Camera-Shy Chrissie Hynde on Finally Allowing a Definitive Doc to Be Made About ‘The Pretenders,’ Bowing in Toronto: ‘I Just Wanted to Be in a Band. I’ve Never Graduated Beyond That Initial Interest in It’
At this late date, what the Pretenders accomplished is no mystery achievement.
But it’s also a story that has never been extensively chronicled on film until “ The Pretenders ,” a Joss Crowley -directed doc that premieres Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival .
The band released what might rightly be considered the best rock ‘n’ roll debut album of all time in Janauary 1980, and Crowley’s film covers the lead-up to that — Chrissie Hynde looking and acting like a biker chick in late ’70s Akron before moving to and finding her real gang in the U.K. — and the tumultuous few years that followed, with further masterpieces arriving alongside band dismisals and deaths.
Although the focus is on the original lineup and the first five years, it brings us into the present day of Hynde, still one of the greatest to ever pick up a guitar.
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