Matters of life and debt

Musicians Neil Young and Leonard Cohen have long and significant histories of representation on screen. Two recent instances, Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Demme, 2006) and Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (Lunson, 2006), were released in the wake of personal and professional trauma that their protagonists incurred. Each project was occasioned by a concert, the former by Young and the latter of Cohen's songs, that forms the film's central event. Properties of the central character's persona, the film's structure, and the film's design and style, including staging and representation of the performance, determine each documentary's negotiation of the musicians, their audiences and their current cultural significance.