Entertainment

Toronto fest puts Neil Young in spitting distance

September 13, 2011 / 10:02 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Musician Neil Young, left, and director Jonathan Demme attend "Neil Young Journeys" premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 12, 2011, in Toronto, Canada. Getty

(CBS/AP) TORONTO - Documentary audiences are used to seeing Neil Young on the big screen but Jonathan Demme's third and latest take on the Canadian rocker is so up close and personal that it leaves the audience viewing the rocker through his own spit.

"Neil Young Journeys" premiered Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival. Afterward, Young joked with the audience that a tiny camera mounted on his microphone for the concerts "scared the hell out of me."

Pictures: "Heart of Gold"
Pictures: Toronto Film Festival

The camera was so close that it caught a glob of the singer's spittle, creating a blotch on the lens that gives the footage a bit of a psychedelic tinge.

Director Jonathan Demme told the audience he decided to include that sequence in the film, quipping that it was like a "hundred-thousand-dollar special effect."

Demme's previous Young documentaries are 2006's "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" and "Neil Young: Trunk Show" in 2009.

Rocker documentaries are big in Toronto to this year. The festival opened with a film about the Irish rock group U2 and Cameron Crowe's film about the grunge band Peal Jam is also on the festival bill.