When filmmaker Jacob Hatley went to legendary musician Levon Helm’s home in Woodstock, New York to shoot a music video for one of Helm’s new songs, he knew he wanted to know more about Helm’s life, but not that he and his crew would eventually end up living at Helm’s home.

Fans of The Band or Martin Scorsese’s concert film The Last Waltz will recognize Helm as one of the members of the influential Sixties and Seventies group, but as becomes immediately clear in Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film about Levon Helm, Helm is still haunted by memories of The Band (the band’s other two members have died, and Helm has suffered through throat cancer, still refusing to give up smoking).

Helm and Hatley realized they both wanted to make more than a simple music video; Helm only stipulated that Hatley wouldn’t be allowed to ask him any questions, but could shoot footage of Helm whenever he wanted to. Because Helm is rather reclusive when he’s not on tour, Hatley and his crew found it easier to capture footage of Helm if they just moved into Helm’s home, an arrangement the musician agreed to. Hatley answered a few questions recently about how – and why – he made the film.

SXSW: This isn’t so much a movie about The Band as it is a character study. What interests you about Levon Helm?

Hatley: That was the most difficult thing about making the movie, was containing The Band story and making sure this was front-and-center a hangout movie, a character piece that you go to so you can be around him and hear him bullshit and tell stories. He’s a raconteur. I met him and I just thought, "He has so much charisma" and I thought, “If he was never a musician, if he just worked at some gas station in Arkansas, he should still have a movie made about him.”

For the first 4 or 5 months of shooting, nothing much happened. We were sitting around his kitchen table at night and he was remembering scenes from The Wild Bunch, and talking, and I realized, “This is the movie.” Then things started to happen. He got sick and lost his voice and he was given this [Grammy] lifetime achievement award, which he rejected, and it brought up some difficult memories of The Band. We were forced to bring some of that up, so it was a difficult balance.

SXSW: Was it difficult to get him to let you follow him around?

Hatley: It was not difficult to film him. He loved the idea of having a camera around. He was really into the idea – we went up to just make a music video, a weekend shot, and everything seemed like it was the right time. I had a camera with me, and I just crashed with him in his barn. The rule seemed to develop that “I’ll let you film whatever you want, but you can’t ask me for an interview, you can’t ask me to talk about things; don’t try and turn this into a biography or anything.”

SXSW: Why do you think he was so reluctant to talk about the past?

Hatley: I think obviously everyone wants to think about what they’re doing right now and the music he’s making now and I think he doesn’t like the idea of an interview, regardless of what it’s about. And this is not an interview-driven movie; this movie is a fly-on-the-wall approach. We’ve all seen enough docs where someone is looking at the camera. It’s not natural.

SXSW: I read that you and the crew ended up living at Helm’s house – how did that happen and how long did you all live with him?

Hatley: Well, when we first knew we were going to be able to do this, we got a little place in Woodstock for a month or two and we just didn’t have the money to pay rent. We would go two or three weeks where we didn’t see him. When he’s not playing a gig, he’s pretty private. We would hear that he had gone out at 2am to play with the dogs or something. We can’t manipulate things, we can’t predict what’s going to happen, so we just moved in and kept the camera on a tripod with a tape ready for whenever he went out. He kind of stays in the kitchen-bedroom area; he can disappear if he wants to.