Michael Hutchence dominates conversation as Nick Cave takes Kylie Minogue for a ride

MICHAEL Hutchence dominates conversation as an unusual celebrity reunion has Nick Cave very nervous and Kylie Minogue a little sad.

IT is an unusual reunion.

Almost 20 years after they recorded the astonishing murder ballad Where The Wild Roses Grow, Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue are in a Jaguar, talking mostly about Michael Hutchence.

Cave is driving, Minogue is looking wistful and a little sad about this surreal, intimate exchange.

What to watch: All the latest movie reviews from Leigh Paatsch

Kylie Minogue “dropped into my life from another planet”, says Nick Cave. Picture: Supplied

Minogue is one of the featured “guests” in 20,000 Days On Earth, the docudrama which endeavours to lift the veil on Cave’s creative process and strip away some of the mystique of the man himself.

Yet what the viewer, even the most ardent of fans, is left with at the end of this existential examination is a fever dream of impressions rather than revelation.

Cave said this vanity project of sorts started with inviting filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard to shoot during the recording sessions for the last Bad Seeds record, Push the Sky Away, in France.

He has worked regularly with the pair in recent years so when they proposed a film which would represent a fictitious 24 hours in his life, Cave was intrigued. He gave them access to his notebooks and archives to create a portrait which is less fly-on-the-wall and more structurally adventurous and cinematic.

“I had some defective gene which thrust me into the margins,” saves Cave of his appeal. Picture: Supplied

Minogue, actor Ray Winstone and former Bad Seeds musician Blixa Bargeld, who suddenly left the band in 2003, star in the car scenes.

They appear even more surreal when Cave reveals the car was stationary on the back of a truck “being pulled around the streets of Brighton”.

“Kylie and Blixa were two people I had very, very close relationships with that I hadn’t seen for a long time,” Cave says.

While he wrote Where the Wild Roses Grow specifically with Minogue in mind — and had been wanting to record with her for some years before finally coming up with the appropriate song — he describes their relationship as being otherworldly.

Even though they clearly have a fondness for each other, there is no discounting the gulf of distance in their respective careers and creative aesthetics.

Nick Cave, left, in a scene from the film 20,000 Days On Earth. Picture: Supplied

“Kylie had dropped into my life from another planet,” he says. “It was a long time ago and that part of my life was defined by Kylie in a way. We were collaborators who became very good friends and as life goes on, we lost touch for a while.

“There was a genuine warmth between us that still existed when we sat in the car. I was very nervous about doing those scenes before I did them.”

Their very first connection was Hutchence. But both speak in the film about him as admirers rather than friends.

“What we talked about in relation to Michael was interesting, his true stage persona who had a natural gift to reach out to huge masses of people. As does Kylie. I was always really attracted to that,” he says.

Cave talked to British psychoanalyst Darian Leader for nearly 10 hours. Picture: Supplied

“My appeal has been much more of a marginal thing and there is a certain amount of envy for those people who reach out and touch millions of people. I had some defective gene which thrust me into the margins.”

In the era of reality television where the minutiae of daily life is thrown up as scripted drama, the filmmakers were determined not to “normalise” Cave.

Yet some of the film’s most hilarious moments involve that most necessary of human activities, eating.

One is with his right-hand creative man Warren Ellis, their lunchtime discourse accompanied by a meal of eel. The course was pure fiction.

“Warren didn’t cook that eel; there’s OHS regulations about that,” Cave says. “Of course the truth is Warren eats stuff that no-one else will eat.”

20,000 Days On Earth creates “a portrait which is less fly-on-the-wall and more structurally adventurous and cinematic”. Picture: Supplied

We also see Cave speaking about his teacher father Colin, who died in a car accident when the musician was 19, opposite British psychoanalyst Darian Leader.

The pair had not met before but ended up speaking for almost 10 hours over two days in a fictional shrink’s office which looks styled from a Mad Men set.

“We walked into this situation, sat down and he was straight in there throwing questions,” Cave says.

â–  Nick Cave is on tour in Australia from November 27. Full details on his website.