Everything feels so real in “Moby Doc,” puppetry and reenactments notwithstanding.
In Rob Gordon Bralver’s documentary, released Friday in theaters and on digital, the titular “Feeling So Real” singer made a concerted effort to put all of his cards on the table, the less flattering the better.
“When a subject is involved in the creation of a — whether it’s a memoir, an autobiography, a documentary — there’s always that assumption that, to some extent, they’re going to gloss over the things that might make them feel compromised or diminished. But because I get so vexed when other people do that, I actually feel like, to an extent ... that I went in the other direction and whenever there was an opportunity to make myself look bad, I took it,” the Harlem-born multihyphenate, 55, told the Daily News last week.
Even when it came to foibles and mistakes, the “Go” singer never glossed over the pictures he paints of himself, be it the success of 1999′s “Play” having “ultimately corrupted and ruined” the electronic musician to the admittedly “gratuitous” description of waking up with an unknown person’s feces on him.
“That’s just me, sort of like, masochistically taking another opportunity to throw myself under the bus,” Moby, born Richard Melville Hall, said.
Many of Moby’s memories, insecurities and inner thoughts are explored in the documentary through reenactments of therapy sessions to more unconventional means like puppetry.
Bralver “didn’t want this to be a puff piece. And honestly, neither did I,” Moby told The News, crediting Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he attended on the Lower East Side with having helped inspire his candor.
“I was so impressed with people’s ability to tell their stories honestly,” the Grammy nominee recalled. “There really was never a goal of trying to gloss over the difficult stuff, as evidenced by the fact that all the difficult stuff is included.”
Though the animal rights activist — who also founded Los Angeles vegan restaurant Little Pine — admits creating things is “a little bit of a compulsion,” his drive to do the documentary was due in part to the hope that it “might address issues that, presumptuously, I feel deserve to be addressed.”
“Also, I don’t know, addressing aspects of my story in a way that, when someone experiences it, maybe they experience a catharsis,” Moby continued. “Or, it makes them, if they’re able to find increased comfort around their own sort of buried issues.”
Among the familiar faces in the film are the eccentric Davids — the late Bowie, Moby’s favorite musician before they struck up a friendship and performed together, and Lynch, who lauded the “Natural Blues” singer for his remix of the “Twin Peaks” track, “Laura Palmer’s Theme.”
The film highlights the good, the bad and the ugly of his life — from his tumultuous and financially strapped childhood to nearly giving up music and most everything in between — but Moby wouldn’t change anything he’s been through.
“If I could build a time machine and go back to meet myself when I was 19, the only thing I would say to myself is, ‘Well, things are going to be complicated,’” he said.
“I don’t know if this is gonna sound a little bit odd or esoteric,” Moby cautioned. “Of all the things I have in my life, the thing that is most precious to me is my perspective: regarding myself, regarding others, regarding the world, regarding music.”
Noting that one’s perspective inevitably stems from their collective experiences, Moby says his own “would be compromised if I had made better choices when I was growing up.
“If I had done everything flawlessly growing up, if I had never had mental illness or addiction or stupid relationships or heartbreak, terrible choices... all of those regrettable, embarrassing, terrible things are what have led me to have the perspective that I have today, that I value so much,” said Moby. “So no, even though there’s so many things I would love to change about my past, if I could change them, I don’t think that I would.”
