INTERVIEW: Peaches, musical trailblazer, comes into focus
Photo: Peaches Goes Bananas is now playing in New York City. Photo courtesy of Film Movement / Provided by Foundry Comm with permission.
Peaches, for many people, has reached icon status. She is a feminist Queer trailblazer whose art cuts across several mediums, and now she’s the focus of a new award-winning documentary called Peaches Goes Bananas, directed by Marie Losier. Amazingly, the filmmaker lensed this film over the course of 17 years, so there’s a real intimacy achieved as the audience gets to know the subject.
Peaches Goes Bananas is finishing up its run at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City this week, with more markets in the future, including Los Angeles.
In the film, audiences learn about Peaches’ music and edgy art, plus her endearing and enduring relationship with her sister. There are scenes that help contextualize her upbringing in Canada (her name is Merrill Nisker) and offer some commentary on her provocative theatrics over the decades. As one publication put it in a review of the documentary: This is a conversation between two artists, a talk that lasted years.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Losier to better understand her motivations for befriending and following Peaches. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When did you first become interested in Peaches’ music and art?
When I met Peaches in 2006, I had no idea who she was; I hadn’t listened to her music, and I didn’t know her art. I think it’s good that I wasn’t a fan, and, instead, I was an artist focusing on making my first feature film, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. I think that approach — being an artist and not a fan — is really what’s important for me in terms of filmmaking and making documentary portraits.
I also became interested in Peaches as Merrill — the person behind the mask — when I met her sister Suri and I saw their relationship, and I knew very quickly that there was a film to make there. So I think we both loved meeting each other as simply Marie and Merrill. Then, of course, as I filmed Peaches Goes Bananas over 17 years, I became interested in her music and her art as it was part of our relationship. So that’s how it really works for me.
What do you think it is about Peaches’ creative output that has attracted so many fans and such longevity?
I don’t really think about someone else’s career in terms of fans or creative output. I think as a filmmaker making a portrait, time tells stories and informs cinema, and it’s this notion of time that helped to create the film that I made and the relationship we have. The passage of time also shows that Peaches keeps making and keeps creating, and the film is also about the fact that even … as our body and mind ages, we just need to keep making and creating and having an audience. That’s the strength and the beauty of what I think Peaches Goes Bananas is about: Though we age, we still want to create and make art; ultimately, I think it’s Peaches energy and her lack of fear is really what I admire.
If someone doesn’t know Peaches, why should they watch your documentary?
I think I made a film that can interest all kinds of people, and that is meaningful in 2025.
Was Peaches entirely onboard with the documentary treatment? Did it take some convincing?
I actually don’t go to people saying that I’m going make a documentary on them. It’s really a friendship that creates the documentary as there’s nothing written. It’s also the passage of time that helps inform the film and the editing. So convincing someone is not at all how I function when I decide to make a documentary on someone.
Were you surprised to find out the details of her close relationship with her sister?
Peaches’ relationship with her sister is really what moved me and decide to make the film — the tenderness, the fragility of life, the fact that Suri is full and was full of life, full of energy while her body was dying. And then her sister in a way took all that energy, took all that inspiration, and lives and vibrates with this energy and vibrates as an artist and musician with the energy that Suri, her sister, gave her and the relationship they had.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Peaches Goes Bananas, directed by Marie Losier, is currently playing at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. Click here for more information.
