The new documentary 20,000 Days On Earth revolves around the enigmatic Australian musician Nick Cave, best known for a 30-year career supported by his backing band, the Bad Seeds. Unlike a traditional "rockumentary," the film aims to depict an ordinary day in Cave's extraordinary life, as he chats with a psychotherapist, rummages through his personal archive, writes songs for a new album (2013's Push the Sky Away) and drives around in his luxury car with pop star Kylie Minogue, actor Ray Winstone and former Bad Seed and Einstürzende Neubauten founder Blixa Bargeld. 

The film's experimental combination of Cave's scripted narration and fly-on-the-wall footage is the result of Cave's long relationship with its directors, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. Over the past eight years they developed a friendship, shooting the Bad Seeds' promotional music videos and producing the soundtrack for the audiobook version of Cave's 2009 novel, The Death Of Bunny Monro. 

"We were in the studio with Nick filming. And nobody had ever really filmed that band that early in their [writing] process," says Pollard in conversation with Forsyth and Soundcheck host John Schaefer. "The footage we were getting was just remarkable. It deserved not to just whimper out onto to YouTube in some 10-minute making-of clip. So, we decided we needed a different vessel of some description. And an ambitious film seemed the way to do it."

20,000 Days won directing and editing awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival. The film's title is a rough estimate of Cave's tenure on the planet -- so far. It opens in New York on Sept. 17.

This segment originally aired on Aug. 7, 2014.