Rockin’ in the film world

I grew up near Miami Beach, so I know better than to talk politics with old guys who sit poolside in black socks and sandals. But I broke that rule Tuesday because the old guy happened to be Neil Young and, well, we’ve all come to expect a lot from the sagely Young (other than acute fashion judgment).

I was hoping Young could help me understand why it is that film is getting more political and rock music is getting less. The rock star practically growled his answer. “Woodstock was the beginning of the end....”

Young was sitting beneath the sculpted palm trees of the Argyle Hotel, and he was clad in tattered jeans and denim jacket with a lapel microphone clipped to his gray T-shirt. The occasion was a “poolside chat” tied in to the Los Angeles Film Festival, but with Young’s frontiersman aura I think a campfire would have been more appropriate.

Young is the “artist in residence” for this year’s festival, which I guess is sort of like being the grand marshal of the Rose Parade except there’s less waving and more popcorn. About 150 people bought tickets to hear him be interviewed on the Argyle patio by Nic Harcourt, the erudite music director from KCRW-FM (89.9).

I noticed that Harcourt was wearing black socks with red sneakers. Maybe I’m the one who’s out of fashion sync.

Young began his comments by warming up to the audience. “I’m not really much of a movie buff,” he told the crowd of film students, filmmakers and film lovers. “By mistake I saw ‘Citizen Kane.’ That blew my mind. I had to sit back awhile.”

Give the man this: He’s always candid. The rocker picked two films for the festival, “Dead Man” and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The former is an under-appreciated Jim Jarmusch movie that has Young’s music as its score; the latter is a movie you may have read about already.

After weeks of huffing and puffing, the film’s opening Friday feels like an election night -- I half expect Dan Rather to be up until the wee hours with his blue-state/red-state map. Filmmaker Michael Moore has introduced a new type of caucus: ballot box office results.

Young lauded the film Tuesday and clearly likes Moore’s wildcat art, but he also conceded he was leery of the director’s tendency to shoot his films with a loose cannon. Young allowed Moore to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” at the close of the film only after a screening and very specific explanation and assurances regarding the context. Young mentioned Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” and its torpedo treatment of Charlton Heston. The singer’s expression reminded me of a store clerk eyeing the giggling teenagers back on the beer aisle.

Young may not have even considered allowing the song to be used in a film in past years, but the non-movie buff is finding it necessary to prowl the poolside of Hollywood. Neil is no Norma Desmond, but on Tuesday on Sunset Boulevard he was ready for a new type of close-up.

“All venues for music are closed,” he said. To him, it’s old news that the paving crews took the meadow. The massive display of Woodstock did not herald a new era of love, it announced to Madison Avenue a new target audience.

“They put walls up around it and contained it,” Young said, pushing wisps of graying hair behind his ear. Music now is slicker than ever, and commercial radio is as rigidly uniform and unsurprising as a Blockbuster Video store. Young’s strongest niche now is classic rock radio, but that’s an umbrella that blocks the sun as well as the rain -- yes, of course “Southern Man” is still great, but the creatively vital Young wants the spotlight “not on what I did but in what I’m doing. I’ve outlived my usefulness there.”

For what it’s worth, the man who sang about tin soldiers and Nixon said mainstream radio and record labels are politically neutered and he’s weary of the suits telling him to turn down the volume. Listening to Young, he didn’t quite announce a complete divorce from rock albums and tours, but he made it clear his passions now are for film and concept pieces. In other words, the FM dial and major labels are now consigned to a supporting role, if even that.

“Greendale” is his new film. It’s a collection of songs as story that began as album, came alive as a stage production and now marks a turning point for a rock star who plugged into fame on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s.

Then, rock music was the unpredictable lightning rod, and movie theaters were usually political safe houses. On Tuesday, back on Sunset, Young’s reflection rippled on new waters. “I think I have a future in it, more of a future in that than in radio airplay.... This way I escape.”

Geoff Boucher can be reached at geoff.boucher@latimes.com.