On Friday night, East Hampton's Guild Hall was packed for the Hamptons International Film Festival SummerDoc's screening of a new documentary opening next week. “It Might Get Loud” limns the history of rock & roll from the perspective of three generations of electric guitar players, interweaving interviews and performances, archival and live, featuring Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes. This film offers an insider glimpse of these artists, the back story of their music performed on instruments they found or invented, the evolution of their craft. Taking a page from legendary films like “Last of the Blue Devils” which brought together Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, and Jay McShann for a jazz summit in Kansas City, this film climaxes on a day when these guitarists came together to play, teach, and share their stories. Let's just say, hearing the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven,” I was transported to the person I was back in the day. Clearly I was not alone: Alec Baldwin moderating the Q&A, evoked the excitement of those years, describing the anticipation of a new Led Zep album, having the joint rolled in the ready, and laying out (he demonstrated almost falling off his chair) listening. This movie has that nostalgic pull, as well as bringing something new. Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (Academy Award winning “An Inconvenient Truth”) fielded questions and rock journalist Lisa Robinson said she thought Keith Richard was the best guitar artist ever. No one mentioned a pivotal guitar event: Bob Dylan switching mid concert from acoustic to electric guitar, being hissed as a sellout and stormed off the Newport stage by an angry crowd, The sound of the electric guitar, now the mainstay of the rock idiom, was that controversial.

The Blue Parrot was the scene of the after party hosted by Tom Scott of Plum TV. Over marguerites, guacamole, and quesadillas, Davis Guggenheim told me, he was not of those Guggenheims: “While they were sipping champagne in their Venice villa, my grandfather was selling shoes in the Midwest.” His wife, Elizabeth Shue, sorely missed from movies after her tour de force performance in “Leaving Las Vegas,” said she has two new films, one an indie, the other commercial and sure to give me nightmares. When asked, who was the bigger pain in the ass to work with, Al Gore or the famously difficult Jimmy Page, Guggenheim declined to comment.

Regina Weinreich