The Young@Heart Chorus's Grand Pop

"We're so youth-obsessed; everywhere we look, it's youth, youth, youth," says Walker, whose documentary credits include films about the Los Angeles porn industry and Hiroshima. "Old age is a subject that's swept under the carpet. I wanted to address it head-on." The filmmaker wanted it to be "an unflinching commentary about mortality."

The film opens with the feisty and flirty nonagenarian Eileen Hall singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" -- "a song about life or death when it's sung by a 92-year-old," Walker says. From there, he follows chorus members at rehearsals, in their homes, in the hospital and, yes, even on their deathbeds.

Walker's original plan was to interview the Hearts about their near-death experiences and the deaths of loved ones. "And we were suddenly overtaken by realities," he says with a heavy sigh. Death shifted the narrative in a dramatic way. One of the film's most stirring moments comes when Patsy Linderme sings Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" at rehearsal just two hours after the chorus receives some devastating news about one of its own.

And a video of the Hearts performing the Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere" is used around footage of one of the chorus members being put into an ambulance. "It's the philosophy of what the chorus is about," Walker says. "They're saying: 'We don't know what that road is, but you can celebrate life along the way.' And they sing it with glee."

The idea for the documentary came in 2005, after Walker's wife and production partner, Sally George, persuaded him to see Young@Heart giving a theatrical performance in London. "I remember thinking, as indeed many audiences might think of the chorus and of this film at first: 'Is it a gimmick? Is this a sort of a dancing-bear situation? Is this karaoke?' I was skeptical," Walker recalls.

He went anyway. And, he says, he was stunned. "I loved their interpretations, their voices, what they looked like, how the audience, which was every age group, reacted. Most of all what touched me was how these songs whose lyrics I knew so well became completely different in these people's mouths."

At first, Cilman resisted Walker and George's overtures. "Bob didn't want to make a cute film about sweet, lovely old people," Walker says. Says Cilman: "We get that all the time. 'Isn't it sweet that these old people are singing these songs?' No. What's really interesting is how they sing the songs."

But when Walker and George proposed making some music videos with the Hearts, Cilman committed to the project. "You never see old people in music videos," Cilman says.

A story line was hatched: The Hearts would learn new material with the cameras rolling -- a fascinating process given Cilman's song choices (James Brown's "I Feel Good" was also on the new set list) as well as his surprisingly firm hand in guiding the chorus. "The toughness is there because he's creating a chorus that performs at major venues around the world," Walker says. "This is not a group that just performs at senior centers. He's incredibly demanding, but they respond really well to that. Even I learned that they don't want to be mollycoddled. And Bob has real, real love for them. It's so obvious."

Cameras rolled. Art and life happened. Walker suffered in the editing suite, trying to distill 140 hours of film into 108 minutes. The end result has generated a rave from Cilman. Sort of.

"I was very pleased that the people I've come to know over so many years came across in a very honest way," he says. "I liked the people in the movie, just as I'm attracted to them in real life."

But? "But some of the music was not great. There were a couple songs that just never elevated to the level I wanted them to, like [Allen Toussaint's] 'Yes We Can Can.' "

On the other hand: "Schizophrenia"!

"It's the most successful song in the movie," Cilman says. "What I like about it is they went somewhere very different with it -- but it's still not something made to be sweet so people can accept it. It's just as edgy as the Sonic Youth version. The energy is fantastic. And you know what? I think the chorus likes it a lot."