It is impossible for me to review The Road to Ruane, the new Boston music scene doc which had its world premiere as the centerpiece selection this year’s IFFBoston, without commenting on the circumstances of the screening itself. The enormous main hall of the Somerville Theatre was packed to the gills, with a lengthy standby line outside. This, of course, is unusual in itself for a film festival screening of an independently produced documentary, but what was really remarkable was the makeup of the crowd itself. Filling the seats were a veritable who’s-who of Boston musicians, rock journalists, and scene freaks of a certain age– people whose music you almost certainly know, or have at least flipped past in the record bins. All around me, leather-clad sixtysomethings slapped each other’s backs, reminiscing about good times and inviting each other to their upcoming gigs. The mood of the place was somewhere between a class reunion and a wake.
I mention all of this for two reasons (beyond the standard I-was-there bragging rights). First, the experience of watching the film surrounded by so many of its participants became inseparable from the film itself, like one of those immersive 4D screenings. But second, and more to the point, the turnout was a testament to the singular place within the Boston music scene occupied by the film’s subject: Billy Ruane.
Anyone who attended a rock show in Boston from the ‘80s to 2010 has likely been in the presence of Billy Ruane. Even if they didn’t know who he was, they almost certainly noticed him, nattily dressed in a blazer and loosened tie, hair unkempt, leaping up and down in front of the stage like a maniac. Ruane earned his place in the pit: as a rock promoter and general impresario he served as the nexus for Boston’s indie rock scene. Most famously, it was he who convinced the owners of the Middle East (then a Lebanese restaurant with occasional belly dancers) to start hosting live music after accidentally overbooking his 30th birthday party at T.T. the Bear’s next door, and, along with musician Greg “Skeggie” Kendall and Fort Apache founder Joe Harvard, served as the club’s talent booker during its glory days. His famed generosity and air of largesse were not a put-on, either: his father was a billionaire investor (“One of the richest men in the state,” one interview subject speculates), and he was literally the godson of Warren Buffett. But, as anyone who ever caught a glimpse of him in action could probably surmise, Billy Ruane was a volatile property, and no one can be that weird for that long without some consequences.
The structure of The Road to Ruane can be likened to that of Broadway Danny Rose, with a seemingly endless series of Boston hipster-elite talking heads (many of whom, again, were in attendance) telling increasingly wild Billy Ruane stories. The film’s de facto narrator is Looney Tunes Records owner Pat McGrath, Ruane’s best friend/handler/Sancho Panza of many years. The picture they paint is something of a tall-tale figure– yet, somehow, even the tallest of Billy Ruane stories appear to be true.
Some of the film’s anecdotes, such as a hilarious early encounter with J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf, are animated in amusing sequences, but others are presented via a treasure trove of home video footage. Someone in Ruane’s orbit (possibly McGrath, though the film isn’t always clear) was clearly a habitual self-documentarian, allowing us a remarkable degree of access to a subject who was not a public figure in the conventional sense of the word. Not only do we hear stories of Ruane’s notoriously terrible table manners, we get to see him shoveling fistfuls of lo mein into his mouth and using shrimp heads as little finger puppets (it must be said that these clips also present a priceless snapshot of Central Square at its most wonderfully scuzzy). One senses that the existence of this footage was the impetus for the film’s creation; the world needs a vehicle to witness this madness.
The home movie footage also provides one of the film’s most striking and tragic images. Somewhere in the mid 2000s Ruane abruptly loses his boyish good looks and apparently ages decades overnight; his tousled hair becomes a slicked-back gray, his lithe frame becomes bloated, and his teeth seemingly recede into his gums (it is this incarnation of Ruane I encountered as a college-age concert hopper, knowing him only as “the crazy old guy”). As McGrath explains, this is not due to a lack of footage, but rather to Ruane’s lifestyle choices. Ruane suffered from bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and (it should go without saying) impulse control, and in the last decade of his life hunted down a doctor unscrupulous enough to prescribe him unlimited quantities of methamphetamines. Ruane’s decline was precipitous and, in retrospect, feels preordained, but everyone interviewed describes his inevitable passing as nothing less than a shock. Ruane was one of those unique souls so crazy that those around him assumed that he’d live forever.
There is a secondary story running through The Road to Ruane as well, though you may not be aware of it until the final act. Peppered throughout the film are funny moments in which director Michael Gill interacts with his interview subjects, instructing McGrath on how to hold his cigar on camera or lamenting to Amanda Palmer how many people he still needs to talk to. At first blush, these moments may come off as jokey, or even self-indulgent, but their purpose becomes clear in the film’s big reveal. Gill himself died unexpectedly while working on the film, two years to the day before its IFFBoston premiere; it was ushered through post-production by Gill’s friend and collaborator Scott Evans, who is credited as co-director (and received a standing as he took the stage for the Q&A). At this point, the film modulates: we see footage of Gill’s own band at the Middle East, and the film’s interview subjects (and others, including Kevin Smith) reminisce about how they met him. It was clear that these sentiments were shared by many in the audience, as I could hear audible sobbing throughout the theater.
Gill’s death obviously altered the shape of The Road to Ruane, but not the meaning; if anything, the passages dedicated to him serve to underline what was the message of the film from the start. Billy Ruane was as singular as people come, but we’ve all got Billy Ruanes– or Michael Gills– in our lives, larger-than-life figures whose stories can’t help but touch others, and whose absences are acutely felt when they’re gone. The Road to Ruane is admittedly something of a shaggy dog story, filled with in-jokes and asides which may mean less and less the further the viewer is from central Cambridge (I recognized Lyres frontman Jeff “Monoman” Connelly in a scene-stealing cameo helping McGrath clear out Ruane’s storage locker, but I’m not sure how many outside of Saturday’s crowd would clock him without onscreen identification). But the heart of it– of grizzled scene-lifers telling stories about their crazy, departed friend– is universal. Billy Ruane is gone, but as long as weirdos are making fools of themselves at rock shows, his spirit will live on.
The Road to Ruane
2024
dir. Michael Gill & Scott Evans
102 min.
Part of the 2024 Independent Film Festival Boston
