcycles with him and his brother, we rode trials. The three of us did a lot of hanging out at their house. I took my first photography class in college, and my first picture turned in was a huge Nell ollie on the big side of Sadlands. Neil and I went and cemented the crack so we could skate the big side. We were pretty into it.

Now you shoot photos professionally?

For magazines and advertising, movie posters. And I direct some commercials. That was kind of howl started to make the movie--once I made a few commercials I realized it wasn't that different from photography, and I'd learned a lot about editing from cutting down two hours of footage to a 30-second commercial. So I started feeling I could do it.

Then one morning you woke up and decided to make a film about Wilco.

Well, I saw a really great show of theirs at the Bowery Ballroom in NY I thought, "Man, someone should do a film on this band... I should do a film. Let met find out if they're into it." 'Cause I was thinking it was probably about the time they should be getting back in the studio. It started with small aspirations, I was just going to try and hang out in their recording sessions and follow the path of the songs from being written to being recorded, to everything It got bigger, obviously...

Would you have included more of the technical aspects of recording Foxtrot had the drama not unfolded?

The biggest challenge with that stuff is that it's not too exciting of a process to film. I've seen these re-tread movies where they pull out a "great" album from the past, take the band back in and bring the tapes up, then sit around the mixing board and they all talk about it. It's just not that exciting, so it's funny how much mixing did end up in the movie, with the argument in the mixing room [scene]. The reason it works is because--and this is what I learned filming--it doesn't matter what the characters are doing necessarily, it matters if you care about them. By that time in the movie, you know enough about these guys and you care about them enough to be able to watch this argument over the minutia, and it has all these layers of subtext because of what you know. In the beginning I think people make the jump up of "He found all this drama and he abandoned his original idea." I had planned all the time to talk to the people at the record company and to follow the record through the marketing process an d the publicity process. It just so happens that things in that area got dramatic. I didn't want to make the film just about the making of the record. When I say the 'making of the record," I mean all of it.

After the band was dropped, were you there for the actual shopping-around-for-a-new-label?

In the movie we address it when the manager says how initially they were contacted by 25 or 30 different labels and they whittled it down--that's really what they did. Right after it happened they got 25 or 30 calls--they weren't just calls of: "Hey, we hear you're free. Maybe we could talk" They were: "We want your band," and it was kind of overwhelming They immediately tried to throw out the ridiculous offers where they felt like it was just the hype of the moment. Jeff would tell me about these meetings they would have. One record executive came up to them and said, "I have two words for you: Radio...Head." And that person would have immediately been crossed off the list. At one point the band decided they were going to put it out themselves and just find distribution, but Warner's arm is pretty long. Even though it's ironic they ended up back on a Warner company, if they had released the record themselves, in order to get distribution...

...They would have been tied to Warner somehow?

Warner Bros' distribution is pretty much the best for that kind of music all over the world, so they'd be working with the same people anyway. Even if they had gone to Matador or Drag City, they would have ended up being distributed by Warner. People don't realize how consolidated the industry's become. When you have Interscope owning Geffen, A&M, Atlantic...it's insane. Nonesuch is a label in the Warner family that runs more autonomously. The band felt that they weren't not going to be able to put something out, obviously they proved that if they liked their record they weren't going to change it 'cause some record company said so, but that wasn't going to come up with Nonesuch. There wasn't a history of Nonesuch doing that. They decided more people will have the chance to hear the record if they found the most independent-thinking company that has all the major distribution accoutrements.

Has your view of the music industry changed after all this?

It hasn't changed in terms of "Oh; I'm shocked by what goes on." I just got a real education. Bands have been dropped since the beginning of record companies, that's nothing new. What I did find out was how the corporate environment has changed the record company. I don't think relations with artists have changed. Every time you get a new president of a record company there may be some bands he doesn't respond to and those bands kind of get the shaft--they draw up one contract with an A&R person or a president that really loves them and then the regime changes and the band finds themselves without an ally. As big as these companies are, it really comes down to one or two people really championing the band that have a high enough position to keep them on. Movies and music used to be able to have a longer time to percolate and get under people's skin. You could open a movie small and keep it in theaters until it built up word of mouth--now everything is focused on the opening weekend. That's spilled over into m usic where the shareholders or these corporate bosses are worried they're going to lose their jobs if the don't produce quarter-by-quarter results. That's not how music works. Big records took awhile to build. An Elton John record or whatever, you had to get a single out there and then a second single, people would talk about it, and it would build. It wasn't so much advance hype and press that Eminem is going to sell two million records his first week out. People are treating a record like the opening release of a movie. If your movie has a bunch of explosions in it, if your record has a bunch of incendiary lyrics and crazy videos that preceded it and a giant million-dollar marketing muscle behind it, maybe you can do that opening weekend thing, but it's not a good business model. If you have to spend two dollars on publicity for every dollar you make on--take some one-hit wonder type of band. The record company always loses money on them because they have no catalog or staying power so they spend more money publicizing them, hoping they can get a couple hits out of them. This is the corporate mentality of music executives. I don't think anybody really understands catalog, about how you can loose money on the first four records the band makes, but on the fifth record finally build up this cult audience and have one song that goes big...

You can re-sell the first four.

...At no publicity cost. It's an investment. I learned this from Howie Kline, who used to run Reprise, how these CEOs don't have a concept of catalog; leaving it not to the numbers or the first week sales, but to the long-term appeal of the music. That's the big change, giant corporations need results immediately. And that's not the nature of music. When I read a book I'm usually done with it, when I go see a movie I'm usually done with it; maybe if it's great I'll see it again on cable. With a record, I'll listen to that thing 100 times. I'll pull it out 10 years later if it's good. It's a different mindset.

What does skateboarding have to do with who you are today?

When I started skateboarding it was kind of a dark period. When Thrasher started it was pretty much backyards, empty pools and street skating. That put me in an independent mindset immediately. I had my group of friends and you go to your local little spots, Flower St. or Sadlands or wherever, where you're making shit up all the time; "Hey, lets see who can ollie up onto that rock and come back down." That kind of thinking is entirely different than team mentality; having to learn methods of throwing a pass or catching a pass or hitting a ball are tried and true and tested, where there's no creativity. We'd go and buy decks for like $12 and cut them ourselves and paint them. So there's definitely the arts aspect and the graphics aspect, but more than anything it just set me off in this independent mindset of what people were telling me wasn't necessarily the most fun thing or the right thing. That kind of led to photography, led to playing music. I was never attracted to team sports. I was always attracted to motorcycles and skateboards, things where my creativity could supplement my athleticism...or lack of athleticism.

What's up with the DVD?

It's going to be a two-disc DVD. One of the movie and the original theatrical tinier, and a commentary with myself and the whole band watching the film and talking about it. The second disc is an extra 70 or 80 minutes of footage that includes about 23 other songs: rehearsal performances, live performances; there's some unreleased stuff that didn't make it into Foxtrot. Then there's a documentary about the making of the film, which is kind of ridiculous but we had to make one in case some media outlets wanted to do an in-depth piece. There's some solo stuff on there of Jeff from the Great American Music Hall show, some of the songs you just see pieces of in the movie. It's a pretty in-depth package. Then there's this book that goes with it; I'm writing a 10,000 word behind-the-scenes glimpse. David Fricke, the Rolling Stone guy, is writing liner notes and there will be a bunch of pictures too. The second disc is about as long as the movie itself.

What's your next big project?

I'm looking for a film--it's not going to be a documentary, but an actual feature film. I feel like the documentary was my film school and now I want to do it again on a bigger level, but with someone else's money.