When a team of documentary producers first met with supercharged rocker Meat Loaf (real name: Michael Lee Aday) about making a film on his tour supporting his Bat Out Of Hell III album, the initial omens were not good.
'They kept asking me, `What's this about?' '' recalls Meat, as his friends and overly familiar reporters call him, by telephone from his home in Calabasas, Calif. ``And I said, `How the hell do I know what it's about? You're making the movie, you have the camera crews, you shoot some stuff and then you'll know what it's about.'''
The result, Meat Loaf: In Search Of Paradise, airs on the Rave HD cable channel at 10 p.m. Friday. But Meat still isn't entirely clear on what the narrative, theme or even point is. ''I can't possibly tell you what it's about, you just have to watch,'' he says. ``I don't even know how to start to tell you what it's about. They follow me around with cameras and I do stuff.''
He's a little more clear on what it isn't. No staging, retakes, or anything else faked -- that was his iron-fisted dictum to director Bruce David Klein. 'In acting, they call it `forcing a scene.' On a TV show like Big Brother, every scene is forced, everybody knows the camera is on and they're playing to it. That's no longer real. I said this documentary had to be real and not forced.''
His other iron-fisted dictum -- no concert footage -- was less successful. ''Yeah, it's in there,'' Meat says ruefully. ``There wasn't supposed to be. But they snuck cameras in and when I saw it, I let them keep it, because it was very good. That happened a lot -- I told them no, they did it anyway, and I let them keep it.''
With the 18-month tour complete and the film finished, Meat is now planning his next big campaign -- to get a role on ABC's Lost, produced by his Calabasas neighbor J.J. Abrams. ''I've never met him, but I want him to hire me for something,'' Meat insists. ``I was lying on the floor one night in a hotel room, recovering from doing a show, and I thought it all up. I know how to finish Lost.''
-- GLENN GARVIN
