Fan Asks The Kinks To ‘Do It Again'

What motivates a man to go on a mission? How about a mid-life crisis and a potential job loss?

A few years back, journalist Geoff Edgers was approaching 40 and faced the very real possibility of being laid-off from the Boston Globe. So he did what any self-respecting music fan would do. He set out to reunite one of his all-time favorite bands, The Kinks.

Along with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, The Kinks were a vanguard of the "British Invasion" of the early 1960s. Before their breakup in 1996, they left their rabid fan base with a string of hits: "You Really Got Me," "Well Respected Man," "Waterloo Sunset" and "Lola," just to name a few.

In Edgers' new film, "Do It Again," he documents his journey to bring the band back together. But there's a problem. After years of squabbling over creative differences, The Kinks founding brothers, Ray and Dave Davies, don't speak to each other anymore.

Undeterred, Edgers sets out on a quixotic quest to bring the brothers together. Along the way, he receives advice from fellow Kinks fans like Warren Zanes, formerly of the Boston-based The Del Fuegos, Paul Weller, from The Jam, actress and singer Zooey Deschanel and Sting.

Edgers even gets some of the stars to sing Kinks songs with him. As Edgers told Here & Now host Robin Young Thursday, "When you listen to the records, you realize how dynamic The Kinks are and how much they influenced people. There's a lot of passion for them."

Edgers calls his movie a kind of "'Sherman's March' with guitars" — a reference to Ross McElwee’s 1986 documentary in which the filmmaker unintentionally becomes the focus of his own film. The cameras follow Edgers from Boston to Los Angeles, and finally to London, where he has an "encounter" with Ray Davies at a Kinks convention.

Edgers eventually has a heart-to-heart talk with Dave Davies about the brothers' troubles. Edgers said the talk led him to a revelation of sorts.

"It was wrong for me, this total outsider fan from Boston, to be trying to force them into a room together," he said. "If they want to get into the room together and work out their problem, that’s their deal."

"Do It Again" has been screened at film festivals in Nashville, Cleveland, Rotterdam, Glasgow and Buenos Aires. It gets its Boston premiere on Saturday, April 24 at the Somerville Theatre as part of the Boston Independent Film Festival.

WBUR's Christopher Ballman compiled this report.