Baby, I'm a Star

Baby, I Was a Star

2010-07-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

This blog was always intended as a finite project. Since the project is now finished, Baby, I'm a Star will no longer feature new content.

However, there's an embarrassment of riches in the archives if you're a music film buff. Take a look around and enjoy!

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

2009-11-25T03:49:00.000-06:00

So we already know the BEST POP MUSIC FILM (that'd be Purple Rain) and the BEST CONCERT FILM EVER (Stop Making Sense, of course), but what about THE BEST ROCKUMENTARY EVER?

Well, here it is.

Unlike so many pop movies that cater strictly to the fan base, Some Kind of Monster will appeal to those who've never heard of Metallica and even those who don't like them. The film is many things: A story of a band trying to hold it together, a fascinating psychological portrait, a commentary on therapy, a wellspring of unintentional comedy, and a document of the creative process.

I like this movie so much that whenever it's on TV (usually VH1 or VH1 Classic) it's an automatic turn and watch, from whatever point I come in. In honor of that watchable goodness, I present a running diary of my latest viewing of the film. As always, apologies to Bill Simmons, from whom I stole this shtick.

0:00:38 The film starts us off in 2003, with best-selling hard rock band Metallica about to release a new album. Rock critics sulk into a listening room and nod their heads vaguely to the heavy sounds they hear.

0:01:32 Band members sit for lightening round-style press interviews regarding the tortured origins of the new album. Lead singer James Hetfield is asked to summarize Metallica's entire career in one word and he's at a loss for words. The film takes the opportunity to go two years into the past, conveniently to when the film started shooting...

0:03:44 An MTV News Break (remember when those things used to come in and you'd wonder if it was real news or some fluff piece?) with Kurt Loder reveals that Metallica bassist Jason Newsted has quit the band. At the same time, the band are about to begin recording a new album, and have brought in a "performance coach" named Dr. Phillip Towle ("Just, what, exactly, are you a doctor of, Mr. Venkman?") to help them work through their issues as a group. Towle had worked with the Saint Louis Rams, previously. They could probably use him again (They're currently 1-8).

0:04:42 This is the first appearance of Phil's yellow sweater. We'll get to know it well.

0:05:02 In a refreshing moment that'll be repeated, people on film actually mention that they're being filmed. This is always one of the most unrealistic part of documentaries, that people wouldn't show some sort of awareness / discomfort with the fact that there's a camera in their face.

0:07:43 The first day of recording is April 24, 2001. Producer Bob Rock (who helmed some of David Lee Roth, Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi's biggest albums) is producing AND sitting in on bass.

0:07:58 Footage of James Hetfield driving his black with flame-decals dragster as he claims, "This is part of me not trying to be famous." To his credit he realizes how ridiculous this is going to sound and adds that he realizes he's going to get noticed while driving the dragster. Then he tries unsuccessfully to justify it as non-conformity.

0:09:56 Drummer Lars Ulrich lounges in front of a huge Jean-Michel Basquiat painting and waxes philosophical about the nature of the creative process before being interrupted by shouts from his son. "Yes, sweetie?" he replies.

0:11:08 Gentle guitarist Kirk Hammett surfs and reveals he's quit drugs and scaled back his drinking. He claims to like the individualist nature of surfing, which proves to be psychologically telling, given his sublimated role in the band.

0:12:09 Old footage of the recording of the Black Album reveals that things have always been a little bit tense (that was 1991).

0:14:35 As a result of a group lyric-write James stumbles upon the title of the film.

0:15:06 A priceless dose of unintentional comedy comes in the form of Dr. Phil (can I call him that?) reading an earnest bit of prose that ends, "We have learned and we understand and now we must share" followed by Kirk explaining to everyone what a mission statement is.

0:16:40 While rehashing the previous day's collaborative writing, Kirk exclaims, "I couldn't get to sleep last night because I was so wired from it all." Hetfield rolls his eyes, a sure sign of trouble on the horizon.

0:17:27 James killed a bear in Russia, but it's not edible because it had been hibernating. So, good job, you shot a sleepy bear. We also find out that because of this hunting sojourn, he missed his son's first birthday party. Priorities man, priorities.

0:20:00 Lars' improbably cute son comes in to the studio. "This is daddy's workplace," he announces and proceeds to manically play drums.

0:20:46 As if on cue, an interview finds Jason Newsted listing his reasons for leaving the band. For one, he felt music wasn't the number one commitment for the band members anymore. "Music is my children," he says, as English teachers everywhere cringe. The bigger issue, though, is the fact that Newsted felt stymied, like he couldn't do any side projects. And in reference to bringing in a performance coach, he says, "I think that this is really fucking lame." Finally, he makes use of the word "squillions." Good interview, all around.

0:23:14 Hetfield, surprisingly self-aware, admits barring Newsted from side projects. He says he didn't want Jason to enjoy that more than Metallica. "The way I learned to love things was to choke them to death." Like the Russian bear?

0:24:14 A piece of studio equipment is mislabeled METLLICA in neat silver Sharpie marker.

0:26:30 Now is a good time as any to urge you to pay attention to the changing hair lengths and facial hair configurations that the band goes through as the film progresses.

0:29:36 Tension mounts in the studio. James doesn't like Lars' rhythm experimentations, and in classic respond-to-a-complaint-with-your-own complaint, Lars calls James' guitar part "stock." James calls him on this tatic and Lars stays petulant. Bemoaning their lack of communication, he asks, "Do you want me to write it down?" Meek Kirk jumps in with a whiny, "You know what guys, why don't we just go in there and hammer it out instead of hammering on each other." He is roundly ignored.

0:31:54 Another MTV News update, this time with fresh-faced Gideon Yago reporting that James has entered rehab for alcoholism. Points to whoever wrote the copy for throwing in an "Alcoholica" mention.

0:33:05 As the band goes on hiatus while James rehabs, the film focuses on Lars. We meet his gnomish father Torben. As they hike through some open land, watch for an awkward moment where Dr. Phil and Lars talk about Torben as if he isn't there, while Torben appears about to keel over.

0:35:45 In what might be my favorite moment of the film, Lars plays a new Indian-flavored track for his father, who responds in a thick Dutch accent, "I would say delete that. Unless I'm a guy that's shouting in some sort of echo chamber."

0:37:28 Phil's yellow sweater makes appearance # 2!

0:37:42 Discussing James' ongoing absence and the uncertain status of the band, Lars remarks, "This is a bit of a shit sandwich." It's unknown whether or not he was intentionally referring to This Is Spinal Tap. ("The review you had on Shark Sandwich, which was merely a two-word review, just said Shit Sandwich.")

0:41:01 Kirk rides a horse on his land and gives an interview wearing a pink collared shirt, open at the chest. Given his effete mannerisms and way of talking, the first time I saw this I thought, 'I didn't know he was gay!' How cool would that be, to have a gay lead guitarist in one of the heaviest and most macho bands of all time. Eventually, I looked it up. He's not gay.

0:42:22 Dave Mustiane, the guitarist Kirk replaced, shows up for a one-on-one with Lars. Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica before the band even made their first record and is obviously still bitter about it, though the film points out that his post-Metallica band, Megadeth, has not exactly been unsuccessful. He bemoans his severed relationship with Lars and wishes to go back to the good times: "I remember the day you and me talked about digging a hole and smoking hash through the dirt." Okay. This is followed by Lars asking and answering his own questions but not really interacting with Mustaine.

Mustaine then says that, "People hate me because of you" and admits he fucked up. He wishes they had asked him to clean up and get sober instead of just kicking him out of the band. At this point I feel that Dave Mustaine has Bret Michaels-level potential for reality TV career resurrection. Someone get on that.

0:45:44 An extended sequence features Kirk, Lars, and Bob Rock attending the first performance of Jason Newsted's new band, Echobrain. Rock starts to notice a bunch of ex-Metallica crew members now working for Echobrain. Jason doesn't even stick around to talk to his ex-bandmates. A bit melancholy after the gig, Lars laments, "Jason is the future. Metallica is the past." Considering that Echobrain was a flop and that Newsted left after one album, I think he was kinda wrong.

0:52:12 After a YEAR away, James returns. His first comment, "Why are we filming this?" This leads to a discussion about whether the film should carry on, with both directors (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, documentarians who gained the band's trust through their film Paradise Lost) sitting in and seeming open to the option of not continuing. Though we don't see a resolution, they obviously decide to carry on, because the movie doesn't just abruptly end here.

0:58:27 Dr.Phil owns the exact same sweater in robin's egg blue!

0:59:23 While collaborating on lyrics, Kirk comes up with a line they all love: "My lifestyle determines my death style."

1:00:03 There's a good producer moment where Rock gives James a helpful suggestion on how to sing a certain portion of the song. This is a good time to point out that the album they're working on throughout the film ends up being pretty bad. The creative process is still obviously interesting, but imagine how much more amazing the film would be had the record turned out to be a masterpiece!

1:01:28 James, who is limited by his rehab to only work 4 hours a day, complains about Lars and Bob listening to songs without him. "I feel like I'm walking into something that's already been decided." Kirk replies without missing a beat: "That's just like the last 15 years for me." His comment goes unaddressed.

1:04:27 Why is Lars wearing a bathrobe in the studio?

1:06:03 Lars gives a great speech responding to James' complaints about the band working without him. It ends with, "All this rules and all this shit. This is a fucking rock and roll band. There shouldn't be any rules. Fuck."

1:07:56 During a fan appreciation day, regular joes are given the chance to audition for bass player. The winner gets to play a song with the band. How cool is that?! A woman named Elena wins.

1:09:13 The fighting between Lars and James continues. "I'm not enjoying being in the room with you playing," James says. I'm distracted by the ridiculous amount of fruit they keep at their studio.

1:12:00 Lars reflects on his friendship with James and they honestly sound a little bit like a couple. He says that they always got along great when it was just the two of them, but any third party automatically led to strife and competition.

1:15:59 A discussion about not having guitar solos on the album upsets Kirk. "Can I say something that I think is bullshit?" he begins. He then eloquently explains that not putting solos on the songs dates it to a current trend. Everyone actually listens to him this time and they decide there should be no hard and fast rule about solos.

1:18:17 Kirk sez: "I try to be an example of being egoless to the other guys." I don't think it has worked so far.

1:19:26 A rare moment of humor and camaraderie between the three guys as they try to do straight-faced radio promos about some sort of cash giveaway. They soon start making their own vulgar, funny promos like Lars' "I'm about to stick $10,000 up your ass!" They discuss why they have to do this and the answer is basically to grease the palms at the major radio chains. James comes up with the line, "I'll wash your back so you don't stab mine" and of course it ends up in a song.

1:22:19 While doing vocals James does a B-52s Rock Lobster ad lib. A very strange but satisfying moment.

1:22:51 Lars gives a lesson on semantics. Is there really a difference between "moping" and "sulking"?

1:23:25 Bad sweater watch continues, even though we haven't seen Dr.Phil's yellow sweater in awhile. This time it's MTV News' John Norris, who looks supremely uncomfortable in a bright red body-hugging sweater with a large leather-trimmed zipper at the neck.

1:23:59 James discuses the death of original Metallica bassist Cliff Burton. He laments the fact that "we'll never have that initial four guys going on and on." Well, technically if you wanted that you'd have to get Mustaine back in the band.

1:26:29 The yellow sweater is back! Phil tries to contribute some lyrics. Soon after, you can watch him methodically dismantle a sandwich.

1:37:00 They play 18 songs for manager Cliff Burnstein, who becomes progressively more antsy and bored as they go on.

1:40:35 Lars, who has been collecting art for many years, auctions off his entire collection at Christie's. He gets drunk during the bidding and ends up making somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million dollars.

1:45:27 Dr. Phil begins to wear out his welcome. He starts talking about something called "The Zone," which I believe was some sort of method he was hoping to write a book about and get a huge payday. But, the band all think it's stupid. But don't feel sorry for Phil. We soon find out that the band is paying him $40,000 A MONTH for his services. I'm sure to Metallica that's pocket change, but still!

1:46:47 James in reference to Phil: "I'm afraid he's under the impression that he's in the band."

1:49:26 Auditions for a new bass player begin. Bassists from across hard rock come out of the woodwork, including former members of Marilyn Manson, The Cult, Kryuss, Jane's Addiction, and Ozzy Osbourne's band.

1:51:38 The yellow sweater comes back for its fourth and final appearance.

1:54:20 Bob urges the band not to settle on an inferior bass player, warning, "We don't want another Jason." Ouch. Soon after Lars asks, "Are we gonna sack Bob now?" and one can't help but feel a little sorry for the producer, especially when you learn that Metallica didn't bring him back to produce their follow-up.

1:56:28 They pick the Ozzy Osbourne guy, Rob Trujillo, who impressed during audition by "playing Battery with his fingers." He seems like a genuinely sweet and laidback guy. When they give him the official offer to join he looks like all of his dreams have come true. Then we see footage of him practicing bass in his bedroom.

1:58:32 Things get ugly with Phil when the band learns he's considering moving his family from Kansas City to San Fransisco. He doesn't see his relationship with Metallica ending anytime soon and he thinks they still have a lot of work to do. "I have individual performance goals for each of you," he reveals. Lars rightly brings up the question of ethics. If a therapist is making money off of a person being unwell, what is their motivation to cure that person?

2:03:06 They refer to the documentary while discussing business with Rob. They tell him if it loses money, he's not liable for that. I can't find any budgeting info on the film, but it only made about $1.2 million at the box office. I'm sure TV and DVD sales added a bit to that.

2:04:04 Some of the album titles the band considered: We're Already Dead, We're Just Haunting Together; Old, Ugly, Nasty; Best Dressed Chicken In Town; Butchered; Sarcasm With Meaning; Surfing the Zeitgeist; Unbridled; Floods Of Vomit; Speed Ave.; Satanic Cukoo Clock; Unresolve; and St.Anger. They went with the final one.

2:05:44 The band film the video for the album's title track at San Quintin State Prison. This affords us the opportunity to see a lot of awesome prison mustaches. Refreshingly, most of the inmates are white.

2:08:27 The quotable Lars Ulrich: "You can make something aggressive and fucked-up with positive energy."

2:09:58 The band seems at peace with Phil again. James mentions not knowing the difference between depression and sadness, and Phil responds that there is "clearly" a difference, but declines to explain what it is.

2:12:59 The film boasts that St.Anger debuted at number 1 in 30 countries, ignoring the fact that most critics hated it and several fans shunned it. It sold 2 million copies in the U.S., which is not bad, but considering that their previous 8 albums sold 3 million, 5 million, 6 million, 8 million, 15 million, 5 million, 4 million, and 5 million copies respectively, this was a let down. It has a 65/100 Metacritic rating, and the reviews for its follow-up Death Magnetic, all led with, "it's better than St.Anger."

2:13:59 The movie ends with the band playing Frantic, a terrible new song, to an adoring sausage-fest of an audience.

And there you have it, the BEST ROCKUMENTARY EVER!

Sid and Nancy (1986)

2009-11-18T03:49:00.009-06:00

Pretty vacant

I was hesitant about Sid and Nancy, because I approached the film with little or no knowledge of the two principals or of the Sex Pistols' music (I tried; it never did anything for me).

But then I thought, this is the rare case where I'm the average viewer of a pop music film. So I decided to go with that perspective.

What Happens:

I'm recognizing a pattern here. Just like other biopics Selena and Notorious, Sid and Nancy starts at the end. We're in New York, and police have responded to a 911 call at the Hotel Chelsea. They find Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) in a near catatonic state, and a dead woman on the bathroom floor. Blood is everywhere. The police arrest Sid and take him in for questioning. "Who is she?" they ask him. "Where did you meet her?"

"At Linda's," he responds and we flash back to the beginning of our story, a year earlier.

Sid is the bass player for UK punk sensations the Sex Pistols. He likes to hang out with his lead singer, Johnny Rotten, and do things like break out the windshields of Rolls Royces. They go to Linda's house. She's a dominatrix who doesn't mind if the boys spray paint on the walls of her very nice place. She's got a friend named Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), an American groupie and heroin runner / addict.

Neither John nor Sid is exactly taken with Nancy right away, but she hangs around anyway. After a busted drug deal, Sid takes pity on her and offers to buy from her, though he is not a user. She takes his money and runs, but they meet again later after her druglord boss has abandoned her. They get high and have sex. In the morning Nancy, who knows the drill, gets up to leave, but Sid asks her to stay.

And so begins their courtship. They get high together, yell at each other, and generally cause Sid to stop focusing on his job. This changes when the Pistols set off for an American tour. The band, knowing Nancy is bad news, refuse to allow her to come on tour. Sid and Nancy fight about it, and he leaves.

In no small part thanks to Sid's erratic behavior (he can barely stay upright on stage, he keeps hurting himself, both accidentally and purposefully) the tour doesn't go well, and the band breaks up when the drummer and guitarist both quit. Sid goes back to Nancy. They resume their old ways, and they head to New York to try to get clean and strike up a solo career for Sid.

Things don't go well. He gets some gigs, but they're poorly-received, and he's not really committed to making it work anyway. Both Sid and Nancy start using again and begin a slow descent into drug-addled vacancy. The two begin to spend all of their time in the hotel, living in squalor. They alternately talk of a suicide pact and of getting clean. During an argument one night, they scream at each other, then tussle. They go to sleep together. Nancy is bleeding. She wakes up in the middle of the night and the sheets are soaked in her blood. She staggers into the bathroom, collapses, and calls Sid's name before dying.

Now we're back where we started. Sid makes bail and asks the cops where he can get some good pizza. He goes to a pizza place seemingly in the middle a huge desolated lot. He eats, pushes the table over, and leaves. Some black boys are dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band's Get Down Tonight and Sid joins them. Then, Nancy shows up in a cab and he gets into it with her and they drive away.

What Really Happens:

I had a lot of problems with this movie. It's not necessarily a bad movie. The production values are good, something you can't take for granted with '80s films. It's very watchable. Where I get hung up is in the message/purpose of the film. Is it a biopic, a tragic love story, or a cautionary tale? The film doesn't commit fully to any of the three. It's not really a biopic, because it only covers one year in the subjects' lives. The problem with it being a love story (probably the most common way the movie is thought of) is that the story is less about love than it's about co-dependence. Before drugs became a part of their lives, there was no action or interest between Sid and Nancy. They spend more time fighting in the film than they do showing affection for one another. And while by virtue of its existence the film serves as a cautionary tale against drug addiction, I'm not convinced that was at all the filmmaker's intention. Instead of condemning, the film seems to take a little too much glee in the bad behavior and the nihilism of its subjects.

Furthermore, neither character is remotely likable, which I'm guessing was purposeful, since neither seemed to be all that likable in reality. But we need some reason to care about them, and the film never really provides that. Sid doesn't seem to care about anything. He has no real talent (even as a bass player) or appeal. He's a blank slate. Nancy is a shrill opportunist. We don't know how they ended up where they are, or what they're rebelling against, why the punk aesthetic appealed to them so much. The only glimpse we get of either's past is a brief visit to Nancy's grandparents' house. They're Jewish and wealthy, and thus Nancy just seems like the family fuck-up. In reality she probably had some serious unaddressed mental illness. Sid too.

But let's look at the four categories for biopics and see how the film fares there.

1) Believable Actors
Both Oldman and Webb had very short resumes when they were cast in Sid and Nancy, but what different paths they took! Their performances in the film are actually good precursors for their later careers. Gary Oldman is amazing. He embodies Sid Vicious completely, for what that's worth. Chloe Webb, on the other hand, is wholly unimpressive. In many scenes, she throws subtlety to the wind. Part of it is the way Nancy is written, so writer/director Alex Cox is partly to blame, but in many scenes her acting choices are downright distracting. The result of her overacting is that her character is never quite sympathetic and thus we don't really care what happens to her. All of the other actors do fine jobs, especially Andrew Schofield as Johnny Rotten. But Webb is a dealbreaker.

2) Truth
It's well-documented that Sid and Nancy plays it fast and loose with the truth. Even Wikipedia, of all places, calls it a "fictionalized account." I have a couple of problems with this. One is that most people watch biopics and take everything as gospel truth. The other is that the truth was more compelling than the fiction the film creates. Sid and Nancy were not only co-dependent, they were also mutually abusive of one another. The ending, with Sid getting in Nancy's cab and driving away, is a symbolic approach, but ends up glossing over the tough-but-compelling reality. In "real life," after making bail (thanks to Sex Pistol manager Malcom McLaren) Sid spent the next few months trying to fulfill his side of the suicide pact with Nancy. On different occasions he took an overdose of methadone, slit his wrists, and jumped out a window. Finally, about five months after Nancy's death, he succeeded. Assisted by his mother, he took what many believe to be a purposeful overdose of heroin.

I don't buy Sid and Nancy as a punk rock Romeo and Juliet, mostly because it seems insulting to the latter, but Sid's suicide is a vital part of the story. It completes it. Plus, the hopeful, glossed-over ending doesn't match with the nihilism of the rest of the film, nor that of its subjects.

3) Defining Moments
All good pop music stories have clear defining moments. The story of Sid and Nancy has four: Their meeting, the demise of the Sex Pistols, their drug holiday, her death, and his death. The film depicts them all save the latter. I wish more time had been spent on the Sex Pistols and what really went down with their break-up. In total maybe 15 minutes of the film are spent on the band. In comparison, the final drug holiday descent is given 25 straight minutes. And the film lingers on that crucial moment - Nancy's death - a little too long. It's almost like a snuff film.

4) Musical Performances
You might guess from the paragraph above that music is by far a secondary concern in the movie. As such, musical performances are in short supply. We see the Pistols perform about four times, with brief snippets of them doing Anarchy in the UK, No Feelings, God Save the Queen, and a cover of the Monkees' (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone. Sid's solo career gets one showpiece, a disturbing dreamlike sequence where he does his cover of Frank Sinatra's My Way and ends up opening fire on his audience and killing many of them, including Nancy.

Though the lack of music is disappointing, I suppose it's fitting that the film spends most of its time on bad behavior and drugs over music, because that was obviously Sid's priority as well.

Questions and Comments:

I'm trying not to be a square or an old fogey with this, but even after watching the film and reading up on Sid Vicious, I'm still at a loss as to why he was so intriguing to people. I'm even trying to reinhabit the dark worldview I sporadically held in my teens and early twenties, and I still don't get it. As I said before, he wasn't intelligent, he wasn't talented, he stood for nothing, and he wasted his life. Some say he embodied the spirit and attitude of punk, but I think there are many other heroes who did it better, like maybe Joey Ramone or Joe Strummer.

On that note, I love punk music, but I think the lifestyle of the late-'70s British punks was so hypocritical. Here's this "we-don't-give-a-fuck" movement that requires a ton of effort to participate in. You don't wake up with a mohawk or your hair spiked with egg whites or died green. You have to pony up for the leather jackets and put the saftey pins in them yourself. And in other ways these early British punks were no different than hippies. They slept in communal situations and didn't bathe all that much. And money was not a concern, especially not for the Sex Pistols who lived a rebellious lifestyle while their record label and manager funded them. It's all kind of bullshit really. The film addresses the ephemeral and phony nature of the aesthetic ever so briefly when at one of the Pistols' gigs a punk tells his friend that he "ain't gonna be a punk no more." He says he wants to be a rude boy (a Jamaica-inspired trend focused on ska music) instead.

The film brings up a lot of questions about domestic abuse. A woman's murder at the hands of her lover is nothing new in abusive relationships. And though it's more likely that both parties contributed equally to their demise, the film makes a strong case for Nancy as a villain. She introduces Sid to heroin and helps distance him from his one positive outlet, the Sex Pistols.

In his book Killing Yourself to Love, Chuck Klosterman visits the Hotel Chelsea. Nothing much comes of it, but in the book he reports that Sid once told his mother he found sex "boring." The film actually depicts this subtly in a couple of ways. The first night the two meet, Nancy snuggles up to Sid and he brushes her off. Later, in the middle of their drug-addled final days, Sid asks, "How long has it been since we fucked?" Neither knows, and they briefly discuss trying it, but they're both too inert to make it happen. This can be a commentary on addiction, but it also says something about their relationship, namely that it was far from a traditional love affair.

The film only hints at the role Sid's management (Malcom McLaren) and record company had in his demise, but it's undoubtable that they enabled him. When Sid and Nancy are on their drug holiday it's never clear who's funding it, but given the amount of money Sid still had, he must have been still getting regular support from the company. It was in their best interest to have him embody the punk lifestyle, but in they end they just helped one of their assets destroy himself.

Am I the only one who wondered what became of the couples' cat, Socks, after Nancy's murder?

According to the Internet Movie Database, Chloe Webb had only two professional acting gigs before Sid and Nancy. One was an episode of Remington Steele. The other was an episode of Mary Tyler Moore's failed 1985 sitcom Mary.

Jack Klompus, Morty Seinfeld's Del Boca Vista nemesis on Seinfeld shows up as the manager of the Hotel Chelsea. The actor's name is Sandy Baron.

A pre-plastic surgery Courtney Love is in the movie too, in a role so small it could be called a cameo. She probably would have been a better choice to play Nancy than Webb was.

In Conclusion:

The combination of unclear purpose, miscast leading lady, and glossing-over of the truth sinks Sid and Nancy. One even wonders if it was a film that needed to be made in this form. I can't help but think a documentary would have served the story better.

Fear of a Black Hat (1994)

2009-11-11T03:49:00.006-06:00

Take away the pornography; take away the women-bashing; take away the "kill whitey" stuff. Take it all away, and you've got the kids next door.

We all like things summed up in five words or less. So it's easy enough to say Fear of a Black Hat is a "rap version of Spinal Tap" and move on, right? But wait. Together, let's resist the temptation to be glib.

What Happens:

Fear of Black Hat is a mockumentary following a year in the life of rap group N.W.H. (Niggas With Hats). The group is comprised of MC Ice Cold (Rusty Cundieff), hype man Tasty Taste (Larry B. Scott), and DJ Tone Def (Mark Christopher Lawrence).

In the film's fictional world, the documentary is being shot by grad student Nina Blackburn (Kasi Lemmons), who's doing her thesis on rap as political and cultural communication. Nina appears throughout the film, interviewing the group members.

As the movie begins N.W.H. at a middling level of success. They've made a name for themselves with past minor hits such as My Peanuts, P.U.S.S. Why?, Grab Your Shit, and Booty Juice but still can't get that name on the marquis at their concerts (instead, they're listed as "Special Guest"). In one scene, the backstage bouncer hasn't even heard of them and won't let them in.

That all changes when they release Fear of a Black Hat. On the strength of the strident single Guerrillas in the Midst (as well as album tracks such as Straight Outta Da Butt, Garden Hos, Fuck the Security Guard, and Bald and Buried (Wear Your Hat)) the band blows up. Their album goes to number one, they appear on the cover of Newsweek, and they take over headlining the Monsters of Rap tour.

The boys enjoy their money and fame for awhile, but then, as always, things begin to sour. First, their white, ponytailed manager Guy Friesch (Howie Gold) gets killed in a backstage altercation (he's their 5th manager to die by gunfire). Then, a groupie named Cheryl C. (Rose Jackson) attaches herself to Tasty Taste and begins to sew seeds of dissent in the group by complaining Ice Cold's extra curricular activities (he's landed a starring role in a film called New Mack Village, directed by Jike Spingleton). She's their own personal Yoko, if you will. This eventually creates a rift that drives the band apart (and leads to the accidental death of manager #6, Marty Rabinow (Barry Heins)).

The three embark on very different solo careers. Ice Cold starts the Ice Plant and scores a hit with a dance single called Come Pet the P.U.S.S.Y. Tone Def gets in touch with his spiritual self and forms The New Human Formantics. Their hit song is called I'm Just a Human Being. Finally, Tasty Taste takes out his anger about the break-up on his solo album Extreme Use of Force, featuring songs such as The Ice Man Melteth and Granny Said Kick Yo Ass.

Eventually of course they all realize that they're better together, and make a triumphant return to the stage. As the film ends, they are about to release a new album, The Black in the Hat Comes Back.

What Really Happens:

Fear of a Black Hat was written, directed, and stars Rusty Cundeiff (he plays Ice Cold). He also wrote the songs that appear in the film. It's a tour de force display of talent, even more remarkable - and curious - for the fact that he's done almost nothing of note since. He did direct and act in some episodes of Chapelle's Show, but that's basically it.

If the cause of his relative anonymity can't be found in the quality of Fear of a Black Hat (and I certainly don't think it can), then the next best culprit is the dismal, dismal, dismal box office performance of the film. Reportedly made for just under $1,000,000, the film grossed just under $240,000. Ouch.

It certainly couldn't help that the film came out a year after Chris Rock's CB4, a film with an identical premise (if very different execution), a bigger budget, and a higher-profile cast.

Even considering all of this Fear of a Black Hat is very watchable and frequently quite funny. It also provokes a thought or two.

As you can see, the film has a lot of fun making up fake songs and albums. There are also lots of fake artists among N.W.H.'s tourmates are MC Slammer (who has recently dropped the "MC"), The Jam Boys (their chief rivals), Vanilla Sherbet (a token white rapper), Yo' Highness, and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary N' Thyme. Ice Cold also points out his fellow Ices: Ice Tray, Ice Coffee, Ice Water, Ice Box, Ice Berg, and Ice Cup. Save this last batch and the Jam Boys, each of them is analagous to an existing rapper: Vanilla Ice, Queen Latifah, and Salt 'N Pepa, namely.

N.W.H. themselves are not a specific parody of anyone, though they contain similarities to N.W.A. (in nomenclature and appearance), 2 Live Crew (in their outrageously bad taste), and Public Enemy (mostly musically, though Tasty Taste is an obvious Flava Flav stand in, especially when he's seen wearing a full size trophy on a chain around his neck).

When the N.W.H. members go solo, the musical parodies become even more obvious. Ice Cold's Ice Plant project is a C & C Music Factory clone, replete with a they-got-a-skinny-girl-to-lip-synch-for-a-soulful-black-woman controversy. Tasty Taste's Granny Said Kick Your Ass is an LL Cool J homage, and The New Human Formantics are a spot-on P.M.Dawn take-off. Cundeiff has a lot of fun time creating videos for all of these tunes, many of them parodies of the original videos in question.

And then there's the question of the film's message. You might say, it's a comedy, do we have to talk about this? Yes, yes we do. Like Spinal Tap, Fear of a Black Hat elevates the pomposity of the musical and famous to cartoonish levels. Unlike Spinal Tap, this film also has the job of confronting stereotypes about race. By 1994 rap had split into categories: party, socially conscious, politically conscious, and gangsta. At various times N.W.H. fits into all categories, but mostly they're the final one, the one that was most riddled with violence and misogyny. Though that brought fame and fortune to its purveyors, it also helped further negative stereotypes about African-Americans while at the same time making them seem attractive and desirable. To some degree gangsta rap reflected the reality of black life in urban areas, there's no denying that. But did some rappers stretch that reality? No doubt.

What it ultimately left us with is a picture of rappers (and black men, by extension) as violent, short-tempered, gun-toting thugs with little respect for women, laws, or themselves. By ratcheting these stereotypes up to 11 in the film, Cundieff becomes an equal opportunity offender. Not only is he making fun of people who believe the stereotypes (something that Dave Chapelle excelled at on his show as well, by the way), he's also taking the piss out of the rappers that indulge in ridiculous levels of excess and self-mythology. Near the end of the film, the Jam Boys and N.W.H. participate in a Rappers Against Violence program at an elementary school. After a showing of N.W.H.'s video for A Gangsta's Life Ain't Fun (which features the group in hot tubs with topless women, surrounded by stacks of cash and champagne), it quickly devolves into a game of one-upmanship over who's harder. Tone Def takes credit for the Savings and Loan scandal. Tasty Taste claims to have been shot with a bazooka ("He used to be 6' 4"," Ice Cold adds). Then they reveal that one of the Jam Boys attended prep school and was on the tennis team, yearbook staff, and in the glee club, and that his gangsta cred is nonexistent.

Also like Spinal Tap, all three lead characters are more than a little dim. And though the guys in Tap took themselves too seriously, they rarely claimed to be doing anything beyond making entertainment. Spurred on by Nina's questions, the band (especially Ice Cold) try desperately to claim social and political meaning in their songs. First they describe their name as a tribute to slaves who couldn't wear hats while working in the fields, which then made them too tired to rise up and rebel. Then they try to justify clearly misogynistic lyrics to songs like Booty Juice ("the butt is like society, and the white man wants to keep it closed up") and Come Pet the P.U.S.S.Y. ("It stands for 'political unrest stabilizes society, yeah'").

Questions and Comments:

Kurt Loder appears twice as basically himself, but without his usual MTV News backdrop. Instead, he has a hastily and poorly assembled backdrop.

The actor who played Tasty Taste was Jerry a.k.a the black Cobra Kai in Karate Kid!

Mark Christan Lawrence (Tone Def) has done a ton of TV work in his career. Most recently, he is the manager of the Buy More on Chuck.

Speaking of that character, he's a fountain of weird / funny quotes. Here are some:

"Tasty once killed a motherfucker for taking a picture of him while he was thinking about smiling."
"When you take that bus, you get there."
"The second letter of the English alphabet is B. Think on it."
"The black man was the first sensitive man, long before Alan Alda."

Kasi Lemmons (Nina Blackburn) is also known as a Victoria Madsen's friend in Candyman.

The film provides a good joke for your next party. Q: What's the difference between a ho and a bitch? A: A ho fucks everybody. A bitch fucks everybody but you.

In Conclusion:

A film without a country, so to say, Fear of a Black Hat is nonetheless a movie that manages to be charming and appealing while trying to piss you off. Though overlong in places, it nonetheless deserves gang status (that's the urban version of cult status, by the way).

Notorious (2009)

2009-11-04T03:49:00.002-06:00

Dangerous on trizzack, leave yo' ass blizzack

Our second biopic is also the most recent. It's the authorized story of rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Big Poppa, a.k.a The Notorious B.I.G., a bigger-than-life personality and talent who didn't make it past the age of 24.

What Happens:

The film starts at the end, with Biggie's death, just like Carlito's Way. Biggie himself is our narrator, looking back at how he got where he got.

The son of a single Jamaican, Jehovah's Witness mother (Angela Bassett), Christopher is a shy, bespectacled, chubby kid (played by Christopher Wallace, Jr., his son!) growing up in Brooklyn. He's not popular at school and is in obvious pain over the absence of his father. He finds solace in hip hop, and even begins to write lyrics about his deadbeat dad. He also finds acceptance and status by becoming a dealer during the mid-'80s crack epidemic.

A few years later Chris (now played by Jamal Woolard) finds out his girlfriend Jan (Julia Pace Mitchell) is pregnant. He's obviously not pleased at the development, but he promises to take care of her. Later, his mom confronts him about skipping school, and he reveals both the drug dealing and the pregnancy. She kicks him out. THEN, he completes the hat trick of at-risk-urban-youth and is sent to jail (the film doesn't tell us why), and he uses his time to write. While he's locked up, baby daughter T'yanna is born.

When he gets out, Chris records a demo tape under the name Biggie Smalls, and through a friend he gets an audience with Sean "Puffy" Combs, a producer at Uptown Records and already a proven hitmaker with Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. In a meeting, Puffy tells Chris to stop dealing drugs and that, "By the time you 21, I'll make you a millionaire."

From there, we get the fairly typical A Star Is Born story as Chris navigates the peaks and valleys of fame. Not only do we get to see the rise of his career (apathetic early crowds won over by his charisma, his first album climbing the charts, etc.) there's also ample time devoted to the two main components of the Notorious B.I.G. legend: His way with the ladies and his relationship with Tupac Shakur.

The former finds Biggie to be an insatiable Lothario. He cheats on his baby mama with Li'l Kim Jones (a.k.a. Li'l Kim - more on her later), and then cheats on her with Faith Evans (whom he married after a three week courtship). Oh, and he wasn't faithful to Faith either. In fact the film depicts their wedding ceremony, and shows Biggie tripping over the words "forsaking all others."

As for Tupac, some might be surprised to find that the two icons were fast friends with a strong mutual respect. The film follows them through several meetings, each with a slight change in their interaction. At first, Pac is a mentor (he warns Biggie that things are never going to be better than they are at that moment, and he's pretty much right), then they're equals (Biggie warns Pac to watch who he keeps company with), and then comes the incident at Quad Studios. While Biggie is working on a track, Pac get's jumped and shot in the lobby. He thinks Biggie set him up, and this leads directly to the east coast / west coast feud that ultimately resulted in death for both men.

The film ends in California, where Biggie is promoting the release of his second album. In an avalanche of foreshadowing he has relationship-summarizing conversations with his mom, Fatih, and Kim, before getting a tattoo of the 23rd Psalm ("yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" etc.). Ignoring an anonymous death threat, he goes out to a club and is shot on his way back to the hotel.

At the funeral, there's not a dry eye in the house. The point of view of the film switches to his mother's, and she has a brief flashback of a time right after son Christopher Jr.'s birth, and then she's further buoyed up by the fan love that greets the funeral procession, seeing how much her son meant to people (this is taken from actual documentary footage). The End.

What Really Happens:

In the piece on Selena, I introduced the four criteria for good biopics. We'll use those to go through the ins and outs of Notorious.

1. Believable Actors
When forced to choose, casting directors for biopics should always go for spirit over resemblance. If they can get both, of course, that's the ideal. Notorious does damn well on almost every count. The actors that play Tupac and Puffy (Anthony Mackie and Derek Luke) don't look much at all like their real-life counterparts, but they have the swagger. The others, Antonique Smith, Naturi Naughton, and Jamal Woolard, are all the whole package, with looks and chops. Naughton especially nails the transformation of her character. And Woolard was a find, in that he is also a rapper who both looks like and can reasonably replicate Biggie's flow (more on that later).

2. Truth
The truth is slippery in this film. On one hand, you have the credibility of Notorious being an officially-sanctioned biography, with both Voletta Wallace and Bad Boy Records (a.k.a. Diddy) producing. Then again, are they the best ones to tell the story? This is the pitfall of having family members involved. You get unprecedented access to up-close-and-personal information (and the luxury of casting your subject's son to play him as a boy!), but you also get the a lack of objectivity. Not only do family and friends want to remember the best, they also have a stake in the story being told a certain way.

This shows up in interesting ways in Notorious. The film, as you may have guessed, doesn't shy away from depicting some of the more negative aspects of Biggie's character, especially his treatment of the women in his life. In addition to showcasing his charm, the movie shows the negative consequences of his philandering. It ultimately costs him his marriage to Faith. In one especially effective sequence, Biggie confronts Faith on rumors that she slept with Tupac (who claimed in the raw Hit 'Em Up, "I fucked your bitch you fat motherfucker"). When she denies it he roughs her up and throws a chair across the room. He eventually calms down and apologizes, but she responds: "Maybe now you have an idea what it's like to be cheated on."

The other morals of the film aren't so clear. In fact, sometimes it seems like Biggie's bad behavior is glorified. When he cheats on Kim and ignores a call from Jan in order to smoke weed, drink Pepsi, and participate in a threesome we find the ultimate result is the inspiration for his hit song Juicy. What kind of message are we supposed to glean from this? Also, it never truly seems like his drug-dealing was done out of anything other than a need for self-confidence, even though he claimed in Juicy he was just "tryin' to get money to feed my daughter." Part of being a rapper is creating a larger than life persona, so we can forgive some stretching of truth.

On the flip side, there's some conveniently shuffled or skipped details. Speaking of his daughter, in the film it appears that she's born while he's incarcerated. In actuality, she was born two years later. The film also ignores fact that Biggie never finished high school and was arrested multiple times before and after his prison stint.

The film also has an agenda. Namely, it wants to prove to you that Biggie had absolutely nothing to do with Tupac's death. Now, I tend to believe this. I think both Pac and Biggie's murders were done by hot-headed hangers-on who took things waaaaay too seriously. But the film oversells its message by making it seem like Biggie didn't contribute to the east coast / west coast feud in any way. I find that hard to believe.

3. Defining Moments
Every iconic musician has a story full of key plot points. The Notorious B.I.G.'s life story has a few noteworthy ones. The shy, underconfident kid's transformation into a charming drug dealer and ladies man. The rise of a rap career based on pure raw talent and fortuitous timing and stewardship (from Puffy). The friendship with his only true peer that went bad and the feud that followed. The tragic death.

The film depicts it all well. The coastal feud (doesn't that sound fancy?) is especially well-covered, even including the infamous incident at the 1995 Source awards when Death Row Records head Suge Knight dissed Puffy not so subtly: "Any artist out there want to be an artist, and wanna stay a star, don't wanna worry about the producer tryin' to be all in the videos, all in the records, dancin', come to Death Row."

4. Musical Performances
The bottom line on Notorious in terms of music is that it skimps. Yes, there's a generous amount of Biggie songs in the movie. And yes, it was a very smart choice to use Jamal Woolard's vocals instead of having him lip synch. But in the end music takes a back seat to the other drama. We get some In some ways it makes sense, because that's how things played out in Biggie's life. On the other hand, the only reason anyone cares about the Notorious B.I.G. is because of his music.

That said, there are a couple of magical musical moments. One is a street battle in which Biggie just decimates a braggart named Primo. The other is a concert in Sacramento during the height of the east coast / west coast hoopla. The crowd is quite hostile toward Biggie and Puffy, begging the question: Why would you pay to go see someone you hate? But I digress. Biggie wins the crowd over eventually by wading right into the controversy and performing Who Shot Ya, a boastful tune that was widely misinterpreted as being about Tupac.

But that's about it. The actual recording of Biggie's two albums is woefully under-represented by the film. His second album gets an especially short shrift, with only one (pretty bad) scene devoted to the making of the two disc set. How did his life intersect with his lyrics? Where did the musical ideas come from? How did he compose his rhymes? Maybe only record geeks care about that kind of stuff, but afterall this is a man's legacy we're talking about. In the end that's what he left behind, his music. It deserved more focus.

Questions and Comments:

The foremost question in my mind went unanswered by the film. What is B.I.G. an acronym for? I had to look up to find out that it means "Business Instead of Game."

If conspiracy theorists ever needed fodder, Biggie's two album titles are perfect. The first was called Ready To Die. The second (released after his murder) was Life After Death. If people start having Biggie sightings, I'll take it seriously.

As a high schooler, Biggie changes outfits after leaving home and before getting to school (he mainly adds chains, rings, and fancy shoes) to pull the wool over his mom's eyes. It's just like Stephanie Kaye in Degrassi Junior High.

In the film, Puffy is like a human fortune cookie. Some choice wisdome: "Don't chase the paper, chase the dream", "What don't break a nigga, make a nigga.", and "We can't change the world unless we change ourselves." He's also the one that, rightly, convinces Biggie to record Juicy (Biggie thinks it sounds too commercial): "If I don't have something I can play on the radio, nobody'll ever hear or buy your album. You'd just be a broke-ass mix-tape rapper."

Voletta: "What kind of grown-ass man calls himself Puffy?"

Can we blame B.I.G. for how Li'l Kim turned out? The film makes a case. When he meets her, she's Kim Jones, a smartly-dressed store clerk. They have sex immediately, despite the fact that Jan and Biggies daughter are still very much in the picture. He promises to take care of her. When he finds out she can rap and he advises her to be less gangster and more sexy. Instead, she combines the two. Though the film doesn't show how exactly it happened, we know that he hooked her up with Puffy, she joined Junior M.A.F.I.A., and became foul-mouthed Li'l Kim. Later, when Biggie marries Faith, Kim is justifiably angry and confronts him in the studio about his broken promise. "You said 'I got you,'" she reminds him, and wonders what Faith has that she doesn't. His response? "Look, bitch, stop talkin' all that shit." Today, she's a half plastic ex-con.

Having Biggie narrate the story from beyond the grave is a bit creepy, but it's also effective. My favorite line: "Ask 10 people who Pa is and you get 10 different answers"

What's up with the absence of Mo' Money Mo' Problems in the film? There is a conversation between Biggie and his friend D Roc where Biggie says the line, but the song never makes its expected appearance.

Kudos to whoever decided not to play I'll Be Missing You (Puffy and Faith Evans' cash-in Police-copping post-mortem tribute) over the end credits. I was dreading it the whole time. The better choice prevailed, Jadakiss' Letter to B.I.G.

In Conclusion:

Notorious is far from perfect but riveting nonetheless. The same thing could be said about its subject.

ABBA: The Movie (1977)

2009-10-28T03:49:00.001-05:00

Thank you for the music, but no thanks to the rest.

In 1977 Swedish pop group ABBA were riding high. They had released a hit album per year since 1973, culminating in 1976's worldwide smash Dancing Queen (from Arrival), which catapulted them to superstar status.

A movie was a logical next step.

What Happens:

In March of 1977, ABBA came to Australia for a weeklong tour. The band were especially popular there with 6 number one singles and an additional 4 in the top ten, more than even in their homeland.

Filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom (yes, him) came along to document the event, but ABBA: The Movie is not a documentary, nor is it a concert. Instead, it's a combination of both, with a fictional story thrown in for good measure.

The movie's main character is Ashley Wallace, (Robert Hughes) a DJ at an country music station in Sydney, Australia. His boss assigns him to get an "exclusive in-depth interview" with ABBA to air a week hence. Why ABBA, on a country station? Well, because "the pop scene's never been touched like this before." I think that really means, "screw our format, let's cash in on this phenomenon."

It turns out that the boss' trust in Ashley is misplaced, because Ashley has no idea how to get an interview with a super group. His first approach is to try to meet the band as their plane lands, along with hundreds of press members and fans. Ummm, yeah, that's not going to work. He finds out that there'll be a press conference, so he drives across town, yelling out his window at other drivers, asking how to get there. Also, as he drives, he realizes how deep Sydney is in ABBAmania. People everywhere are wearing shirts and holding signs for the band.

While this madcap scene is taking place, we cut to the already-in-progress conference, where Bjorn (guy #1), Benny (guy #2), Agnetha (the blonde one), and Frida (the red head) are handling the usual questions. No, they don't drink or do drugs. They don't like touring but they do it for the fans. The best is when one reporter asks Agnetha how she feels about winning a "sexiest bottom" award. She responds, "How can I answer that? I haven't seen it." (You, however, can judge for yourself in the very next scene, when she wears skintight white pants).

Of course Ashley misses the press conference, so he decides to go to their concert that night, but genius that he is, he fails to bring his press pass or realize that he might need a ticket to get in to the sold out show. While this goes on, the film treats us to generous footage of ABBA performing Tiger, S.O.S., and Money Money Money. During the latter, Hallstrom cleverly cuts in footage of ABBA merchandise, including drinking glasses, buttons, and books.

The next day Ashley goes to the Sydney Opera House and basically accosts the band while they are in the midst of a photo shoot. At this point two things are becoming clear. One is that Ashley is pretty much an idiot, and two is that the film is going to run this he-can't-get-an-interview thing into the ground. As evidence, the next scene finds Ashley calling his boss and saying he needs more time with the band, and needs to follow them to their next stop, Perth.

And so it goes. Ashley follows ABBA from Perth to Adelaide to Melbourne, each time failing to connect with the band, each time approaching them in the stupidest way possible (sneaking backstage and asking random people "Have you seen ABBA?", for instance). Interspersed throughout is concert footage from the Australian tour (though it doesn't always match up with the "story"). Songs performed include He Is Your Brother, Waterloo, Mamma Mia, Rock Me, I've Been Waiting For You, Get On the Carousel, I Kissed the Teacher, I'm a Marionette, Fernando, Dancing Queen, and So Long.

To be fair, the movie does throw in some other tricks as it goes on. When Ashley realizes he's not going to get enough of an interview with ABBA to fill up two hours, he starts doing people-on-the-street interviews about the band. The first round of these result in an inordinate number of people saying they enjoy the band because they are "clean." Later, he interviews children about the group. Some say they like ABBA's songs "because they're good," but one says he doesn't care for them because "they show off and wear too many clothes" (he obviously hasn't seen the footage of Frida's ass cheeks hanging out on Why Did It Have To Be Me). The interviews culminate with a group of young ballet students singing along to Ring Ring.

Also breaking from the usual format are a couple of dream sequences that double as music videos. The most ridiculous is The Name of the Game, which finds Ashley fantasizing about having all access to the band. At first he's enjoying a picnic with the four of them, then his he's a psychiatrist and Agnetha is lying on his couch. Hmmm. He goes on to imagine himself enjoying a fancy candlelit dinner with the whole group, hanging out in a western bar, going golfing, and sailing. Ashley's fantasies are heavy on the girls (though he gives Benny hugs several times throughout the sequence), and he does wake up somewhat sweaty, so conclude what you will.

At the 11th hour, after multiple failures, Ashley gets smart and approaches the band's manager, Stig Andersson, about an interview. Stig agrees to it, for the next day at 10 AM. Ashley, though, forgets to set his alarm and misses the interview. Then, in a dictionary definition of the term "dumb luck" he ends up on an elevator with the band and gets his interview.

The movie ends with Thank You For the Music, presented in multiple formats (with shots of Australian fans, the group in the studio recording, and on stage performing). The end.

What Really Happens:

Executive #1: Hey, this ABBA thing is pretty lucrative right now. Let's make a motion picture.

Executive #2: Great idea. Can the band members act?

Executive #1: Um, well, not really. And English isn't their first language.

Executive #2: That's okay, how about a concert film?

Executive #1: I thought about that, but what if kids just go see that movie instead of actually going to an ABBA show? We'd be robbing Bjorn to pay Benny.

Execuitve #2: Okay, what if we do a combination of the two? We'll bang out a script that allows the band to make minimal non-musical contributions.

Executive #1: Bingo!

Making a film where you have to work around your main subject is nothing new. See Can't Stop the Music, That's the Way of the World, or Rock Around the Clock for evidence. The tactic can work, but you have to put a compelling, appealing story in place to make it happen. ABBA: The Movie, fails to do that.

If you couldn't tell, the scenes with Ashely the DJ drag the film down (and unfortunately that accounts for about 50% of the movie). For one, the character has zero appeal or personality. He just seems annoyed and harried most of the time. Plus, he keeps making boneheaded decisions. People making stupid decisions can (and often does) make for good entertainment, but in this case it's just tedious. By the film's halfway point, I was actively rooting for him to fail in his quest to get an interview.

Even worse, when the film gets to that point it's been building to the whole time, Ashley's "gut-level dialogue" with the band, we don't even get to see it. Instead, the film goes into a weird video for the song Eagle. This involves footage of a soaring eagle, naturally. The rest of it is Agnetha and Frida hanging out in a colorful metallic wind tunnel.

It's too bad, because the concert footage is very well-filmed, and the performances by the band are sharp. Even the few non-musical scenes that feature the band are good. Beyond the press conference, there's a scene with the four of them in a hotel room chuckling over the press about their first night's show, including a bogus account of their supposed lodging demands. Best line: "What does kinky mean?" Hallstrom clearly would have been better off doing a straight up documentary / concert film hybrid.

Comments and Questions:

Lasse Hallstrom, in case you don't know, is the Swedish Oscar-nominated director of such hearty fare as My Life As A Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, The Shipping News, and Chocolat. ABBA: The Movie was his second film, and not one that he received any Oscar nominations for.

Ashley's sign-off catchphrase is "what you see is what you get," which is kind of strange for radio, if you think about it.

At this point in their careers, the band wore white warm-up jackets, each with an A (the girls) or B (the guys) in red on the back.

Watch for the creepy personal trainer in the rainbow suspenders. That guy could get his own horror movie franchise.

In the concert sequences, the number of musicians on stage is staggering. You thought Parliment / Funkadelic had a lot of members? There are at least 10 players (drummers, horns, basses, guitars, keys, back-up singers) in addition to the four core members, and that doesn't include the string section and a creepy clown that serves as an emcee.

I like that Hallstrom didn't present a sunny, public relations view of ABBA. As mentioned, not all of Ashley's on-the-street interviews are necessarily positive. There's also a non sequiter scene at the end of the movie where Ashley's cabbie complains about the previous night's concert. He says it featured "too many white lights" and that the band "took their clothes off."

In Conclusion:

As loathe as I am to say it this is another one of those films it's hard to completely dismiss. Yes, it's half flawed, but it IS interesting if you want to witness a pop music juggernaut in action. If you're only looking to celebrate the music of ABBA, you're probably better off with Mamma Mia.

Stop Making Sense (1984)

2009-10-21T03:49:00.001-05:00

And nothing is better than that. Is it?

My second favorite film of the Baby, I'm a Star project, and the best concert film ever made is the result of a band at the height of their performing prowess, a frontman leader with a design background, and an A-list director. Stop Making Sense is so good, it deserves a running diary (with apologies to Bill Simmons). These are my thoughts, recorded live as I watched.

00:00:15 The distinctive, hand-written credits roll silently, over a greyish background. I feel like I'm about to watch a David Lynch movie.

00:00:40 Credits read, "Conceived by the stage by David Byrne." What that means is that all the crazy, innovative sequencing, lighting, and backdrops came out of David Byrne's head. It also means that concerts can and should do more than they do. It's 25 years later and we've still got boring old light shows.

00:01:10 Directed by Jonathan Demme. At this point, he'd been directing for 10 years, but his star hadn't really risen. He'd make Something Wild the two years after Stop Making Sense, followed by a couple of little films called Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. Maybe you've heard of them.

00:01:20 Byrne appears, but we only see his shoes, walking out on to the stage. He sets down a boombox, steps up to the mic and says, "Hi, I've got a tape I'd like to play for you." He starts up the simple drum machine beat, and begins to play along with an acoustic guitar. The song is Psycho Killer. Qu'est que ce?

00:02:25 A brief shot of the audience, just to let you know they're there. Unlike many concert films, Stop Making Sense doesn't indulge in shots of fans enjoying the music (at least until the end of the movie). It makes you feel more like you're actually there.

00:02:35 We see that the stage is bare, with no curtain. Various behind-scenes-materials (boxes, ladders) can be seen, and the lighting is brightly stark.

00:05:03 Byrne reels around the stage to the beat, even as it breaks down. This is very much an influence of early hip-hop, I'm guessing.

00:05:40 Stage hands begin to set up behind Byrne even as he finishes the song.

00:06:31 Bassist Tina Weymouth enters, and the duo strike up one of the prettiest Talking Heads songs there is, Heaven.

00:07:25 "The band in Heaven / They play my favorite song / Play it one more time / Play it all night long."

00:07:46 Disembodied harmonies come in. I had always been under the impression that Tina was singing them, but I noticed this time, for the first time, that she has no mic. I assume one of the background singers was doing it offstage, but the film gives no evidence of this.

00:10:23 Drummer Chris Frantz (Weymouth's husband) enters. He's excited to be there. The trio starts up with Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, from the band's second album More Songs About Buildings and Food. At this point the concert / film are playing out like a strange little origin story of the band, since these three were the original founders.

00:12:51 Guitarist Jerry Harrison enters and they go into the mildly funky Found a Job. The song really shows off their chemistry and familiarity, especially when a wide shot shows Byrne, Harrison, and Weymouth's legs and hips in synch with the song's rhythm as they play.

00:16:27 Harrison switches to keys, and backup vocalists Edna Hope and Lynn Mabry come out, along with percussionist Steve Scales. The septet launch into Slippery People, from the band's then-new album Speaking In Tongues.

00:16:39 A black backdrop falls behind the band.

00:18:03 Byrne gets a little smirk on his face in response Hope and Mabry's singing. You can tell he likes what he hears.

00:19:18 Byrne does a dance that's reminiscent of GOB's imitation of a chicken on Arrested Development, and the two singers copy him.

00:20:40 As the song climaxes, Frantz appears to be one of the happiest men alive!

00:21:10 The band's line-up becomes complete with the addition of guitarist Alex Weir and keyboardist Bernie Worrell. In case you're counting, we're up to nine members, and five of them are black! The new monster-sized Talking Heads let loose with Burning Down the House.

00:24:45 Jerry (back on guitar) awkwardly attempts to dance with Edna and Lynn.

00:25:30 Life During Wartime begins. I'm finding it difficult to describe just how much energy and joy is pouring out of the band at this point. Byrne especially is going nuts during this song. He runs in place with the rest of the standing members of the band, does the twist, moves like a belly dancer, runs circles around the mic, falls on the floor and convulses, and does laps around the stage set-up. He must have been in fantastic physical shape.

00:30:02 Frantz can be seen singing along with the song's lyrics even though he doesn't have a mic. I love it when non-singing band members do that. I think it shows they really enjoy their own music.

oo:31:15 The song ends. Byrne to the audience: "Does anybody have any questions?"

00:31:30 An extended pause begins. This makes it feel like a real show, where you wait for set-up. But when we come back it's definitely a different night (the film was edited together from three different concerts). Frantz and Weymouth are wearing different clothes, and Byrne is put back together (his hair had become loose, his shirt untucked, etc. on the last song).

00:33:00 Making Flippy Floppy, another song from Speaking In Tongues, begins.

00:34:50 "Our president's crazy / Did you hear what he said?!" Ahh, the Reagan years. And the W years.

00:37:04 The backdrop changes from black to red, and the futuristic blues tune Swamp begins.

00:39:40 Is it just me, or is David Byrne kind of like a creepy version of Mr. Rogers?

00:41:40 The lighting changes again with the new song What A Day That Was (the song is actually not a Talking Heads song; it came from Byrne's solo project The Catherine Wheel), with very stark under lighting on Byrne's face. It's like when you shine a flashlight under your face to tell a ghost story. When the camera goes back for a wide shot, the effect creates huge shadows of the band members on the back panels. It's very cool.

00:47:32 I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but Hope and Mabry are not wearing bras.

00:48:10 My favorite Talking Heads song, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), begins. There's now a standing lamp on stage, and the backdrop is flashing pictures of things like books, furniture, landscapes, cityscapes, and body parts. The stage feels very warm.

00:49:48 I just realized that Byrne has those pointy Star Trek sideburns.

00:50:09 Strange moment where Weymouth looks lovingly at Byrne, Hope, and Mabry as they harmonize.

00:52:49 Byrne dances with the lamp. It makes me think of Steve Carell in Anchorman. "I love lamp."

00:53:46 Once In a Lifetime. Byrne is wearing boxy nerdy glasses and seems intent on recreating the video, with the convulsions, contortions, hand chopping, and head-hitting.

00:59:30 In order to give Byrne a breather, the Tom Tom Club (a side project featuring Frantz and Weymouth) take over and do Genius of Love, the song that has since become an R & B and hip hop sampling favorite, most notably on Mariah Carey's Fantasy.

01:01:30 I just noticed that Weymouth bears an uncanny resemblance to Lex Luthor's girlfriend, Miss Teschmacher, in Superman: The Movie.

01:02:17 Kurtis Blow shout-out.

01:02:32 James Brown shout-out.

01:03:31 Weymouth does a freaky spider dance.

01:04:07 Frantz: "We're going to change back into the Talking Heads."

01:04:35 The moment we've been waiting for arrives. It's the debut of the BIG SUIT! Byrne looks sublimely ridiculous as a blazing version of Girlfriend Is Better begins. A stage hand walks around with a spotlight and shines it below various band members to cast huge shadows on the backdrop.

1:08:30 "As we get older / And stop making sense." We have a title!

1:08:35 Byrne holds the mic out to the camera as if asking it to sing along.

1:09:50 A greenish/blue light bathes the stage as the band eases into their version of the Reverend Al Green's Take Me To the River.

1:12:50 In another homage to James Brown, Steve Scales plays the hype man: "Y'all ready?!"

1:13:24 Byrne has doffed the coat of the BIG SUIT, but is still wearing the pants. We can see Mabry laughing at the sight of this.

1:14:51 Byrne introduces the band members while wearing a red cap someone has thrown on stage.

1:16:50 Byrne takes off the cap and throws it. It lands on Frantz's drum set.

1:17:53 The final song, Crosseyed and Painless (from the band's most critically-acclaimed album, Remain In Light), begins with Byrne jamming on the guitar and playing a slowed-down instrumental version of the song's chorus before launching into its regular high-tempo self.

1:20:06 "Facts don't do what I want them to."

1:24:00 The first extended shots of the audience, dancing in the aisles. A couple of things to look for: 1) The mix of white and black fans at the concert. Very few bands these days cross over in this way. 2) The kid with the stuffed unicorn.

1:24:45 As the band jams the song's coda, the stage crew members come out to get props.

1:25:11 Chris Frantz throws his drum sticks to the audience, because it's always a good idea to throw hard wood projectiles into crowds of people.

1:26:27 Those of you hoping for an encore will be disappointed. That's the show. Credits roll.

1:26:51 An actual credit: "Mr. Byrne's big suit built by Gail Blacker."

1:27:40 No music on the credits, just a shot of the stage, now bare once again. And thus ends the best concert film ever made. Of course this statement is contingent on 1) you actually enjoying the Talking Heads' music, and 2) there not being a concert film you enjoy more than this one.

U2: Rattle and Hum (1988)

2009-10-14T03:49:00.004-05:00

Tryin' to throw their arms around the world...

In 1986 U2 released the biggest album of their career. It was called The Joshua Tree and it has sold 25 million copies worldwide, won two Grammys, and spawned two number one songs, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With Or Without You (the album's other standout, Where the Streets Have No Name only made it to a measly 13 on the charts).

U2 needed something impressive to follow this up, so while on their 1987 U.S. Joshua Tree tour, a film crew followed the band and documented not only their triumphant concerts, but also their exploration of America and the recording of new songs.

The whole shebang was released as a film and a soundtrack album, both called Rattle and Hum.

What Happens:

Rattle and Hum straddles the line between documentary and concert film, more often than not falling on the side of the latter. Roughly 80% of the movie is footage from shows in Denver, Colorado and Tempe, Arizona. And since this was the Joshua Tree tour, 7 of the 11 songs from that album are featured in the film. Along with them is a mix of older classics (Bad, MLK, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Pride (In the Name of Love)) and covers of classic rock tunes (Helter Skelter, All Along the Watchtower).

The rest of the film consists of very brief interview snippets, a "candid" backstage moment, studio performances of new songs (Desire, Van Demian's Land), and a visit to Memphis. The band were busy at the latter, finding time to visit to Graceland, record Angel of Harlem at the famous Sun Studios where Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. first made their names, and sit by the interstate and watch the cars. There's also an extended sequence documenting the recording of When Love Comes to Town with B.B.King.

What Really Happens:

Since it is a film about U2, Rattle and Hum features some very good performance sequences and some genuinely interesting documentary footage. But since it is a film about U2, the movie also features over-the-top theatrics and strangely stilted moments.

While in Harlem, the band visit the New Voices of Freedom, a gospel choir, and sit in with them for a stirring version of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. As contrived as that may seem, it works, especially with the amazing acoustics of a church elevating everyone's performance.

The performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday is passionate and firey for good reason. It took place on the day that 11 people were killed in Enniskillen, Ireland in a Remembrance Day bombing by the Irish Republican Army. Mid-song, Bono goes on an angry, but well-spoken rant against the events, at one point shouting, "Fuck the revolution!" In a brief interview snippet in the film he seems embarrassed and wonders aloud if it should even be included in the film. I'm glad it was. Despite their lyrics, this was the first time many Americans became aware the political activist side of the band, and while it served them well on this occasion, it doesn't later. See below.

In terms of documentary moments I liked, I was fascinated by the visit to Graceland. It wasn't so much the oddity or social commentary of it as it was drummer Larry Mullin Jr.'s interview about the experience. He seems to have been genuinely moved, and he speaks at length (well, at least by the interview standards of this film) about his love for Elvis (he even has a similar haircut). He gets the heebie jeebies about Elvis' grave being on the premises, and there's an extended shot of him looking uncomfortable while talking about it.

The rehearsal and recording with legendary blues guitarist and singer B.B.King is not especially insightful except for the moment during rehearsals when B.B. admits that he's "horrible with chords." Bono seems taken aback, but gamely replies that the Edge will take care of all the chords.

Another revealing moment comes via bassist Adam Clayton. When asked about the film's purpose, he says it's documenting a musical journey, and that all bands go through stages in their career, and that Rattle and Hum captures them at this particular stage. "We're not the same band that recorded War," he says. Later, David "the Edge" Evans adds, "Music can get so boring, so conservative, so predictable." Is it any wonder that the 10 years following the film found the band experimenting heavily and constantly reinventing themselves?

Bono is curiously quiet during the interview segments. Maybe that's because he saves it all up for the stage.

To whit, he's responsible for some of the film's less worthwhile performances. During both Silver and Gold and Bullet the Blue Sky, he goes off on didactic screeds against apartheid and televangelism respectively. I have no problem with his political stances, I just don't think we need to hear them in the middle of a rock concert. At least put them in the lyrics and don't bother with the VH1 Storytellers thing. It's that kind of sermonizing that makes the band seem pretentious, like they're doing something more than playing songs for people to enjoy. The film doesn't do much to lessen that particular view.

Bono announcing a mediocre version of Helter Skelter with the comment, "This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles; we're stealin' it back" doesn't help. Nor does the sequence that finds the band on a tour bus in San Fransisco working out a cover of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. We're made to think that this is the first time the band are even considering doing the song (the Edge doesn't even know the chords yet!), but the film follows this with the band at and outdoor concert performing the song perfectly. The way the scenes flow, we're made to think they stepped off the bus and nailed the song with no rehearsal. Personally, I think that was the magic of the movies right there.

But the films hands-down oddest, most stilted, most fishy-smelling scene takes place after a concert performance of In God's Country. The band rush off stage and gather in the wings. I'm going to try to transcribe it for you:

Bono to Larry: "Really smashing the cymbals there!"
Adam asks a stage hand for a tissue, even though the box is clearly within his reach.
Bono to Adam: "On Love Comes to Town, watch the third verse, not the first, not the second."
Adam: "We should all be looking at Larry?"
Larry: "Edge is on a completely different timing as usual." The Edge smiles as they walk back out.

I might have missed some of the subtitles, but that's the gist of it. I watched this scene four times and went through a host of emotions, from confusion to denial to anger to bafflement. I didn't find it genuine at all. Every time I watch it it seems more and more like a busted improv skit, like the film director told them to pretend they were working out the encore, when really they just wanted to stand around, take a drink or two, and catch their breath.

Questions and Comments:

When they were in Memphis why didn't they visit the site of MLK's assassination and juxtapose it with the performances of MLK and Pride (In the Name of Love) (which features the lyrics, "early morning / April 4, shots ring out in a Memphis sky")? Would that have made too much sense?

One of the band's best songs, All I Want is You, plays over the credits. If you're talking from a pure filmmaking standpoint, Reality Bites used it better.

Like the Wizard of Oz, the movie features a sudden switch to color. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, the switch serves no real purpose.

I've been regularly listening to the song Where the Streets Have No Name for 23 of my 32 years and I never before realized that the lyric was "still building and burning down love." I always thought it was "burning them down." I like my way better.

Ever wonder why Bono is in a sling during the scene in the church with the gospel choir? It's because he fell and disloacted his arm earlier in the tour. Also, that poster image with him shining a spotlight on the Edge? Apparently during this routine one night Bono fell backwards and the light hit him in the chin, leaving a scar. Unfortunately, neither of these incidents are in the film.

Rattle and Hum didn't catapult director Phil Joanou to fame. According the the Internet Movie Database, his most notable resume entries are the Rock film Gridiron Gang and an episode of 3rd Rock From the Sun.

During the aforementioned San Fransisco performance of All Along the Watchtower, Bono runs up to a huge sculpture mid-song, and spray paints on it. City authorities weren't too happy, and the band later issued an apology. So, a socially conscious band like U2 must have had a good reason for defacing someone else's artwork, right? The message Bono wrote on the statue must have been a call for world peace, or a deep philosophical thought, right? Uh, no. Here's what he wrote: "Rock 'n roll stops the traffic."

Where were two of the better songs from the Rattle and Hum album, Hawkmoon 269 and God Part II?

In Conclusion:

Critics found Rattle and Hum to be self-indulgent, and it didn't exactly burn up the box office. But most U2 fans regard it fondly. And that's a good summary of the film. It doesn't belong anywhere near the top of a list of great pop music movies, but as a document of an important band at their apex, it's invaluable.

The Rose (1979)

2009-10-07T03:49:00.007-05:00

By any other name...

I had no idea what to expect from The Rose. All I knew was that it starred Bette Midler as a musician and featured a song called The Rose. I suppose, if pressed, I would have told you that it was a semi autobiographical story about Midler herself, and that the songs would mostly be maudlin showtunes and classic pop covers.

Boy, was I wrong.

What Happens:

Midler plays Mary Rose Foster, a balls-out rock 'n roll singer at the height of her fame. After a brief, wordless opening scene that hints at sadness to come, the film finds Rose in the midst of a 1969 world tour.

After a raucous show in New York, Rose meets with her British manager Rudge (Alan Bates) and tells him that she needs a year off. Fearing his wallet suddenly becoming lighter, he argues vigorously against the idea. As a pep talk he calls her, “one of the best singer ladies in the history of the world.” At a subsequent press conference, she turns it on for the media, but mentions her year off.

The tour continues, and though we learn that Rose has beat a heroin addiction, she is still drinking heavily, often on stage. But on stage is also seemingly the only place where she’s in control of everything. She expresses her feelings about being a woman (“we’re waitresses in the banquet of life”) and her exercise plan (“drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll”).

Right after the second New York show, Rudge rushes Rose off to a meeting with Billy Ray, a venerable bluegrass musician. The meeting quickly turns sour as Billy Ray (Harry Dean Stanton in prime Roman Grant mode) tells Rose that he didn’t like her version of one of his songs on her latest album and asks her not to cover any more. Rose then deduces that the only reason Rudge set up the meeting was in the hopes of getting Billy Ray to sign with him.

This incident sets off an argument between Rudge (who’s looking like a generally terrible manager at this point) and Rose, which culminates in her smacking a random dude in the face with a bottle and then commandeering Billy Ray’s limo. The driver, who introduces himself as Houston, is a handsome fellow played by the dad from Valley Girl (Frederic Forrest). The two strike up a friendship, and when Houston defends Rose’s honor in a hick diner, she clearly starts to fall for him.

The two continue their adventure in a gay club called 777, above which Rose used to have an apartment. When the staff realize she’s there, a drag queen comes out impersonating Rose. Eventually he pulls her on stage to sing along and they’re joined by Diana Ross and Barbara Striesand. Houston and Rose then go back to her place and things take their natural course.

Unfortunately the bliss the two find is short lived, as their late night antics have caused Rose to miss a recording session. Rudge once again chews her out, which leads her to take it out on Houston, whom she calls “a piece of meat in a chauffeur’s cap.” His feelings are hurt and he runs off to a men’s hotel and spa. This results in a madcap chase and eventually to reconciliation when he reveals that he’s a sergeant in the Army who has gone AWOL. She invites him to join her on tour.

The tour moves on to Saint Louis and Memphis, with some “life on the road” scenes peppered between, including one where Rose leads a singalong on the plane (Almost Famous, you should be ashamed). Rose is still clearly weary of the pace of her life, but Houston seems to make it better, at least until Sarah, one of Rose’s former lovers, comes back into the picture. Seeing them canoodle pushes Houston over the edge. He gets mad, hits Rose, and takes off.

The tour’s next stop is Rose’s Florida hometown. We learn that he has been anticipating this show with equal parts trepidation and excitement. She’s eager to show the people from her past how far she has come, and maybe how much she’s risen above them. This is illustrated by a scene where she goes to a market where she shopped as a kid. The manager warmly recognizes her as Mary Rose Foster, but this isn’t enough for her. She wants him to recognize her as The Rose, and when he doesn’t she pulls out one of her records, signs it, and storms out angrily.

Next Rose goes to meet with Rudge before the show, and restates her desire to take a year off. Sick of it, he issues an ultimatum. Either she carries on with the tour as planned, or he’ll cancel the evening’s show (and thus her chance at redemption) and fire her as his client. She is stunned.

At this low point, Houston returns, and Rose sees a chance to finally get her wish: To get away from the crush of fame and relax. But her nostalgia intervenes, and on their way out of town, Rose wants to stop at the bar where she got her start as a performer. She takes the stage, but Houston gets into it with one of Rose’s former classmates with whom she was once, ahem, intimate. After the scuffle he takes off again, this time for good.

Rudge, having overplayed his hand, decides he wants to do the show after all, and tries to get Rose back, but not before she gets ahold of some pills and heroin and calls her parents, with whom she hasn’t spoken in a long time. She washes the pills down with some whiskey, shoots up, and then gets flown into the concert for a triumphant homecoming performance. The crowd is adoring, but the cocktail in Rose’s system is too much. While performing Stay With Me, she collapses on stage and dies. The Rose plays, the end.

What Really Happens:

The Rose, then, is basically the story of a talented-but-insecure woman who gets chewed up by her own fame (isn’t it fitting, then, that when I recorded this on my DVR that the Palladia channel showed the video for Britney Spears’ My Prerogative right before the film?). It’s basically a fictionalized version of Janis Joplin’s life, making it a strange hybrid of categories. It's part biopic, part fake band, and part starring vehicle.

That's not the only way the film is unconventional. As I've said before, most pop music films follow the A Star Is Born story arc: beginning struggle, fame, too-big-for-britches, triumphant comeback. The Rose offers basically only the middle part of the act. Rose is at the height of her fame when the movie begins, and she stays there. Her internal struggle is the story, and her career is purely ancillary. I think this is important, because so many pop musicians have managed to maintain a high level of quality work and even a good reputation while at the same time struggling with many demons.

Where does the film coincide with true events in Joplin’s life, you may ask? Many of the details are the same: the addictions (especially the bit about kicking heroin but substituting it with alcohol), the volatile relationships (including at least one with a woman), the armpit hair, the resentment of her small hometown (though Joplin was from Texas, not Florida), and the style of music. Many of the small details are different, of course, and though Joplin did die of an overdose in her prime, it didn't happen on stage.

Fittingly and realistically, the movie offers no clear path to Rose’s demise. She’s obviously self-destructive, but there’s more than that. Rudge’s consistently crappy decisions (not heeding her wish for a break, the ill-advised meeting with Billy Ray, the ultimatum at the end), Houston’s macho inability to accept her faults, and a consistent disregard for Rose’s feelings by everyone in her life, are also clearly to blame.

Finally, the film's performance sequences are gritty and full of energy, with a strong live feeling. Midler may not have a history of performing these types of songs, but she knocks it out of the park, bringing a manic presence, and rough, powerful vocals. The songs themselves are very much in the rock/blues/soul vein and are workmanlike. None stand out as especially amazing, but none are terrible either.

Comments and Questions

How did Midler get chosen for this role? Though she was already famous at the time as a singer thanks to her Barry Manilow-produced album The Divine Miss M, The Rose marked Midler's film debut. There was no evidence that she could carry an entire film herself (even though she does so admirably; the second-to-last scene, in the phone booth, is heartbreaking). And as I said before, this wasn't even her style of music. Anyway, whoever made the choice was a smart cookie, and Midler was rewarded with a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination for best actress. In fact, the film got lots of accolades from the various self-congratulatory Hollywood award parade that year. It didn't win a lot, but it got a lot of nominations.

Director Mark Rydell has a curious resume. An actor-turned-director (he appeared in As the World Turns and in a smattering of films), he directed some TV shows (I Spy, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke) before going on to movies. Following The Rose, he directed On Golden Pond, The River, and then reunited with Midler on For the Boys. He's done very little of note since.

Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's slightly disrespectful, but the final song and death scene reminded me of Walk Hard, where Dewey Cox introduces the song Beautiful Ride by saying, "Now I'm going to sing a song will sum up my entire life"). After the song, the film tells us that "Dewey died three minutes after this performance." By the way, you should see Walk Hard if you haven't already. And if you have, you should see it again.

In Conclusion

The Rose is a valuable entry in the Baby, I'm a Star canon. Though not always easy to watch, it's a sad, subtle, unconventional, and unflinching film. And if nothing else, Midler's unexpected, electric performance is worth the price of admission.

Final Stretch

2009-09-16T03:49:00.010-05:00

Baby, I'm a Star was always intended as a finite project - 40 essays about 40 pop movies - and the end is finally in sight. In order to properly prepare for my sprint to the finish, I'm going to be taking a short hiatus. So for the next three weeks, don't expect the usual Wednesday entry.

BUT October 7 is the beginning of the end, as we wind our way through the final 10 entries. They include the best concert film ever, an addicting rockumentary, a trio of biopics, a strung-out Bette Midler, and a generous helping of unintentional comedy.

Under the Cherry Moon (1986)

2009-09-09T03:49:00.008-05:00

Act your age, not your shoe size

I first saw Prince's second movie, Under the Cherry Moon, as a rental, and I thought it was just okay. Then I attended a midnight screening of the film at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis, and my opinion completely changed. For those of you that don't know, Minneapolis is Prince's hometown, and his fans there are unparalleled in their dedication.

That's not to say the crowd was big. I don't even recall there being a line. But those that were there, decked out in Prince gear (I saw one woman in a floor length leather coat with the glyph symbol covering her entire back), were ready to have a good time. And they did, laughing lustily at every joke, catcalling during the sex scenes, singing along to the songs, and reciting favorite lines.

It colored my view of the movie, which is far from perfect, and gave it a rosy glow. Afterall, any film that could inspire such devotion must have done something right.

What Happens:

Prince (who also directed) plays Christopher Tracy, a Floridian who has moved to Nice, France to play piano at a supper club and seduce rich women in exchange for financial benefits. His partner in crime is Tricky (Jerome Benton, member of the Time, and Morris Day's sidekick in Purple Rain). As the film opens, Christopher and Tricky have spotted their latest target, a widow named Mrs.Wellington (Francesca Annis, aka Lady Jessica in Dune).

In the meantime, a bigger target emerges in the form of Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas in her film debut), the daughter of a rich shipping magnate. With Mrs.Wellington in tow, Tricky and Christopher crash Mary's 21st birthday party. Both find her fascinating. She comes out to the party naked and asks the partygoers, "How do you like my birthday suit?" and then proceeds to sit in on drums with the band. Though she finds his lifestyle abhorrent, Mary finds herself equally fascinated by Christopher.

The trio begin spending lots of time together, much to the chagrin of her powerful, humorless, domineering father, who hopes to see her married to her boyfriend Jonathan (he's away in New York for the entire film; his only "appearance" is in a phone conversation), because his family is equally rich. But soon enough Mary and Christopher fall madly in love, and the film accelerates to a tragic conclusion.

What Really Happens:

The film opens with a female narrator introducing us to Prince's character. "He lived for all women," she intones, " but he died for one." Talk about giving away the ending! It doesn't really matter though, because the movie is really all about beautiful locales and Prince's charisma, both of which if offers in spades. Shot in color, but reprocessed into black and white, the movie is visually stunning. Much of the film's tone and design has a '40s feel, though it obviously takes place in modern day, as things like boom boxes and answering machines show up. Plus, with a couple of exceptions, Prince and the Revolution's soundtrack for the film is completely modern (more on that in a bit).

It should be noted that Prince directed the film from a fairly solid screenplay by Becky Johnston (based on a basic story concept by Prince). Johnston has only two other film scripts her name, The Prince of Tides, and Seven Years In Tibet. So she doesn't do much, but she does it pretty well. Prince's direction feels natural and assured (making the disjointed Graffiti Bridge, which he also helmed, seem all the more puzzling). Apparently he took over from the original director only four days into shooting, causing Terence Stamp (aka General Zod) to vacate the role of Isaac Sharon (Mary's father).

The acting, all around, is solid. Of course, Prince has a natural sense of showmanship, which lends itself well to acting. And the character suits him as well and allows him to be a bit of a ham. Not that he chews the scenery; Christopher Tracy is partly a poet, partly a cad, and partly a mischievous little boy. Check out the scene where his landlord asks him to pay the rent and he playfully tries to intimidate her by giving her his "Bela Lugosi look." He's a far cry from The Kid in Purple Rain and Grafitti Bridge, who spent most of his time brooding. The real revelation is Kristin Scott Thomas, who is, I'll say it, luminous, as Mary.

Supposedly, Prince and Thomas had an affair during the shooting of the film, but there's not much evidence of that on screen. In fact, if the film has any large flaws, it's with Prince and Thomas' physical chemistry. They make a handsome enough couple, and their conversational chemistry is apparent in several civil and uncivil exchanges (including one that ends with Christopher calling her a "cabbage head"). But when it comes to gettin' freaky, something seems off. Maybe Prince the director had a blind spot in his own performance as a lover, but every time the two make out it looks uncomfortable, like a child pressing two dolls faces together in a clumsy approximation of kissing. Basically Thomas keeps her face still and Prince moves his back and forth like an orange on a juicer.

But what about the music? You might think that Christopher's job as a piano player would lend itself to some interesting performance scenes. It doesn't. Save for the opening sequence, there's only one performance in the film. That's not to say there aren't Prince songs. There are actually at least nine of them featured prominently throughout (all appeared on the Parade album). Notables include Kiss, which soundtracks Christopher and Mary's reunification (and yes, some of the aforementioned creepy kissing) and Anotherloverholenyohead, which accompanies Christopher's mad dash to intercept Mary's plane to New York.

Most of the songs are used this way, either as background, or to accompany montages. The two exceptions are cases where the song's appearance in the film doubled as a video. Girls and Boys finds Christopher taking over a stuffy restaurant with a boombox, dancing on a table, though not necessarily performing the song (he lip synchs some lyrics here and there). It begs the question, are we supposed to believe this is just a song he likes and that it's not him singing, or does he carry around a tape of his own songs to play whenever he feels like it? Either way, it's strange. The video for the song rehashes the scene, but cuts in some shots of the Revolution.

That brings us to the most memorable use of a song in the film, and the only peformance. Christopher dies at the end of the movie, and we're treated to a little coda where we find out what happened to Tricky (he moved back to Miami with the lady landlord and runs his own apartment building, thanks to Mary's generosity), then the camera pans to the clouds, where we find Prince and the newly-expanded Revolution playing Mountains, like psychedelic angels (and extremely apathetic ones too, in Wendy and Lisa's case). The credits roll as the band performs. It's weirdly cool. The video for the song is basically the same thing, only in color (where the fact that they're standing in front of a blue screen is much more obvious).

Overall, this makes Under the Cherry Moon less of a pop music movie than it is a starring vehicle with a soundtrack done by the star. It makes sense when you think of it this way, but considering that Purple Rain's greatest thrills were from the performance scenes, it's odd that Prince ignored his greatest strength.

Questions and Comments:

Do you know what a "wreka stow" is? It's a place where you'd go to buy a Sam Cooke album. Many of the comedy bits in the film, fittingly, appeal to an African-American sense of humor (there is a difference between white and black humor, though obviously several places where they overlap). It's an interesting juxtaposition with the white stuffy setting of the film, as well as the white-dominated style and genre (there weren't many tragic romances featuring black leads in the '40s).

Prince's fashion choices in this film are a sight to behold. In an early scene you'll find him in a bathtub wearing a bolero hat (while Jerome sits on the edge and drops rose petals into the water - was film may have been hinting that they were more than just business partners). To Mary's birthday party, he wears an open-chested, open-backed black jumpsuit. I'm not even sure how that was physically possible. Elsewhere he favors midriff-exposing military style jackets.

Is Isaac Sharon so powerful that he can have a man shot down without provocation in front of at least 10 witnesses, and not have any consequence? The film never tells us. AND, if he was willing to kill the guy, why go to the trouble of offering him a $100K payoff? That's not how you grow your portfolio.

Critics hated Under the Cherry Moon, and very few fans went see it. It made $10 million at the box office. As a comparison point, consider that Purple Rain made $7 million in its first weekend (and $68 million total).

In Conclusion:

Under the Cherry Moon is one of the most weirdly watchable, intentionally melodramatic films I've tackled for Baby, I'm a Star. It's a document of a musician at the height of his fame, power and influence, doing whatever he pleases and damning the consequences.

Seeing it with a large crowd of Prince fans is highly recommended. In all other conditions your results may vary.

That Thing You Do! (1996)

2009-09-02T03:49:00.006-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the Oh-nee-ders!

When one thinks of Tom Hanks, one doesn't necessarily think of music (except maybe the big piano scene with Robert Loggia in Big), and yet he's responsible for one of the most unabashed love letters to pop ever put to celluloid. That Thing You Do!, which came out right in the middle of the Tom-Hanks-can-do-no-wrong era (back-to-back-Oscars and Toy Story before, Saving Private Ryan after) appears to have been a very personal project for Hanks. He wrote (both the screenplay and several of the film's songs), directed, and starred.

What Happens:

Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) works in his dad's appliance store in Erie, Pennsylvania, and he loves music. In fact, when the store closes, he puts jazz records on the hi-fi and plays along on his drum set. Meanwhile an local band comprised of singer/guitarist Jimmy (Johnathon Schaech), lead guitarist Lenny (Steve Zahn), a bassist whom the film never gives a name (Ethan Embry), and drummer Chad (Giovanni Ribisi) are preparing for a talent show. They've got a ballad called That Thing You Do (we have a title!) which they think can win them the prize money. But Chad breaks his arm the day of the show, and...you see where this is going right? Guy agrees to sit in (but only if the boys will buy record needles and a radio from him).

The band (having decided to call themselves The Oneders) wins the talent show, mostly thanks to Guy's last-minute decision to speed up the tempo and change That Thing You Do from a ballad into a rocker. They also win a gig at a local night club/Italian restaurant out by the airport. Things snowball, as things will, and the band gains a strong local fanbase, records That Thing You Do in a church, and comes to the attention of Phil Horace (Chris Ellis), a man who lives in a camper. He offers to manage the band.

Phil gets the Oneders on the radio and a gig in Pittsburgh as part of a larger revue. This bring them to the attention of one Mr.White (Tom Hanks), a Play-Tone Records representative. He signs the band, gets them matching suits, changes the spelling of their name (to The Wonders), and puts them on his Playtone revue, which is traveling across the country playing state fairs. The band continues to gain fame and fans while That Thing You Do rises in the charts, eventually leading them to Hollywood.

There, the band appears in a movie, makes a TV appearance, and prepares to record new songs. But fate has different plans for them...

What Really Happens:

That Thing You Do! is a fine example of the rare-but-rich category of pop music film, the fake band. The Wonders are partly a Beatles analogue, especially in certain details of their story, but Hanks does a good job of giving the Wonders their own unique sensibility. The Wonders are not like the Beatles in individual personality, band dynamics, or career path.This is the tightrope that every fictional pop music film must walk. They have to blaze their own trail while still seeming truthful. That Thing You Do! does that.

Much like The Commitments, That Thing You Do! eschews the typical A Star Is Born story arc (musician starts out struggling, reaches the heights of fame, becomes too big for his/her/their britches, remembers his/her/their roots, and stages a minor comeback). Instead, it's just the first act. The band starts out, reaches fame, and then breaks up. The one-hit Wonders. Get it? The movie actually foreshadows this when Guy meets his jazz drumming idol Del Paxon (Bill Cobbs). Del says, "Ain't no way to keep a band together. Bands come and go."

Though the film is fictional, I picked up some Interweb chatter that the Wonders' story is actually loosely based on an Erie, Pennsylvania band called The Fabulous Epics, who formed in 1962 and later changed their name to Orange Colored Sky. They had some minor success (appearing in Don Knotts film, playing Vegas, and opening for Burt Bacharach and Frank Sinatra) and still perform today. However, all of this information came from their website, with no other source to verify. I couldn't find anything where Hanks himself admitted that this was his source material. So take it with a grain of salt, sugar, or pepper.

At any rate, Hanks and company have great fun conjuring up the musical spirit of the times, especially in the Play-Tone Galaxy of Stars. In addition to the Wonders, there's crooner Freddie Fredrickson, a Supremes-pattered girl group called the Chantrellines, and a Dusty Springfieldish singer named Diane Dane. Each has their own signature song, Mr.Downtown, When You Hold My Hand You Hold My Heart, and My World Is Over, respectively. In an endearing way, the Wonders don't know how to appropriately interact with these stars, and there are a few scenes to that effect.

Anyone who's seen Tom Hanks being interviewed knows he's a naturally witty guy. But it's something else entirely to put that into a film script and translate it to the screen. From the running gag that has everyone mispronouncing the band's name because of the spelling (every one says oh-nee-ders), to nearly every line that comes out of Steve Zahn's mouth (my favorite is when they're filming the beach movie and he reminds Jimmy: "You see, we're not the Wonders right now. We're Cap'n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters") , this is a funny movie that's not a comedy. Those are rare.

The only true fault of the film is the rushed ending. Apparently there's a director's cut that adds several character development moments, which would make sense. Two things are sort of subtly built up and then abruptly jump to full-blown conclusions. One is Jimmy's artistic dissatisfaction within the band, the other is the relationship between Faye (Liv Tyler) and Guy. On the first one, it makes sense that a songwriter would be raring to get more material on record, and to avoid what he sees as extraneous, so when Jimmy complains about that, it seems natural. But when he becomes an all-out asshole (he breaks up with Faye and quits the band, each after one argument) in the film's final 20 minutes, it doesn't seem to flow exactly. As for the love story between Faye and Guy, I don't have a problem with the fact of them together, it's just how quickly it happens that bothers me. It makes sense within the flow of the story because it's obvious there's an attraction between them for the entire film. But the admission of mutual attraction/first kiss/first sex happens in one scene!

The ending is done Fast Times at Ridgemont High style, where we find out the fates of each character. The only one to truly make it in the music business is Jimmy, which is a slap in the face of karma, but is probably realistic. He had the drive and the talent and the ruthlessness to survive.

Questions and Comments:

Here's a list of the band names the group brainstorms early in the movie before settling on the Oneders: The Echoes, The Band You're About To Hear, The Corvettes, The Chord-vettes, The Tempos, and The Heardsmen (which is actually the band Jimmy later becomes famous with).

I think this movie has one of the best "band hears itself on the radio" moments ever. That has become a cliche moment in all pop music movies, but Hanks has the group all listening to different radios and when the song comes on, they run to find one another and like a domino effect soon they're all listening together in Guy's father's store, and just basically going apeshit.

A lot rested on the quality of the film's title song, considering that it's played at least 582 times throughout the movie. That it doesn't become tiresome is a testament to the song. The movie studio apparently held a songwriting contest to find the tune, and Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger (whose band was just starting out; their debut came out the same year as the film) entered on a lark and won. Mike Viola, of the Candy Butchers, sang the lead.

Though the actors in the band don't actually perform any of the recorded or live material, they did rehearse together extensively to make it look convincing.

You might notice that Liv Tyler, as Faye, plays a sort of groupie, getting together with two members of the band and following them around on tour. This is fitting considering that Liv Tyler herself is the product of a relationship between a rock star (Steven Tyler of Aerosmith) and a groupie (Bebe Buell (who also had relationships with Todd Rundgrenand Elvis Costello, among others).

Charlize Theron plays Guy's self-involved girlfriend. Her name is Tina. Thus, when she meets Liv Tyler's character, it results in the following exchange: "Tina, this is Faye." Put them together and you have a bespectacled comedienne.

Tom Everett Scott looks like a young Tom Hanks, and Hanks realized and was uncomfortable with this. Apparently his wife convinced him to go ahead and cast Scott anyway.

Hanks called in some favors for this one. Look for Chris Isaak (as Guy's Uncle Bob), Alex Rocco (a veteran TV actor and Moe Greene in The Godfather) as the head of Play-Tone, Clint Howard (Ron's brother, and king of cameo appearances) as a DJ, Gedde Watanabe (Long Duck Dong, of course) as a hotel clerk, Jonathan Demme (director of Stop Making Sense, Silence of the Lambs, etc) as the director of the beach film, Weekend at Party Pier, Paul Feig (co-creator of Freaks and Geeks) as a DJ), Rita Wilson (Hanks' wife) as a waitress, Kevin Pollack as an emcee, Brian Krantz (Malcom in the Middle, Breaking Bad) as an astronaut, and Peter Scolari (Bosom Buddies reunion!) as a TV host. Whew!

In the director's cut of the film, it's revealed that Hanks' Mr.White is actually gay, just like Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Most obscure reference in the film? Guy's remark that, "If Jimmy's a genius, I'm U Thant" (it sounds like he's saying "ooo-tantay"). U Thant was a Burmese diplomat who served as Secretary General of the United Nations in the '60s.

In Conclusion:

Despite some narrative flaws, That Thing You Do! is an enjoyable film experience. Anyone with a slight bit of nostalgia for '60s pop will find a lot to like. I myself was inspired to seek out the soundtrack. That's the ultimate quality test of a pop music movie.

Selena (1997)

2009-08-26T03:49:00.001-05:00

Desconsolado

Selena is the true story of a talented singer who was murdered in her prime, therefore I can't will temporarily do away my usual joke-cracking. I'm no Howard Stern (who callously criticized Selena and her fans soon after her death). I will, however, offer a fair-minded review of the film's quality, as well as some philosophical musing on the nature of a biopic.

What Happens:

In four chunks, the film tells the story of Selena Quintinalla (played by the then up-and-coming Jennifer Lopez). Starting with her apex, a 1995 capacity show at the Houston Astrodome, one month before her death. That concert attracted the largest crowd in the park's history (65,000 people, though the film claims 100,000).

From there the film goes back all the way to 1961 to detail the trials and tribulations of Los Dinos, a Mexican-American doo-wop group led by Selena's father, Abraham Quintinalla. A couple of short scenes illustrate the pitfalls of being bi-cultural. A racist white club owner doesn't want them because they're Mexican, but when they do a gig at a Hispanic bar, they get booed off the stage for doing American-style music. Obviously, Los Dinos never got anywhere.

Jump ahead 20 years. It's 1981 and Abraham is married with three children. He works at a refinery in Lake Jackson, Texas and earns a nice living. However, when his 10 year-old daughter Selena (Rebecca Lee Meza) shows some vocal talent, his old dreams resurface, and he decides to start a family band. He buys some old amps and microphones, a bass guitar, and drums and forces the kids to play them (putting him in the same category as Earl Woods, Richard Williams, and Joe Simpson).

Despite setbacks, Abraham's restless ambition drives the group (called Selena and the Dinos) to practice and perform, while at the same time costing the family the financial stability they once had. Remembering his troubles trying to make it as a Mexican singer doing American oldies, he encourages Selena to start singing in Spanish (even though she doesn't know the language and has spoken English her whole life).

After a lackluster gig at a county fair, Abraham chides his kids for not playing well enough, then wonders if Latino listeners will ever accept a female Tejano singer. Son A.B. says they need better material (he would later end up writing the group's songs). In an oceanside family talk, Abraham promises the kids that they can make it if they really want to. Then, in a nice little scene, Selena's mother Marcela (Constance Marie) teaches her to dance the cumbia, a Colombian rhythym and dance style. This will be important later.

The film then jumps to 1989. Selena and the Dinos have persevered and are making a serious go of it. Money isn't great. They have no road crew and Abraham drives the tour bus, but the crowds are loving the group, who have found their sound, a Spanish language combination of cumbia (see, I told you it would be important) and Tejano styles. Selena loves being on stage, and even designs her own costumes.

As her career continues to blossom, so does a relationship with newly-hired guitarist Chris Perez (Jon Seda). Abraham disapproves of Chris and thinks the romance will kill Selena's chances at stardom. He even goes so far as to threaten to disband the group (which seems like kind of self-defeating logic, doesn't it?) Much of this part of the film alternates between depicting the growing success of the group (number one songs, a ridiculously large concert in Mexico, a Grammy nomination and win, etc.) and the trials of the two lovers. First, Abraham throws Chris out of the group, but when the couple continue to see each other secretly, finally deciding to elope, Abraham realizes his daughter has found true love.

As Selena opens her own boutique, featuring clothes and accessories of her own design, she also begins recording an English-language crossover album. She also talks with Chris about eventually settling down, owning a farm and starting a family. At the same time, trouble is brewing. Selena's business manager, friend, and fan club president Yolanda Saldivar has come under suspicion for stealing fan club money and destroying the records. Abraham and Selena confront Yolanda, who denies any wrongdoing.

Most people know where it goes from here. After a brief scene of Selena performing one of her new English language songs, Dreaming of You, we see the aftermath of a murder. Yolanda has shot Selena in a hotel. Selena is rushed to the hospital, where she's pronounced dead. There are some shots of the family mourning, a montage of the actual Selena performing, and a candlelight vigil. Credits and tears run simultaneously.

What Really Happens:

If that ending seemed rushed and abrupt, it was. I'll get to that a bit later.

First, let's talk about what elements every good musical biopic should contain, and how Selena handles those elements.

1. Believable Actors
I can't stress this one enough. The actors you choose need to inhabit the spirit of the person they're playing. Physical resemblance is nice, but unnecessary. The Selena actors, for the most part, had an easier time of it than usual, because their counterparts weren't fantastically famous. Even so, they ALL do well, especially Edward James Olmos as Abraham.

Jennifer Lopez had the most daunting task. Selena may not have been well known to white audience, but Latino audiences were sure to scrutinize. By most accounts, she handled it admirably. The most interesting subplot here, of course, is the fact that J.Lo became a pop star not long after the film. Was it the chicken or the egg? Either way this is one of the very few times a pop star played another pop star. Even more interesting? The film's creators wisely chose not to use Lopez's thin voice and instead had her lip-synch to actual recordings of Selena.

2. Truth
Okay, by nature, a film can never really tell the whole story. Most viewers will take every detail as gospel, but this is rarely the case. What you hope is that the filmmakers only change small details to facilitate storytelling and avoid anything that could be labeled fabrication.

Selena's story was not one that a lot of people knew so director/writer Gregory Nava had some leeway here. However, to ensure accuracy, Abraham himself was executive producer (which is funny if you consider that he easily comes off the worst of anyone else in the film; at various points in the film he's clumsy, overbearing, and irrational). As far as I can tell, nothing major was fabricated, but there are details in the film that are misleading.

Selena does an admirable job overall, and it's only factual mistakes (or omissions) are minor. For example, in the film it appears that Chris and Selena met for the first time when he auditioned for her band. In fact, they already knew each other.

Additionally, the film fudges a bit with the timeline of Selena's success. Perhaps understandably, we aren't shown everything about her rise to the top. When the movie jump to 1989, we know the band is popular, but what we aren't told is that they've already recorded three albums! Usually these types of films make a huge deal about getting to cut a record, because that's what allows your music to live on. Similarly, we're asked to infer a lot of information, such as the fact that Selena's brother A.B. writes and arranges most of her songs! It's probably the music geek in me, but I find that stuff interesting.

3. Defining Moments
Being famous and popular does not automatically guarantee a musician a biopic. There have to be defining moments in their story. The Beatles are considered the greatest band ever because their story has so many of these moments: The death of John and Paul's mothers, Hamburg, The firing of Pete Best, George Martin having never produced a rock record in his life, Ed Sullivan, and so on.

Selena's story doesn't have many, mostly because it's so short, but the film makes the most of what's there. The Dinos, the family band driven by their father, the forbidden love between Chris and Selena, the Astrodome concert, and her death. In between are moments that feel like genuine remembrances of a very tight family unit. There are tender scenes between Selena and her parents (such as the one I mentioned earlier where her mother teachers her the cumbia). The romance between her and Chris is played out very sweetly and realistically. There are also depictions of life on the road and Selena's growing fame that make the film feel more personal than than your average biopic. In one particular scene, the kids take the tour bus to get gas and end up stuck in a ditch. A couple of tough-looking Latino men stop to help when they recognize Selena (or Selenas, as they call her). Despite their boasts, their car is not powerful enough to pull the bus out of the ditch. In fact, it yanks the bumper off their car. A.B. apologizes profusely and offers to pay, but the man won't hear it. He claims he's going to hang it on his wall with a plaque underneath, because it came from an encounter with "Selenas"). Later, the siblings retell the story to their parents, and tease Selena mercilessly about it. It has the ring of truth to it.

Selena's death is, unfortunately, the most intriguing aspect of her story. It has the tragedy element as well as the psychological intrigue. The movie doesn't completely give in to morbid fascination, but doesn't ignore it either. I had a slight problem with this, and honestly I think the filmmakers didn't really know how to handle it. You don't want to give Yolanda too much screen time and risk glorifying her in any way, and yet you can't completely ignore Selena's murder. So the movie tried to balance that and ended up obscuring what really happened. Why were Selena and Yolanda at the hotel? What led to the shooting? What kind of psychological problems was Yolanda battling that would lead her to kill her idol? The first two questions should definitely have been answered by the film.

4. Musical Performances
Finally, if you're going to show us the life of a musician, then you need to show lots of musical performances that feel accurate. Selena does this very well. There are tons of performing sequences, and J.Lo does a top-notch job lip-synching (which is not as easy as it might seem). When you see the footage of the real Selena at the end of the film, it's especially apparent that the filmmakers worked hard to recreate her dance moves and her costumes.

Questions and Comments:

Selena was released a mere 2 years after the singer's death, which means it was written and filmed in 1996. That makes it the fastest turnaround for a biopic in the history of the genre.

Did you know that Selena's favorite singer was Donna Summer? At the Astrodome concert she performs a disco medly with two Summer songs, and then in the flashback sequence where Abraham wants her to start singing in Spanish, she says she'd rather be Donna Summer.

Look for the scene where Abraham goes into an extended riff on what it's like to be Mexican-American and have to live up to the expectations of both cultures. "We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans." He goes on and on about it. It's a definite "dad" moment, but also sheds light on living bi-culturally.

Director and writer Gregory Nava doesn't have a long resume, but he must have a good relationship with his actors. He had woked with Constance Marie (Gorge Lopez and several other TV appearances) and Edward James Olmos previous to Selena, and he made Bordertown with Lopez in 2006.

Did you know there was a Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album? Selena won it in the film, and it sounded strange to me, so I looked it up. Yep, it's real. I suppose that is a large genre of music, but does anyone really call it Mexican-American music? Isn't that strangely specific? And how on earth did Linda Ronstadt win it in 1989 AND 1993? Someone please enlighten me.

Have you ever seen a crowd get so upset over the lack of dance music that they physically threaten musicians, as happens to Los Dinos? In Minnesota, we would just listen politely and then talk bad about them behind their backs after they left the stage.

In Conclusion:

Selena is not a perfect musical biopic, but it gets a lot of things right, and it's especially notable for how personal the story feels. It also manages to be a loving tribute without sacrificing truth.

If you feel like a good temporary heartbreak, queue this one up sometime.

Rock Around the Clock (1956)

2009-08-19T03:49:00.008-05:00

But where are Richie, Potsie, Ralph Malph, and the Fonz?

Rock Around the Clock, as you can see on the poster, claims to tell "the whole story of rock and roll!" but that isn't exactly true. In fact, it's barely even the story of its lead attraction Bill Haley and His Comets. That said, it's a fascinating artifact from the infancy of rock, and also a well-scripted, performance-heavy musical.

What Happens:

Our story begins with George Hiller and His Band (apologies to Glenn Miller, I suppose) playing for a crowd of roughly nine people. Their manager, Steve Hollis (Johnny Johnston), confronts Hiller at the end of the set and tells him the obvious: Big band music is not drawing crowds anymore. He says that people want to hear "small groups, vocalists, and novelty combos." He adds, "the only thing that's stayed up to date in this band is your watch." George blames Steve for not doing a good enough job promoting the group. The argument escalates, and Steve quits, taking bassist Corny LaSalle (Henry Slate) with him.

The two decide to head back to New York to look for new opportunities, but Steve takes a shortcut that leads them to the small burg of Strawberry Springs (pop. 1,472), where they decide to stop for the night. It turns out the town is hoppin' on Saturday night, and Steve and Corny end up at a local dance, where Bill Haley and His Comets are playing See Ya Later, Alligator to a group of rapturous teens. Steve, a music industry vet remember, is baffled by this new sound: "It isn't boogie, it isn't jive, and it isn't swing," he says. "It's kinda all of them." Corny asks a dancing teen what they call this music and she responds, "It's rock and roll, brother, and we're rockin' tonight!"

Of course you can see where this is going. Steve and Corny arrange to manage the band (who it turns out are all just local boys playing for a lark), but not without some haggling over percentages, thanks to the band's dancer, Lisa Johns (Lisa Gaye). Lisa's a savvy beauty who Steve tries to manipulate by making her fall in love with him, but the opposite happens.

Thus begins Steve's journey to find fame for the band and his new girlfriend. But it isn't exactly easy. According to the film, the only way to get club bookings in New York is through the Talbot Agency, which is run by the playfully ruthless Corinne Talbot (Alix Talton). Steve and Corinne have a history: She proposed marriage and a partnership in her agency, he declined. So when Steve comes to her office with this new thing called rock and roll, she sees an opportunity, but not in the way you'd expect. Her logic is as follows. If he fails at his new venture, he'll have no choice but to accept her offer. She even says the following line: "When Steve hates me enough he'll realize he can't live without me."

So she agrees to help Steve, but immediately attempts to sabotage him by setting up a gig for the band at a conservative, upscale girl's school in Connecticut. What she doesn't bank on is the power of rock and roll, man. Haley and His Comets go over like gangbusters! Undeterred by Steve's failure to fail and angry about his new girlfriend, Corinne simply goes cold and says there's no future in rock and roll. When Steve once again turns down her proposal, she blacklists him and his group.

Fortunately, Steve is owed a favor by DJ Alan Freed (playing himself), who happens to own a club and is willing to ignore Talbot's mandate. So Bill Haley and the Comets play there, and become a sensation! They get on the cover of Variety, and make oodles of money for Freed. Talbot stubbornly refuses to admit defeat, but then comes up with one last masterstroke: She'll offer a three year deal to Steve, Corny, Lisa, and the band, but with one little addendum to the deal: Lisa can't get married for the duration of the contract. Lisa agrees.

The band heads out to San Fransisco and continues to make headlines, this time landing on the cover of Billboard, while Steve and Corinne work out the details of a televised Rock and Roll Jamboree. The film ends with the taping of the Jamboree, and Lisa coming out to thank "my husband, Steve Hollis." It turns out they got married BEFORE she signed the contract. Corinne admits defeat graciously, and the band strike up the title song. And that's the living end.

What Really Happens:

If that synopsis makes the movie sound especially heavy on an ancillary storyline with little actual focus on Haley and the Comets, that's because it is. Perhaps the filmmakers realized that Haley himself didn't have the charisma or acting chops to carry the film, or perhaps they couldn't even conceive of making him the lead in those pre-Jailhouse Rock days. Normally a music film giving so much time to non-musicians would be a kiss of death, but Rock Around the Clock makes it work. How? I'm not quite sure, but for a short film (it only runs 77 minutes) it manages to pack in all the above-mentioned story along with no less than 15 performances by Haley and several other acts. And if there's anything we've learned, pop music movies live and die by performances.

Some of the other groups featured in the film are Freddie Bell and the Bellboys (a lively white R & B outfit, often tuxedoed, who reportedly inspired Elvis to record his own version of Hound Dog), Tony Martinez and His Band (think of any I Love Lucy episode where Desi's band is featured), and the Platters (a black singing combo with the hits Only You and The Great Pretender, both of which are performed in the film).

1956 was they year that rock and roll blew up. Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes went to number 1, Chuck Berry released Roll Over Beethoven, Elvis broke through with Heartbreak Hotel, and Little Richard had Tutti Frutti on the charts. Rock Around the Clock was obviously meant to capitalize on a fad. It's surprisingly high-quality considering that. And the film was successful enough that in retrospect it can be seen as not only a product of rock and roll's popularity, but also a cause of it. Kind of like how the film Valley Girl reflected a real speech pattern while at the same time spreading it across the country and making it even more prevalent.

There's even an instructional aspect to the movie. Dancing is a huge part of the film and at one point Steve, arguing for Lisa's inclusion in the band, says "it takes a great dance team to demonstrate rock and roll." Not only that, but Haley and His Comets were not all that exciting as performers, so the dancing was cinematically and visually important. Similarly, the movie trades in a dubiously authentic beat lingo, which Steve has to master before he can communicate with the teens in Strawberry Springs. When he sees Lisa dance, he comments, "They're really good!" A young man responds: "Dig it man, when the most is on the floor, you give 'em room."

What really strikes me while watching the film is how much the definition of rock has changed in the 40 years since, or maybe how much it has narrowed. Many of the songs performed in the film would not even be defined as rock music today, certainly not Tony Martinez' mambos, Freddie Bell's horn-heavy rave-ups, or the Platter's mannered harmonies. Even a Haley song like Rudy's Rock has more in common with jazz than modern rock, and tunes such as R-O-C-K and Razzle Dazzle use the call-and-response of big band and swing music.

Questions and Comments:

During the school dance scene, the three bands (Martinez, Haley, Bell) switch off every song. How does this work with set up of instruments? I mean, have you been to a concert lately? It takes 25 minutes, at least, for roadies to take down one band's stuff and put up new equipment. Then the guy has to come out and strum the guitar and mumble into the microphone for awhile. Either the dance would last 6 hours or you'd only get 3 songs in before it was time to go home.

Let's face it, Corinne Talbot is an awful businesswoman. It's almost as though the film's writers were those type of guys who can't fathom the idea of a woman handling power well, the type of guys who would never vote for a woman for president because they think her mood swings during PMS would lead us to war with Iran. So on one hand, I applaud the film for depicting an uncompromising, successful woman who's unafraid to go after what she wants, but at the same time I condemn it for assuming a woman who has gotten this far in business would let a bizarre romantic conquest affect her bottom line.

Besides that, the film is well-written and full of clever snappy lines. These include:

Steve's cutting take-down when George Hiller challenges his promoting skills. "I'll book you at a schoolhouse during a fire drill. You might be able to clear them out with the kind of music you play."
Corny's puns, such as "Just let me pack my traveling clothes and a g-string for my bass" and when Steve mentions that they'll be taking a detour through Strawberry Springs, Corny replies, "Now I'm hungry for strawberry shortcut."
Steve's comment about the chances for rock and roll to gain popularity: "Remember what Christopher Columbus once said: 'The world is no square.'"
When Corny has a good idea, Steve replies, "You don't think much, but when you do, you make it count!"
Corinne gets off some bon mots, like her response to Steve's idea: "Men's imaginations are always faster than they are."
Steve tells Corinne to go after Mike, a man who is as crazy for her as she is for Steve. He remarks, "Why don't you marry the guy so he can forget you?"
And then there's Tony Martinez's lament about being told to tone it down during the school dance. "The professors have taken the cha out of my cha-cha," he says.

Lisa's brother (and dancing partner) is named Jimmy. That's right, Jimmy Johns. The film doesn't cover this, but he later went on to start his own sandwich shop franchise.

Also, Lisa and Jimmy as a brother-sister dance combo can't help but bring to mind the episode of Friends where Ross and Monica unleash their dance routine.

In Conclusion:

This movie doesn't tell the "whole story of rock and roll." It barely tells any of it. Maybe the plot was silly and took too much screen time away for actual musicians, but the film more than makes up for that in performances. Rock Around the Clock is a vital document of an exciting time in pop music.

Cool As Ice (1991)

2009-08-12T03:49:00.003-05:00

Deadly, like a poisonous mushroom.

I've watched some terrible films for this project. After watching Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, I was pretty darn sure that nothing could be worse. I was wrong. Cool As Ice is worse.

Well, duh, you might say. Did you really expect otherwise? Did you really think Vanilla Ice starring in a pseudo remake of Rebel Without a Cause was going to be good? But I tried, I respond. Oh how I tried to be objective about this. I divorced myself of judgment. No cracking on the clownish early '90s fashion and hairstyles. No harsh assessments of Robert Van Winkle's musical ability or questionable personal choices. No, I tried to put myself back into my junior high self, into the kid who got a little thrill every time he heard Ice, Ice Baby.

Even with the benefit of all that doubt, Cool As Ice is an awful film: the script, the musical performances, the characters, the direction, the cinematography, everything. In fact, it's so bad, it deserves a running diary (with apologies to Bill Simmons). These are my thoughts, recorded live as I watched.

0:00:00 The film opens with Vanilla Ice performing of Cool As Ice (Everbody Get Loose) as the credits roll. We're a dark smoky club and /or warehouse and people are dancing. I'm guessing this also doubled as the song's video. Naomi Campbell sings the hook and manages to get through it without assaulting anyone.

0:04:26 The movie was written by Daniel Stenn (not STERN), who had some episodes of Hill Street Blues, 21 Jump Street, and Beverly Hills 90210 to his credit. According to the Internet Movie Database, in the 18 years since Cool As Ice, he has written a TV mini-series and a documentary, and nothing else.

0:04:50 The movie was directed by David Kellog, whose only credits previous to this film were Playboy Playmate of the Year videos. He went on to direct Michael Jackson's Jam video and the Matthew Broderick Inspector Gadget movie, and nothing else. Moral: Cool As Ice is not a film you want on your resume.

0:06:00 Ice and his 3 homies leave the gig on their crotch rockets, just like the Cobra Kai. Who are they? Where are they going? Those details were apparently deemed inconsequential by the filmmakers.

0:07:00 After driving all night, the group comes across a girl riding a horse in a pasture. Ice decides to try to race her on his bike. When it looks like she might pull away from him, he jumps the fence (without using a ramp!) and lands in front of the horse, startling it and causing it to buck. The girl falls off hits the dust, but appears to avoid major injury. Ice rushes to help her up but fails to apologize. Instead, he says, "you did pretty good for a girl." Class.

0:08:40 One of the crew's bikes breaks down and they are forced to stop in the nearby small town. I smell a convenient plot device! By the way, we still don't know who these people are or where they were headed, or even where they are now.

0:09:30 Lingering first person reaction shots of the townspeople, who are utterly flabbergasted at the appearance of these four "urban youths" on motorized bikes.

0:10:00 An odd old couple who live on a large property with a series of brightly-painted buildings take them in and promise to fix the bike. Their place is like a combination of Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the set of the Fresh Prince's Parents Just Don't Understand video.

0:12:30 Remember the girl on the horse? Her name is Kathy (she's played by Kristin Minter, who later went on to several TV roles, including a long stint as Randi on ER), and she's a high school senior. She has a boyfriend, Nick (he's played by John Newton, who did time on Melrose Place) who's worried that she'll forget him when she goes away to college.

0:13:30 It just so happens that Kathy's house is on the same block as the old couple's place! Ice (we've since found out that his character's name is Johnny) spots them and approaches, brazenly interrupting their conversation. He proceeds to hit on Kathy, and then gets off the immortal line: "Drop that zero and get with the hero." He also "accidentally" calls Nick "Dick" instead. He's completely unlikeable as a character at this point.

0:15:00 A fast-motion sequence details Kathy's ideal home life. Michael Gross (the father from Family Ties) plays her father. Meanwhile, we find out that somewhere during their exchange Johnny stole her date book. He's really winning me over here.

0:16:00 Kathy is featured as an outstanding student in a local TV news profile. This causes the plot to thicken, as a man watching in a bar recognizes her father and immediately makes a phone call.

0:19:45 Kathy's little brother Tommy calls Nick a "dick" for constantly promising him a ride in his car, but never following through. You know, in case you forgot that we're not supposed to like this boyfriend.

0:21:30 The old couple who promised to fix the bike have instead dismantled it. Whimsical cartoon music accompanies their consternation.

0:22:52 More cartoon sound effects intrude as the man from the bar and his partner make their way to the town to track down Kathy's dad.

0:23:52 Johnny decides to go see Kathy again, which leads to the following exchange.
Johnny's friend: "Where you goin'?"
Johnny: "Across the street to sling a shlong."

0:24:33 Kathy's mother declines to let Johnny see Kathy, probably because he's wearing a leather jacket that says "Sex Me" on the sleeve.

0:26:30 Now we're at local hangout the Sugar Shack and a band is on stage doing a terrible atonal version of Sly and the Family Stone's 1969 hit Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). If you don't know where this is going, shame on you.

0:27:55 Nick drinks straight from a bottle of bourbon and gives Kathy shit for not loosening up. She's starting to agree with her little brother's assessment of him.

0:28:30 Meanwhile, the two men confront Kathy's dad and call him Jim (his name is supposedly Gordon). Obviously, they're bad men from his past. They want $500K, and give him 24 hours to come up with it.

0:29:50 You knew this was coming! Ice and his crew rudely take the stage from the band, and proceed to do The People's Choice, which samples the same Sly song. One question: Where did the turntables come from? Any power this scene might have had (cool band takes over for lame one is always a cinematic excuse for excitement) is dulled by the fact that the song is so obviously a studio version. The mix is awful and canned and doesn't approach a live sound at all. Even so, Kathy comes up to dance suggestively with Johnny, and then gives him a 24 hour deadline to return her planner (hmm...that sounds familiar).

0:33:40 Nick is angry about the dancing, grabs Kathy's arm and drags her out of the club. Outside, he apologizes, and then makes him a sexual overture. She's not havin' it and he gets mad again, and so for the third time in the film he gets called a dick.

0:35:45 The two thugs who threatened Kathy's father pull up on her as she walks home. It appears that they want to run her down, or at least intimidate her, but Johnny swoops in on his bike and rescues her.

0:38:30 Nick and his buddies take out their aggression by taking baseball bats to one of Johnny's crew's bikes. Having dropped Kathy off, Johnny returns in time to catch them in the act. He confronts them, and then proceeds to take out all 5 guys with his mad fighting skills. This really happened! Is there nothing Johnny can't do?

0:40:10 It's morning, and Johnny has snuck into Kathy's bedroom. He wakes her up by dripping an ice cube into her mouth (get it?!). Where did he get the ice cube? Did he wash his hands before he squeezed it?

0:42:05 He gives the planner back and Kathy tries to get rid of him by saying, "I'll see you later." His Zen response: "You're seein' me now." Before he goes, he promises little brother Tommy a ride on his bike. See the parallelism there? It's subtle, I know.

0:44:40 The film's Take Me With U (the bit in Purple Rain where Prince takes Appolonia for a ride) scene. They go to a construction site and talk. The film almost stubbornly refuses to provide us any biographical information about Johnny. He speaks in riddles. When Kathy asks him where he's from, he responds: "It ain't where you're from, it's where you're at." He also gives his life philosophy: "Live your life as someone else, you ain't livin'." But if you live your life as yourself, and you're a tool, then you're livin' as a tool.

0:47:00 They caper in the skeleton of a house and eventually kiss. A montage begins wherein they ride through the desert on his bike, hang out in a field, kiss some more, and of course, Johnny eventually takes off his shirt. This is all set to the dulcet tones of Ice's own terrible song Never Wanna Be Without You.

0:52:00 They return at night and one wonders: Haven't 24 hours passed? I guess it was an empty threat. Anyway, Kathy's dad is not happy with her being gone all day, nor with her choice of company. He has seen Johnny talking to the two men who threatened him and thinks they're in cahoots (not a terrible assumption) and is worried for Kathy's safety. He tells her not to see him anymore. It's a conflicting moment, because I think we're supposed to think the dad is an ass for trying to control her life, but really he's being pragmatic. Remember, this is Steven Keaton. Defy his fatherly advice at your own risk! And let's face it, even if he wasn't worried for her safety, his dislike of Johnny would just demonstrate good character judgment.

0:54:20 In the only well-acted scene of the film, Kathy's dad reveals to her that he's a former cop in the witness protection program for blowing the whistle on some crooked officers. The two men who are after him are those same officers. Here, Michael Gross somewhat redeems himself for agreeing to be in this thing at all.

0:59:20 Kathy tells Johnny she can't see him. He gets angry in his nebulously anti-authoritarian way, asking her, "Who you bein' true to now?"

1:01:30 Kathy's awful friends suggest she apologize to Nick and get back with him ASAP.

1:02:20 Kathy's little brother isn't under any mandate to avoid Johnny. Instead, he cuts his hair to imitate Johnny's and approaches him about that promise of a ride. Johnny follows through, and as they ride through town they see Nick. Tommy promptly flicks him off.

1:06:20 Tommy is back home, and the two crooked cops have snuck into the house. The film briefly threatens to turn into Home Alone as Tommy eludes them, but eventually they capture him.

1:08:17 Kathy returns home to sulk. Johnny stops by and attempts to charm her. His opening line goes like this: "So you wanna talk or what?" When she says she doesn't, instead of asking what's wrong, he responds by rhetorically asking, "Still doin' what daddy says, huh?"

1:12:32 The family discovers Tommy's absence, and a tape arrives with a ransom message. The crooked cops have set ANOTHER 24 hour deadline. Nick reappears at this time and tells about seeing Tommy and Johnny together earlier. This seems to confirm the father's view that Johnny's working with the two bad guys.

1:14:30 Kathy confronts Johnny and he delicately and sensitively tells her she needs to see a psychiatrist. But then he actually listens to her for once. In reviewing the ransom tape, he suddenly becomes a detective, and filters out construction sounds in the background. Rather than calling the police, they decide to take matters into their own hands.

1:17:20 Johnny wears his sunglasses at night.

1:18:45 Johnny drives his bike right through a wall, and takes on both thugs! After beating 5 men single-handedly earlier in the film, this is a piece of cake for him (though he does take one punch).

1:20:50 Kathy's dad thanks Johnny, who responds by saying, "It doesn't really matter." What doesn't matter? The fact that a little boy is safe and two crooks are captured? Because that matters a little bit. Maybe Johnny is a nilihist and is saying that in the great scheme of things nothing is all that significant. Or maybe he's just an ass.

1:21:40 As Johnny drives off with Kathy, he uses Nick's car as a ramp and jumps right over it.

1:22:43 The film wraps up in another disconnected club scene. Ice performs Get Wit' It and does some Chinese acrobat moves while Kathy dances in the audience. The song's final verse seems to address the film's love story somewhat:

"I'll love a girl and then dis the same one /
'Cause you know that there's more where that came from /
Yo, the one I want just walked through the threshold /
So all you other girls are out in the cold for now /
She's the only one for me /
Who knows if we were meant to be /
Together forever and that's a real long time /
And you can tell I'm in the house by my dope rhyme /
Man, I'm glad she came to her senses /
And that she put down all her defenses /
And finally gave her heart & soul /
To the man behind the mic control /
I'm here with her now I'm ready for fun."

I'll just let that speak for itself.

Of more concern than that is the fact that it's never clear who or what Johnny is. Is he a professional rapper on a very minimalist tour? Is he just a wanderer who happens to have mad rappin', bikin', and fightin' skills? Though Rebel Without a Cause (the plot of which really has few connections to Cool As Ice beyond the general premise) held that title, James Dean's character at least had a complex family relationship to blame for his rebellion. Vanilla Ice's Johnny truly is without a cause. He's rebellious for rebellion's sake.

For a film banking on its star's musical popularity and personal charisma, there's not enough focus on the actual music or the story behind Ice's character. Nearly every other pop music film uses the forum to show some depth and vulnerability in their lead. Not Cool As Ice. Then again, I guess you can't show what isn't there.

Pure Country (1992)

2009-08-05T03:49:00.003-05:00

Puritan Country?

Ideally, pop music movies serve two purposes. Not only are they a cash-in on a musician's popularity, but they have the potential to drive that popularity to a previously unseen level. With Pure Country and George Strait, that's exactly what happened.

In 1992, Strait was on an impressive 11-year winning streak. Of his 12 albums, 8 had gone to number one on the country album chart. 22 of his singles had reached the top spot on the country song chart. The soundtrack album to Pure Country, featuring all Strait songs, sold 6 million copies and became the biggest success of his career. And this was in spite of the fact that the movie itself performed poorly - it grossed about $15 million at the box office. If you did the math with me then you know that means that people spent more money on the soundtrack than they did on the film.

What's strange is that despite starring in a Hollywood film and selling so many many records, Strait has never even had a sniff of mainstream pop success. It's just further evidence that the world of country music might as well be in an alternate universe...

What Happens:

Strait plays Dusty Chandler, a bearded and ponytailed country music star at the height of this fame (sound familiar?). He's got a slick stage show, thousands of adoring fans, and a sequined white leather jacket with his name spelled in cursive on the back, but we quickly discover that he's disillusioned with the smoke and lights and deafening volume. He feels like he's playing a part that isn't true to himself. His real name isn't even Dusty, it's Wyatt. He tells his cutthroat manager Lula (played by Miss Scarlet herself, Lesly Ann Warren) that he wants to simplify the arrangements for his next album.

Meanwhile, Lula has struck it up with dashing Buddy Jackson (played by our favorite coach of the Dillon Panthers, Kyle Chandler), a stage hand and aspiring songwriter. In exchange for a little lovin' she's agreed to promote the song, a clever double-entendre heavy rocker called Overnight Male, to Dusty. At the very next show, Dusty performs the song with no problem. However, during the next song, Where the Sidewalk Ends, he appears falls into a dreamlike revelry and stops singing altogether, except no one notices, not his band and not the fans.

After telling Lula that he no longer wants to be her dancing chicken, she coldly asserts that she can replace him easily. He takes a walk and ends up hitchhiking away. Thus begins his own "lost weekend" voyage of discovery, moving from a shave and a haircut to a visit with his grandmother and to the honky tonk where he first cut his teeth as a musician, and finally into the arms of a plucky cowgirl named Harley (Isabel Glasser).

Meanwhile, Lula brazenly puts Buddy Jackson into Dusty's outfit and has him lip-synch his way through the next concert, and - amazingly - nobody notices. Buddy (who clearly isn't too bright) begins to get too big for his britches and demands a recording contract and signing bonus. When Lula balks, Buddy reveals the deception to the media, and all hell breaks loose.

Lula tracks Dusty down, and will do whatever it takes to get him back for the next show in Vegas. Can Dusty resist the siren call of fame, or will the simple life call him home? The film's title might give you a clue to that answer...

What Really Happens:

Pure Country is an entertaining film, and gets at least one thing completely right: It knows that it lives or dies by providing lots of songs and performance scenes. These aren't skimped on, and the arena sequences are especially impressive. They were obviously filmed live during a real stage show with a massive audience, and yet still have a very controlled, cinematic quality. Elsewhere, songs are incorporated realistically, played on radios or in bars. I've never done a formal study on this, but I'd be willing to be that the more a viewer can connect to the music in a film, the better the soundtrack will sell.

As I watched, I also wondered if this film was intended to be a commentary on the over-commercialization of country music. It's no secret that in the '90s Nashville might as well have been L.A., considering the growing obsession with glitz and crossover success. The songs and the shift away from twang to shiny pop hooks and crossover success (see Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, etc). The movie seems to yearn for a return to the "sittin' on the porch" roots of the genre. And yet, if the film was intended as a commentary, it was remarkably prescient. Brooks was just at the beginning of his peak when the film was released, and others were still a few years away from theirs.

Questions and Comments:

The warbly version of Heartland that plays over the film's opening credits was sung by George Strait's son. I don't think he'll be going into the family business.

The acting in the movie is roundly solid. Even Strait, a non-actor, does a fine job. Granted, he doesn't have to stretch all that much.

Director Christopher Cain's only other major film was The Next Karate Kid. The less said about this the better.

Watch for the scene when Dusty silently eats breakfast with Harley, her father, and her two brothers. It's painfully awkward and overlong, which makes it akin to the dinner scene in Eraserhead, though thankfully doesn't feature any carving of game hens.

Almost casually, one of Harley's brothers mentions that she wants to earn the money to save their failing ranch by winning a rodeo (in Las Vegas, where Dusty's next show happens to be happening the same weekend - what are the odds?!). This is never properly followed up on though a lesser movie would have made it a major plot point.

Backhanded compliments you should usually avoid on a date: "So how come a beautiful girl like you isn't married?"

Pure Country puts forth the world view that all old folks are grizzled, wise, cryptic, and mentally unbalanced. There are two characters who act as whacked-out spirit guides and spout barely-comprehensible advice. The first is Dusty's Grandma Ivy. Sample wisdom: "There are no answers, only the search." The other is Harley's father (veteran western actor Rory Calhoun, in his final role), a grizzled ranch owner with a voice that sounds like he smoked 3 packs a day for at least 50 years. Sample wisdom: "You know that little white stuff on the top of chicken shit? It's still chicken shit." There's even a sly acknowledgment of the two characters' similarity, when they sit next to one another at Dusty's Vegas show. The movie missed a golden opportunity in not having them hold an actual conversation.

When the news breaks that Dusty has has been replaced by a lip-synching impersonator, the anchor calls it "Milli Vanilli in reverse." I thought that was pretty good.

Did you know that Las Vegas used to be known as "The City of Neons and Nylons"? Me neither.

Does Lula's character deserve the redemption she gets? She does and says at least 5 awful things throughout the film, and at the end she easily gains Dusty's forgiveness and stays on as his manager.

And finally, let's talk about the supposed "romance" between Dusty and Harley, because it's the worst part of the movie. She brings him home drunk from a bar after he gets his ass kicked by her ex-boyfriend. They ride horses together. He neglects to tell her that he's a famous star (I guess she has no TV, doesn't listen to the radio, and is generally ignorant of pop culture). They dance at a bar, stare into each others eyes, and then immediately have a falling-out caused by Lula. He tries to reconcile, but she won't listen to him. He arranges for her to come to his Vegas show, where he sings I Cross My Heart directly to her. At the final moment of the film they come together and...hug. Yup, hug. No kiss. It's a strange moment and leads me to wonder. Did George Strait have a "no-kissing" clause in his contract? Were the film's producers expecting a huge Morman audience? We may never know, but it kind of takes all the air out of the romance angle, and ends the movie on a bum note.

If you were Harley's brother and you had to stand next to her while Dusty sings I Cross My Heart directly to her as she sobs, wouldn't you get a little uncomfortable? If I had to make a list of situations I would not want to find myself in, this would be in the top 25.

In Conclusion:

As I said, an entertaining movie overall, and it wisely puts the focus squarely on the music. You can't ask for much more, except, maybe, just one little kiss.

Poetic Justice (1993)

2009-07-29T03:49:00.002-05:00

That's the way love goes?

John Singleton, fresh off the smash Boyz n the Hood and Michael Jackson's Remember the Time video, wrote and directed this "street romance" starring two of music's biggest names: Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur.

What Happens:

Janet Damita Jo Jackson plays Justice (ah, see what they did with the title there?), a young poet and beautician with a troubled past. In the film's first scene, her boyfriend is murdered in front of her eyes. After the murder (we're not told exactly how long after), her beauty shop "friends" are somewhat callously on her case about needing a man to complete her.

A candidate appears in the form of postal worker Lucky (Tupac, R.I.P.), a soulful single father with dreams of helping his cousin achieve rap stardom. Justice and Lucky have an instant attraction-slash-hatred for one another, and of course events conspire to throw them together. See, it just so happens Justice's friend Iesha (played by Regina King, Rod Tidwell's wife in Jerry Maguire) is dating Lucky's co-worker Chicago. And that's how all four of them end up on a weekend trip to Oakland.

A series of misadventures ensues, as the merry band scream and fight their way northward. They crash a family reunion BBQ, stop at a African market and carnival, and leave Chicago by the side of the road. Along the way, Lucky and Justice fall in love, culminating in an oceanside dalliance. When they reach Oakland, they arrive at Lucky's cousin's house they find he's been murdered. Lucky blames Justice, basically saying, "if I hadn't been fuckin' wit' you, I would have been there in time to stop it (the murder)." Nevermind that crashing the BBQ, where they spent at least two hours, was all his idea. Eventually, though, he apologizes, the two reconcile, and they live happily ever after.

What Really Happens:

Singleton imagines his story as a fairy tale, opening the film with the title card, "Once upon a time in South Central L.A." It's an interesting conceit, but other than the fact of it being a love story with a mostly happy ending, nothing much in the movie is very fairytaleesque. Fairy tales are much more gruesome and subversive than Walt Disney would have us believe, but as far as I know none of them feature these events: 1) The female lead asking the male lead if he "wants to smell [her] poonannie," 2) the male lead referring to the female lead as both a "bitch" and a "ho" within five seconds, and 3) the two romantic leads shouting "fuck you" repeatedly in each other's faces.

Okay, so look, I was not crazy about this movie, but I can't hate on it TOO much. In many places it assaulted my sensibilities, but honestly I believe that's a race issue. Despite many white folks' tendency to shy away from pointing out cultural differences, there are clear differences between the African-American aesthetic and the white aesthetic, and they won't always jibe. So I recognize that difference for what it is rather than simply saying, "This movie was awful." I respect the perspective and care Singleton took in creating this movie (I do have some separate issues with the film related to race, which I'll bring up in the Questions and Comments section below).

That said, there are non-cultural elements of this movie that just didn't work for me. There are two of these elements I'd like to spend some time exploring: music and characters.

First, is this a music movie or not? There are basically six categories of music films. There's the prototypical pop music movie, starring vehicles, documentaries, concert films, musicals, and biopics. Most of these categories are self-explanatory, but the first has a narrow, unofficial definition. Namely, it's a movie starring a musician, with music by said musician, and somewhat based on that musician's own life experience. By that definition, Poetic Justice is clearly a starring vehicle.

But wait! Janet's hit Again appears several times in the film. Mostly it's there in a muzak instrumental version whenever Justice is feeling sad or contemplative, but the full song plays over the credits. So that confuses things slightly. Even worse is the fact that at the end of the film Tupac's character seems intent on making a go of a rap career (he takes his murdered cousin's recording equipment home with him). And yet we never hear him perform a single rap. Now this is realistic from a storytelling point of view (it wouldn't have worked to show him as some sort of sudden rap prodigy at the film's end), but here's Tupac freaking Shakur in a movie and you're going to tease us with the possibility of him rapping, but not follow through? That's mean.

That, then, begs the question of why Singleton cast Jackson and Shakur if he wasn't going to cash in on their musical cred? Well, one might argue that both were already established actors outside of their musical careers, but one might also point out that their resumes were frightfully short (Janet had Good Times, Diff'rent Strokes, and Fame to her credit, Tupac had Juice and an appearance on A Different World). Certainly, neither had been proven as a lead. And that was ballsy on Singleton's part, because though the big names might get the proverbial asses in the proverbial seats, the movie's success hinges on the chemistry and magnetism of the two leads.

Tupac proves himself well. I didn't have a single issue with his performance. Janet's is a bit more problematic. It doesn't help that she spends at least 66% of the movie chewing gum. To her credit, it's not completely unbelievable to see her as a tough, streetwise girl when we know her real experience is nothing even close to that (it's certainly not as jarring as seeing her brother Michael try to act menacing in any number of his videos). But save for a few vacant stares here and there and one awful scene between her and Regina King (look for it and laugh, it's right after they pull over at a rest stop and Regina pukes), Janet does okay.

Besides Janet, there are several other good artists that appear on the soundtrack, including TLC (Get It Up), Snoop Dogg (Niggas Don't Give a Fuck), and the O'Jays (Backstabbers).

The other issue of the film is that besides the two leads there are no likable characters. Jessie, the beauty shop owner, is generally awful. Lucky's baby mama is literally a crack whore, who entertains gentlemen callers while her children sit in the next room and watch cartoons. His mother displays no faith in his abilities, says she won't take care of his child, and admonishes him for cussing while doing so herself.

Iesha, Justice's friend, lives by the following philosophy: "The world is just a place for us to go out and fuck up in it." As the film progresses she shows few redeeming qualities. She gets drunk on gin and juice, admits she's only seeing Chicago because he buys her things and she doesn't have to put out much ("I'm rationing it," she says), and unapologetically flirts with other guys. Later, she agrees to have sex with Chicago, then immediately proceeds to demean his endurance, and general manhood and character.

Chicago's response to her mean-spirited tirade is to slap her across the face. So, yeah.

Questions and Comments:

As the film moves along we hear 5 of Justice's poems. In fact they were written by acclaimed poet Maya Angelou (who also has a cameo in the film in the BBQ scene). Is it bad that until the final poem ("Phenomenal Woman"), they were completely believable to me as the work of an amateur? Maybe I just have a tin ear for poetry.

As promised, some thoughts on this film and race:
1) What responsibility does a film have to present positive messages? Poetic Justice has positive moments, but in the details presents an African American experience heavy on drug use and violence. This, unfortunately, helps promote stereotypes already held as gospel by white Americans. Is it fair that every film made by black writers, directors, and actors will be judged this way? No, but it is a fact. One might say that Singleton was merely writing about what he's seen in his own community, but it's hard to say that there's no self-fulfilling prophecy at work here.

2) The most disturbing scene in the film for me was a short exchange between Chicago, Lucky, and a Mexican gentleman (played, strangely by Rene Elizondo, Janet's then-secret husband) they work with at the Post Office. Basically they antagonize each other with racial epithets and prejudicial stereotypes. The scene isn't funny, adds nothing to the film's plot, and is basically offensive to both races. The only good thing about it is that Elizondo's character is throwing darts at a picture of George Bush Sr. during the scene.

Justice has a white cat named White Boy.

Singleton made some baffling filmmaking decisions. They are as follows:
1) There's a jarring scene on the beach where we suddenly are able to hear the dopey inner thoughts of the film's four main characters. What is this, Dune?

2) Did Lucky and Justice have sex or not? We're led to believe they did. There's the aforementioned "fuckin' wit' you" quote from Lucky, plus a VD joke, and a comment that Justice "even walks different" after. However, there's no sex scene. Instead, While Iesha sleeps it off in the postal truck and Lucky and Justice have an oceanside heart-to-heart, we witness their first kiss. The scene ends with a far shot of them kissing and the sun setting on the ocean in front of them with Again playing on the soundtrack. The film certainly wasn't shy about depicting sex, allowing Chicago and Iesha's horizontal tango to play out in full, so why not even a hint of passion between the two leads?

3) There's a fairly major continuity error. While at the BBQ, Justice guesses correctly that Lucky has a child. "How you know?" he asks. "You seem like the type," she answers. He then asks if she has any kids as she holds a baby. It's a fairly memorable scene. But then, after their unclear sex scene, Lucky says he has something important to reveal. As a viewer we wonder if it's something we already know but Justice doesn't. We rack our brains. And the revelation is: He has a daughter. Justice is angry and surprised. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Uh, he did.

Justice's awful boss Jessie (who as a license plate that reads MSBOOTE) is full of wisdom on sexual politics, including, "A man ain't nothin but a tool. You've got to know when to take him out of the box and use him," and "These young girls don't know their coochie from a hole in the wall." Enlightening.

Look for Q-Tip as Justice's murdered boyfriend (he shows up on screen, appropriately, with A Tribe Called Quest's Bonita Applebaum playing), Tone Loc as a droll drug dealer, a bald Billy Zane in a film-within-the-film, and Khandi Alexander (Katherine from Newsradio) as a bitchy beauty shop patron. And, listen carefully when Lucky plays the tapes of his cousin rapping. His cousin is apparently Coolio!

Has anyone ever done a comprehensive count of how many times the "car won't start" contrivance has been used either to create dramatic tension or as a plot device? Someone should get on that.

Did you know that a yam is a "young tramp"? I didn't either, until I saw this movie.

In Conclusion:

The definition of poetic justice is when virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. I don't really think that plays out in the movie. Everybody treats everyone else pretty awful, and some people end up happy and others don't. As a result, I'm not sure what conclusions I should draw from Poetic Justice. Love will improve your life? Definitely. Don't be satisfied with a job that doesn't fulfill you? Maybe. Give up sex only when a man supports me financially? For sure.

The Commitments (1991)

2009-07-22T03:49:00.001-05:00

Author's Note: This is a special entry. This movie concerns a band that never actually existed. This type of film has a small but interesting canon, including Eddie and the Cruisers, Almost Famous, Spinal Tap, and That Thing You Do. The Commitments is the head of the class.

A high school acquaintance once told me that the best bands in the world could very likely never be heard of by the masses. He didn’t expand on this comment, but I assume he meant that there were many bands who formed, were absolutely wonderful, and for some reason broke up or faded away before even recording a note, let alone getting signed to a label. The Commitments is a movie about that very thing.

And I’m sorry if that ruins any suspense, but that’s exactly what makes this movie so refreshing. It’s not the typical retread of A Star Is Born. We don’t have to put up with any rise, fall, and triumphant return.

What Happens:

Jimmy Rabbit is an indefatigable motor-mouthed make-it-happen sort of fellow who still lives with his family. He gets it in his head to form a band, Lou Pearlman style. One of his musician friends, ruminating on his credentials in music, mentions that he was into Frankie Goes To Hollywood before anyone else. Is this really a ringing endorsement?! We’ll never know why the writer of this film chose that band as a touchstone, and probably never should. This scene is redeemed by a very funny discussion of potential band names, musicians who have died prematurely, and influences.

So, against his Elvis-loving Dad’s (played by Lt. O’Brien from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) wishes, Jimmy starts holding auditions for the band. This scene tickles the funny bone. Eventually he has the makings of a band, including a sax man who claims to have played with a plethora of Motown legends, a bespectacled drummer, and a gregarious singer whom we have seen in an earlier scene, singing drunk at a wedding.

The band, now reaching E-Street Band / Parliament / Talking Heads-circa-1984 size, also adds three hot female back up singers. This is nice, but other than a frankly strange plot involving the sax player sleeping with all three of them, we don’t get much time with the ladies. In fact, there are so many characters in the movie, you tend to come away feeling as though you don’t know any of them well.

Anyway, the band begins practicing various soul, funk, and blues classics, but it’s not until they’re all taking the bus home and begin singing together that their sounds starts to gel. I must point out here that this scene predates the much-ballyhooed singing-Tiny Dancer-on-a-bus scene in Almost Famous by nearly 10 years. Shame on you Cameron Crowe! So the band gets good, gets a couple of gigs and things look great.

But inner turmoil begins to pull at them. This is very cool to see, as the contrast between their onstage harmony and off-stage bickering is very stark. It goes a small way to answering the pained questions of every fan who has seen his or her favorite band buckle under the pressure of interpersonal relations, even though the music they make together is so wonderful. Fleetwood Mac fans, I’m thinking of you here.

So the band breaks up after a particularly transcendent gig, and a particularly nasty backstage melee, and the movie ends Fast Times At Ridgemont high style, as we learn what happened to each member after.

Comments:

The guy that plays Jimmy Rabbit is a poor man’s Jude Law. Discuss.

Look for Glen Hansard (of Once fame) as guitar player Outspan Foster.

There’s a frighteningly long extended close-up of the lead singer’s face in their wonderful version of Otis Redding’s Try A Little Tenderness. Watch out for this. You may want to have a magazine ready to look at when you become nauseous.

In Conclusion:

Overall, a worthwhile film for your average music fan, and the soundtrack is probably worth the purchase too.

Spiceworld (1997)

2009-07-08T03:49:00.003-05:00

Zig-a-zig-ah!

Let’s look back at those halcyon days when Hanson were still cute, the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync were only popular in Europe, and Britney was getting her braces off. The Spice Girls were both the rulers and the harbingers of the mindless pop renaissance. They were a genuine British phenomenon, and not surprisingly one that translated over here on the other side of the pond. So of course, they got their own movie…

What Happens:

Emma, Mel C, Mel B, Geri, and Victoria are the Spice Girls, a mega-popular singing group who drive around in a bus painted to look like the Union Jack. They each have a distinct personality designed to appeal to a variety of different fans, and they dress and act accordingly. They also have varied hair colors and bust sizes.

This movie follows them for 5 days, as they make appearances, rehearse, and get into other sundry misadventures leading up to a concert at London’s Albert Hall. As we follow the girls and their larger-than-life antics, various forces conspire against them, including a film producer and writer (played by Norm from Cheers and one of the Kids in the Hall), a documentary team led by Alan Cumming, a spy for a tabloid, and the group’s own manager (who answers to the name Moore, Roger Moore).

Like I said, the girls have some adventures, and then the big question is: Will they be able to make it to Albert Hall in time for their concert? I think you know the answer to that!

What Really Happens:

Okay, I’ll admit that I’m starting from a weakened viewpoint, but I actually kind of enjoyed this. If pressed, I have to call myself a Spice Girls fan. I own two of their albums, and one of Melanie C’s solo albums, and I even have a Spice Girls ruler. I think they are cheesy and somewhat hot. And they had some good songs.

Even so, I really think I was expecting the worst from their movie, and thus was pleasantly surprised by its relative (to my own expectations) quality. Yes, it’s a consistently cheeky movie, but I blame that on Britain. There are some genuinely surreal touches. In particular I’m thinking of Roger Moore’s role. As manager he sits in a small room and plots malevolently. It seems to be an allusion to Bond villains, which would have been funny if it were just a cameo, but instead he keeps showing up and it becomes less and less interesting. Also, there’s a completely inexplicable scene in which the girls stop the bus to go use the bathroom in the woods and end up having an alien encounter. The joke is that the aliens even know who they are and want autographs and concert tickets, but it’s just so left field. And, one of them actually feels up Mel B.!

I have to believe that in addition to A Hard Day’s Night (a blueprint for a group film), the film’s creators also watched Head. This is evident in the slightly psychedelic opening, the meta-movie ending (more on that in a moment), and the way the Girls poke fun at their own image and fame. There’s a scene where they discuss their “personalities” and wish to break free of the way they’ve been stereotyped (or manufactured). Then they switch roles, and it’s a genuinely great scene.

There’re a couple of scenes where they discuss the fleeting nature of fame, which is especially poignant for this group, considering how quickly they went from dizzy heights to bargain bin. But they do get a dig in at Hootie and the Blowfish, and Elvis Costello has a great, self-deprecating cameo.

Thoughts and Concerns:

Watch for the appearance of the sixth Spice Girl, the Asian one. Her presence here (besides as a plot device) is never clear.

I learned a new British phrase while watching this movie, and expanding my knowledge of colloquialisms always makes me happy. It happens after they hear a fart type of noise, and Mel C tells Mel B to “pack it in.”

Besides the great appearance of Elvis, there’re a few other cameos to watch for. Elton John is easy to spot, as is one of the Ab Fab woman. But sharp eyes might miss Bob Hoskins, Jools Holland, and Bob Geldof.

There’s a sweet little flashback scene where they recall their early days, and perform “Wannabe.” This scene recalls the video for that song in a few good ways. And if you’ve seen that video, you know what I’m talking about.

There’s a scene where one of the Girls answers a questions with the old rhetorical “Is the Pope Catholic?” response, and it causes a media furor. Call it obvious, but that’s great parody, mirroring John Lennon's "The Beatles are bigger than Jesus" comment.

This movie uses the Purple Rain freeze frame ending, but in an unconventional way. Onstage, the girls all freeze in place while the camera keeps rolling. Nice twist!

In Conclusion:

Spice World probably won’t stand the test of multiple viewings, but it’s good entertainment. The purpose of a pop star movie like this is to increase the goodwill and camaraderie you feel for the pop stars, and this movie succeeds in that. Besides seeing the Girls pillow-fighting in lingerie, you couldn’t ask for much more.

That's The Way Of The World (1975)

2006-09-10T10:12:00.001-05:00

Earth, Wind & Crap

Once upon a time a man named Sig Shore thought that he'd put two of the '70s most interesting stars together and make a movie with them. One of those talents was the R & B group Earth, Wind & Fire. The other was tiny dynamo Harvey Keitel.

What Happens:

Harvey Plays Coleman Buckmaster, a record producer whose father was a famous jazz pianist. His pet project on the Acorn label is The Group, an R & B band with approximately 27 members (played by Earth, Wind & Fire, natch). His boss, who probably doesn't even own a stereo, wants him to turn his focus to The Pages, a family act with a wholesome, safe, antiquated sound. Coleman is resistant, until he falls into a relationship with Velour Page, the comely star of his new group. With his artistic integrity, his job and his heart at stake, what will he do?

What Really Happens:

This movie has an interesting thematic struggle. How do people who make records operate within a structure where creativity is supposed to be marketed and sold? We are shown the seedy side of the business, from the greasy palms that need to be greased even more to the pay-for-play structure that still exists today to the short-sighted need to capitalize on whatever is popular at the moment.

Harvey and The Group are meant to represent the good and wholesome creative side, while the label manager, The Pages and the mob boss financier (who looks like the love child of Marlon Brando and Abe Vigoda) are obviously the soulless greedy types.

The problem is the films events and characterizations don't make that clear enough and in the end actually end up flipping them somewhat.

Yes, the label manager is a grade A jackass. When he tells Coleman that The Pages will be the group of the future he says, "People on the streets are tired of junkies and fag acts." And, yes, The Pages are a mess. The father is a sleazier version of Jerry Lewis and the son is an entitled junkie, who wears a shirt with a parody of the Coca-Cola logo that instead says, "Enjoy Cocaine." At least he follows the dictums put forth by his own wardrobe.

But Coleman is impossible to pin down the entire film. Perhaps this is because Harvey Keitel only employs one facial expression: impassive. His character is meant, I think, to be soulful and dedicated. He wears a muscle shirt with what seems like a built-in manziere. He drives a red and white British roadster. He approaches the mixing console as if it were a canvas with a half-finished masterpiece. But there's never a clear idea what he's thinking or feeling. Some examples:

- The Group, supposedly his baby, the band he has nurtured along and believes will be able to make a genuine musical connection with, have their song "Shining Star" played on the radio. When Coleman hears it he doesn't even crack a smile or turn the volume up. He could be pissed, happy, bored, baffled or drunk. We don't know.

- He has a vaguely British girlfriend who he seems to like, but once Velour comes into the picture, he drops her like a hot potato. In the scene where she discovers Velour in his apartment in her underwear and reams him out, Harvey acts like the cameras haven't started rolling yet.

- Similarly, when The Group come to tell him they're done waiting for him to finish dicking around with The Pages, he seems as though he could care less.

Speaking of that scene, it is one of two (TWO!) in which any of the Earth, Wind & Fire band members even have lines. Otherwise the only time we see them is when they are recording in the studio, playing at a roller disco and performing in the final scene. Dear Mr. Shore, if you are going to set up this band as your heroes, for God's sake make us care about them! What's worse is that there are only three Earth, Wind & Fire songs used throughout the whole movie!

The Pages have a sound that is somewhere between The Partridge Family and The Starland Vocal Band, but more bland. The scene where Coleman builds the song in the studio is pretty impressive, though I'd like to have an actual recording engineer verify for me that the knob-moving on the soundboard is accurate. Anyway, Coleman makes their song sound pretty good, even though he has already stated that "you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit." Well, you could but it wouldn't taste very good.

The romance between Velour and Coleman seems to be the one genuine thing in the movie. At first he is justifiably wary of her and her opportunistic ways. But they do form a connection, especially when she reveals to him that Page isn't her real father, but in fact a boyfriend of her mother who molested Velour as a child. This begs the question, why did she decide to form a musical group with him?

At any rate, when she asks him to marry her and be her exclusive producer it does seem a bit sudden, but we have no indication that she is being manipulative.

So in the climatic scene, when Coleman reveals that he faked the marriage and now owns her contract, which he wants to trade to Acorn for his own and that of The Group, we are thrown for a loop. She asks him, seeming truly hurt, "How could you do this to me?"

He answers, "That's the way of the world."

At this point the film ends, with Coleman seeming triumphant (I guess it could also be gas judging by Harvey's face) while The Group plays over the credits.

The conclusion that the film reaches then, is seemingly this: The only way to preserve your artistic integrity is to fake an entire romance and break a psychologically-scarred girl's heart.

Questions and Comments:

Maybe the reason The Group don't have the full support of the record label is that they have the worst band name this side of Limp Bizkit.

Coleman catches Velour's fancy and after an evening at the aforementioned roller disco (a scene which goes on approximately 90 minutes longer than it should) she seduces him. She does so by creating a makeshift Statue Of Liberty costume and saying, "You can take any liberty you want with me." I swear to God this happened!

Speaking of her, according to the Internet Movie Database, this is Cynthia Bostick's ONLY movie. And her only other work was a two year stint on a short-lived '70s TV show. This is baffling, because she's cute and she can act.

Near the end of the film there's a scene of a car moving through some streets. On a billboard off to the left we see a Billboard advertising Earth, Wind & Fire. WTF?

In Conclusion:

Often movies can be judged on whether or not they achieved their intent. Did a horror movie scare you, did a comedy make you laugh, etc. With this movie, I fully believe the intent was for us to cheer when Coleman beat the man at his own game. In that goal, the movie failed. Now if the intent was to make me feel sick to my stomach, well then, mission accomplished.

UHF (1989)

2005-01-22T13:50:00.004-06:00

Yank off the knob

Okay, confession time. I wasn't always the well-informed, music-savvy person you see before you. As a youth I quite enjoyed listening to the radio, or my mom's tapes and records, but I had very little knowledge of pop music past or present. In fact, the only tapes I bought myself and listened to on a consistent basis were by "Weird Al" Yankovic.

While I remember being intrigued by his 1984 parody of Beat It (Eat It), I really got into him because of his 1988 Even Worse album. I was 11 years old and the perfect age to really appreciate the concept of wacky humor. And songs like Fat (a parody of Michael Jackson's Bad), (This Song's Just) Six Words Long (a parody of George Harrison's Got My Mind Set On You), and Lasagna (a parody of La Bamba) were perfect for that. But other songs on the album referenced Oingo Boingo, The Beastie Boys, Tiffany, and Peter Gabriel, all of whom I was just barely aware of.

So yes, for several songs, I knew Weird Al's parodies before I knew the originals. There's something definitely off about that, I know.

As would become my M.O. I got obsessed with Al and quickly filled in his back catalog. This only complicated my musical life, as parodies, "stylistic parodies" (parodies of an artist's sound, not a specific song), and polka medleys of current hits by artists like Devo, The Kinks, Queen, The Clash, Talking Heads, James Brown, El Debarge, and The B-52's were ingrained into my young consciousness. In fact, you might have a pretty good case if you argued that Weird Al is to thank for my eclectic tastes. I remained devoted to Al through high school (he was my first voluntary concert), but the joke began to wear a bit thin by college.

Anyway, this is all to say that I was very interested in a "Weird Al" Yankovic film. On paper, this is a great idea. His videos had always been quite imaginative and funny, if a bit sophomoric, and in theory his sense of humor would translate well to the screen.

That turned out to only be partly the case.

What Happens:

Al plays George Newman, an imaginative fellow that can't hold a job because he is so prone to daydreaming and forgetfulness. When he lucks into running a small UHF station his rich uncle won in a poker game, George's talent starts to shine. Thanks to some truly wacky programming, the station catches on with the public, much to the dismay of channel six owner R.J. Fletcher. When Fletcher tries to get control of U62, George must find a way to save the station.

What Really Happens:

The film starts out promising, with a funny parody of the opening sequence of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The statue he's after is an Oscar. From there the movie attempts to blend a sort of down-to-earth plotline with Airplane-style gags. It's a very difficult balance to maintain, and the film fails more often than not. Gags like Conan The Librarian, Ghandi II ("No More Mr. Passive Resistance"), Spatula City, etc are funny but end up making the rest of the film, the real storyline, seem all the more pedestrian.

Perhaps the problem is a lack of focus on the music. The soundtrack to the film featured several funny parodies such as Isle Thing (marrying Tone Loc and Gilligan's Island), She Drives Like Crazy (Fine Young Cannibals parody), Spam (parodying R.E.M.'s Stand), a Rolling Stones polka medley (Hot Rocks Polka), and the epic The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota, which, seriously, may be Yankovic's greatest accomplishment as a songwriter. But these are all ignored in the film. The only true musical moment in the movie is George's daydream combining a Beverly Hillbillies rerun with the song Money For Nothing by Dire Straits (Fun Fact: Mark Knopfler played guitar on the parody).

In fact, it's no stretch to say that the video for the song UHF (another great Al original) is a better filmic accomplishment than the movie itself. Interspersed with clips from the movie are parodies of famous videos by George Michael, Guns 'N' Roses, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Robert Palmer, Prince, ZZ Top, Billy Idol, and The Beatles. It's brilliantly done.

The movie should have been more like that.

Questions and Comments:

The cast is fairly talented. George's mostly loyal girlfriend is played by Saturday Night Live's Victoria Jackson. The station's janitor Stanley Spadowski (who becomes a star when he has to fill in as a kid's show host) is played by Michael Richards, who later ascended to fame as Kramer on Seinfeld. Long Duck Dong also has a small role, as does The Nanny. Kevin McCarthy plays the villain Fletcher and hams it up just like he did when he played the villain in Innerspace.

The funniest moment of the film is a brief bit featuring two old men sitting on a bench. One is blind and he's trying to do a Rubik's Cube. After each turn he asks his companion if he's got it yet and the companion keeps saying "Nope!"

So many movies feature plucky underdogs attempting to save a local institution by earning a certain amount of money. Many cliches are true, but how come I've never actually come across this situation in real life? Does it ever actually happen?

Is it coincidence that a film that features Kramer as one of the main stars also features a character with the last name of Newman? Yeah, probably.

In Conclusion:

Most devoted "Weird Al" fans will tell you (if you're brave enough to engage them in conversation) that the quality of Al's records come from his original compositions and polka reinterpretations, and the parodies are just for chuckles. In this movie, the opposite is strangely true. The parodies are the funniest parts, with the rest seeming slightly flat in comparison.

The Wall (1982)

2005-01-02T08:20:00.002-06:00

Uncomfortably numb

Apparently seeing a need to complete the trifecta of terrible dialogue-free film depictions of popular albums (the first two being Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Tommy), a group of talented people got together and made this movie of Pink Floyd's 1979 concept album The Wall. And though The Wall is the best of the three, that's not much of a compliment. It's like being the nicest mass murderer on death row.

Interestingly, it effectively killed the genre, just as music video was on the rise.

Admittedly, I went into this film at a double disadvantage. One, I don't really like The Wall as an album. And two, I wasn't stoned or tripping.

What Happens:

Bob Geldof (he of The Boomtown Rats and Live Aid) plays Pink Floyd, a burned out rock star haunted by his smothering mother, dead father, terrible school experience, and divorce. He's sitting in a hotel room, decaying, and having disturbing flashbacks and visions and nightmares, all set to the tunes of Pink Floyd the band. According to the documentaries on the DVD this story was autobiographical, based on the life of Pink Floyd's singer / songwriter Roger Waters (with a little bit of off-his-rocker early member Syd Barrett thrown in for good measure).

What Really Happens:

For a vast majority of the movie (especially the parts about Pink's father and his marriage and divorce) it seems like we're watching a preview of an existing film. You know, snippets of the film's best scenes set to music. I guess that's sort of a compliment.

The non-narrative parts of the movie are its weakness (but, again, I was not chemically altered). There are three major animation sequences by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and they feature a large mechanical bird and a large talking butt, among other things.

There are two majorly disturbing sequences. In one, Pink is shaving and then something snaps and he decides to cut his nipples and shear his eyebrows (Waters says this was a Syd Barrett moment). It's almost impossible to watch. Soon after, the film turns into some sort of fascist rock star fantasy. Pink is no longer a musician but a neo-Nazi dictator. He speaks at a rally and incites several skinhead and folks in black Klu Klux Klan gear to hate others. I guess it's a commentary on the power of the rock star, or something.

Though The Wall is not one of my fave albums, there are some great songs. Here's what we're visually subjected to when we hear those songs in the movie:

Goodbye Blue Sky - One of the aforementioned animation sequences...the German war machine goes into motion (Pink's father was killed in World War II).

Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2 - School kids are marching in unison, wearing grotesque masks. Then they are sent into a meat grinder and turned into sausages. But somehow they get it together enough to riot and destroy the school. As a teacher, I disapprove of this scene, and believe everyone involved needs to reconsider their choices.

Young Lust - Pink brings a groupie back to his hotel room and instead of doing the same old thing he decides to ignore her in favor of the T.V. until he gets a notion to destroy his hotel room. If I were to trash a hotel room, I think I'd wait until just before check out, because otherwise, where are you going to sleep?

Comfortably Numb - Pink recalls the time he found a wounded rat in a field. He brought it back to his mother and she freaked out so he took it to the shed and attempted to care for it. But it died anyway and he dropped it in the river. Not a bad scene, but also not entirely appropriate for the best song on the album.

Run Like Hell - More rioting and violence, and the kids with the masks return. At this point I began to calculate what percentage of the 96 minute film features folks destroying things. It came out to roughly 26.2.

Questions and Comments:

When the band's manager (Bob Hoskins cameo!) comes to rescue Pink, the hotel manager is played by none other than...the guy who played the hotel manager in Ghostbusters. ("$2000 dollars? That's ridiculous; I won't pay it.") I wonder if he just took out ads in the trades saying: Need a snooty hotel manager for your film? Look no further.

This film's director is the only one to appear twice in the Baby, I'm A Star project. Alan Parker also did The Commitments, and his resume is quite interesting, including Fame, Birdy, Evita, and The Life Of David Gale.

In Conclusion:

I know The Wall has become somewhat of a cult film and is still seen in Saturday midnight showings and in dorm rooms across the country, and I respect it for that. And unlike its partners in crime (Sgt.Pepper and Tommy) its story is at least mostly discernible. But I still don't ever care to see it again, voluntarily.

Head (1968)

2004-11-14T18:07:00.003-06:00

"A manufactured image, with no philosophies..."

The Monkees may well be to blame for my obsession with popular music. When they made their 1987 comeback and the old episodes started showing up on TV, they quickly became a favorite. That summer I spent the longest two weeks of my life visiting my grandparents in Kentucky and, to allevieate my homesickness, my step-dad sent me a tape: Then And Now...The Best Of The Monkees. It got my undivided attention.

When I got a CD player the first thing I sought out were Monkees CDs. I was in luck, because Rhino was on the forefront of the reissue game, and they'd released all 10 of the Monkees' albums with "restored original artwork and bonus tracks." I bought all of them. There were the albums with the hits on them, of course, but among a few curiousities cheif was a CD with a plain silver cover and the name Head. It advertised itself as the soundtrack to the film, a film that I didn't even know existed. How could the Monkees have made a movie without me knowing?

Well, because it was a flop. But, it shouldn't have been!

The Monkees got an unfair rap. To the rock and roll hipsters they were the Prefab Four, a cynical commercial unit with no artistic merit, only designed to sell records and merchandise to teen girls. There is some merit to this, afterall the group did advertise clothing for JC Penny. The band weren't picked with music in mind. Sure, Mike and Peter were actual performers and songwriters, and Mickey and Davy could sing, but they were actors first. The untruth about the Monkees is that they they were fakes. Yes, they came together in an artificial way, and they had a powerful corporate machine behind them, but in they end, they were still a band. In their short initial career, they sporadically did things that all bands do: They performed live, composed some of their own material, and recorded music as a self-contained unit.

In a time so concerned with authenticity, the boys themselves were painfully aware of their image. Head, believe it or not, was an attempt to change that image.

What Happens:

Helmed by first-time director Bob Rafelson (who would later do Five Easy Pieces and The Postman Always Rings Twice) and co-written by Jack Nicholson (yes, THAT Jack Nicholson) Head is a very stream-of-consciousness, very meta film. There is no plot to speak of, only a series of vaguely connected vignettes and musical numbers. That's not to say there aren't recurring themes. Appropriately, the film is majorly concerned with overcoming the fake and commercial aspects of life, more specifically the Monkees' status as manufactured teen idols. The way to do this? Make a really hip film, and have the boys admit they're fakes.

What Really Happens:

Imagine yourself as a teenage Monkees fan coming into the theater, excited to see your idols on the big screen and expecting the rolling-a-bed-through-the-streets-while-catchy-music-plays Marx Brothers style comedy of the TV show. Instead what you see is a highly esoteric, impressionistic work of art filled with songs you don't know.

Now you can see why this movie tanked so badly at the theaters. Expectations are one thing, but remove those and what you have is a highly enjoyable film.

We start with the dedication and opening of a suspension arch bridge. When the mayor is about to cut the ribbon, Mickey comes crashing through like a runner winning a race, and then promptly takes a dive off the side of the bridge. While he's in the water, Porpoise Song (Theme From Head) strikes up and the colors turn psychedelic and some mermaids show up. The song itself is a minor classic filled with nonsensical lyrics ("an overdub has no choice / it cannot rejoice"). The biggest surprise is it was written by Goffin and King, the team responsible for some of the group's poppiest hits. Sgt.Pepper obviously had a huge influence.

This transitions into a scene where a hot girl is taking turns making out with all of the boys. She saves Davy for last and of course that kiss sets off harps and doves. It's sort of a dig at his poster boy image, and the first sign that the Monkees have become self-aware. This becomes very obvious in the next sequence, where we see the boys in the trenches of war. They are preparing for a raid, which promptly turns into them running onto stage for a concert. Of course there's a commentary on the Vietnam war there, as well as an insider's look at how it feels to be the objects of so much fervor. The boys play Circle Sky, a rare de-countrified Mike Nesmith composition, and the performance is interspersed with screaming audience reaction and actual scenes of people in horrible situations. It's obvious but effective social commentary. When the band finishes the song, they're literally ripped apart by the audience.

From there the movie just snowballs, through a funny fake Coke commercial set in the desert, to a belly-dancing sequence, to western, boxing, and party scenes. Throughout, people step in and out of character, walk off sets, or have existential crises. Men turn out to be women, maharishis turn out to be liars, cops dance, Mike denouces Christmas and birthdays, huge eyeballs appear in medicine cabinets, etc.

The music shuffles things along but there's not a single classic song. As We Go Along is an introspective number accompanied by scenes of the boys walking though snow-convered mountains and flower-filled fields, and to me is reminiscent of those old Sesame Street song sequences about nature or lonliness.

As the film winds down the boys engage in a manic chase through the film's sets and end up right back where they started, in the water. And as the film ends we realize the water was not a river or ocean, but a tank in which they were trapped.

Questions and Comments:

Teri Garr, Victor Mature ('60s B-movie actor), Annette Funicello, and Frank Zappa all make appearances. The latter gets the best lines. After Davy's performance of the vaudeville-esque number Daddy's Song (with choreography by Toni Basil!), Zappa tells him: "That song was pretty white, man." He goes on to say that Davy obviously spends more time on his dancing than his music, and should probably reverse that.

My senior year of college a friend and I wrote and directed our own short film. It was called Put On Your Dancing Pants. Not long before we started production, we watched Head, and little did we know how much influence it would have. The movie we made incorporated several elements of Head, including a dream sequence, flashing words on the screen, interviews, and a general sense of surrealism.

The dialogue is rather sparse, but what is said is usually funny or quotably weird, such as "Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor" and "I believe he's in the john, I mean, comfort room."

In Conclusion:

There were really two possible outcomes regarding the release of this film. The first possibility was that Monkees' fans, critics, and haters all embraced the film for its artistic merit and self-awareness and the Monkess thus lost their square image. The second possibility, the one that actually happened, was that the band was effectively killed. They limped on for another year without Peter Tork and then called it quits.

That's a shame really. Overall, this movie manages to be wonderfully weird without crossing the line to offputtingly weird, and it does so admirably. You'd never see a major label recording act make a movie this cool and out-there today. Never.

Jailhouse Rock (1957)

2004-10-31T15:50:00.003-06:00

Keep it locked up

In terms of numbers, Elvis Presley has a film career unmatched by any other recording star. And as we know, quantity ALWAYS means quality. And Jailhouse Rock is considered the cream of the crop.

It might be helpful to keep in mind that when this film was released, Elvis was already a huge star with several number one hits to his name.

What Happens:

Elvis plays Vince Everett, a thuggish feller who's sent to jail for beating a man to death. Here, he's considered a "hooligan" and ends up in a cell with Colonel Tom Parker, I mean Honk, a musically-inclined old man. Honk likes to play gospel songs on his guitar to soothe the souls of the other inmates. When he learns that Vince has musical talent he nurtures it, teaching Vince everything he knows.

He even arranges to get Vince on T.V. and it results in mountains of fan mail (including a disturbing letter from a 15-year-old girl wherein she gives her measurements).

After 14 months, he gets out of prison and is determined to become a star. He meets a record company employee named Peg who helps him on his road to fame. The film follows him through the traditional arc of struggling-for-fame, achieving it, getting too big for his britches, and then realizing the error of his ways.

What Really Happens:

I had problems with this movie. The main one is that Elvis' character is not likable at all. He goes to prison because he gets into a melee with a pimp and can't control his anger while beating him up. Since this is the case, then you hope for the movie to offer the character some redemption. It does, but not enough. In fact there's one small redemptive moment compared to roughly 8 horrible ones. Here are some of them:

Afer his star-making turn as in the televised prison talent show (!) he stupidly involves himself in a prison riot and gets more time added to his sentence.

On his road to fame he's petulant. There's a scene in which he sings "Young And Beautiful" in a club and the patrons could care less. In frustration, Vince smashes his guitar in the face of a particularly chatty patron. Yeah, that's the way to build a fanbase.

When Honk gets out of prison, looking for a piece of Vince's career, Vince cold-bloodedly cuts him off.

Later, he slaps up a record executive who steals the arrangement idea for one of his songs.

His relationship with Peg is also maddening...they are very hot and cold. At first she seems to despise him but he digs her. Then she starts to like him and he responds by treating her like shit. They flip back and forth for the entire film. It's like Ben and Felicity all over again. It does inspire a curious scene where she tries to include him in her group of friends, but he gets very angry about their discussion of jazz (he thinks it's too high-minded) and storms away after insulting a party-goer. She storms after him to give him the business and he responds by kissing her. Of course she melts, but she does offer weak protestations about his romantic "tactics." He responds: "They ain't tactics honey...it's just the beast in me."

As for the twists and turns of the plot, they aren't really interesting. Peg and Honk both come to think fame has given him a big head (though it was pretty big before) and is not thankful enough for the work they did to get him where he is. This leads to the climactic scene where Vince and Honk get into a fight and Honk punches him straight in the windpipe, thus taking away his voice. Given how much of a jackass Elvis is in the movie, it's kind of a satisfying moment.

(By the way, he gets his voice back for the final scene).

Questions and Comments:

When Elvis reveals his musical talent to Honk, he sings a song about being kissed tenderly. To me, this doesn't seem like the wisest idea... to sing a love ballad to your new cellmate.

Why isn't the music a strong point in the film? There's only one genuinely electrifying song / performance, and that's the title track. Though his dancing is great, he barely even tries to mask the fact that he's lip-synching. Other songs, such as Treat Me Nice, Young And Beautiful,
Don't Leave Me Now, etc. barely qualify as rock 'n' roll. Mostly they're just boring, and even a young fan's insistence that a performance of (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care is "really gonesville" doesn't convince me.

There's a baffling moment wherein a radio DJ (who's about to play Vince's new song) reads a dog food commercial that touts its use of horse meat. I can't even venture an explanation as to why this was given precious film time.

I've mentioned one, but there are actually two scenes where a woman dislikes / is mad at Elivs and his solution is to force her to kiss him. Both times they give in immediately. Are we to believe this is because he was such an awesome kisser? Or is this truly the only method of dealing with women who despise you? If it's the latter, then I've been approaching things all wrong.

In Conclusion:

If this is the cream of the crop that is Elvis' film output, I'm certainly not going to spend any of my time on the rest of the harvest.

Graffiti Bridge (1990)

2004-10-24T21:24:00.002-05:00

This is one bridge that needs to be burned.

Graffiti Bridge was written and directed by Prince and was billed as a long-awaited sequel to Purple Rain. It's actually amazing that this film was made, considering that Prince's second movie, 1986's Under The Cherry Moon, was about as popular as a screen door on a submarine.

What Happens:

As I understand it, the Kid now has his own nightclub (Glam Slam, which was a real club Prince owned in downtown Minneapolis, but the interior scenes don't appear to have been filmed there). He's in debt, and his music isn't bringing large crowds, though the people in the club seem to be enjoying themselves, especially all the couples who are getting freaky in the booths. Instead, the Kid is all wrapped up in some sort of spiritual crisis, spurred on by a mysterious woman named Aura (Ingrid Chavez). The Kid's old rival, Morris Day, also has a night club and he's very interested in putting the Kid out of business, as well as gaining Aura's affections.

What Really Happens:

The end credits say the movie was filmed at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Can I just say that it looks like it? I don't believe more than two scenes were actually filmed on location. At least Under the Cherry Moon had that going for it. From the nightclub exteriors of Seven Corners to the wooded area containing the tagged up bridge of the title, the settings have an enclosed, fake, low-budget feel to them.

Anyway, as we begin, the Kid's girlfriend leaves him because…he likes to write music. I think. At this point he starts seeing Aura, who repeatedly tells him "It's just around the corner." What "it" is, nobody knows. She disappears into thin air a lot, but also hangs out by the titular graffiti bridge in the fake woods, and writes poetry. I must mention here that she also comes with a whispered interior monologue a la every character in David Lynch's version of Dune. I don't really even have an opinion on this.

So Morris Day's club is called Pandemonium, and he has a sort of gangster-like hold on the area of nightclubs called Seven Corners (an actual place in Minneapolis, but they're all college bars and restaurants, not nightclubs). Curiously, there are apparently only four nightclubs (the other two are owned by Mavis Staples and George Clinton!) in Seven Corners. Let me just say here that I don't buy Morris and Jerome's transformation from members of a rival band to gangsters. That whole bit is fuzzy for me. But I must admit that the old chemistry is there even if the sparkling dialogue isn't…perhaps this is why they get as much or more screen time as Prince himself.

But even though Prince's supposed purpose here is to win Aura's heart and protect his club, he doesn't seem especially interested in either. He's apparently not terribly concerned about the operations of his club, or even being there on a regular basis. He seems to be sickened by the blatant sex and skirt-chasing of Morris and Jerome. (That doesn't stop him from freaky with Aura to the tune of Joy In Repetition, replete with a lot of above-the-clothes groping and hip-straddling).

He also spends time writing letters to his dead father (one of the very few connections to Purple Rain, and a tenuous one at best) and seems to want something out of that, but what we don't know. Aura sees a list of songs he's been writing, all have titles referring to spiritual matters, but are any of them played in the movie? No, instead we get mindless jams like New Power Generation and Can We Funk?

It's never clear why Aura, who seems the most lucid character in the movie, would even consider dating Morris. But, she always seems to know something we don't, and probably never will. So, when the Kid steals her away (literally, he kidnaps her), tensions escalate between the Kid and Morris and this results in, besides a few sorry "intimidation" attempts by the Time, a song challenge.

A cool idea, and one that brings up fond allusions to Purple Rain, but we get no clear criteria or rules, and once the competition starts it's intended to be obvious that the Time's performance of Shake is better than Kid's pyrotechnic Tick, Tick, Bang though I'm not convinced.

Then, danger befalls Aura, as she has warned would happen since the beginning of the movie, and Prince uses this as inspiration to win the contest by performing Still Would Stand All Time a pretty, but unremarkable, song. Jerome is amazed: "He won with a ballad."

But wait, don't the Time get a second chance too? Apparently this is like a baseball game in P.E. class where one team got to bat an extra inning and then the period ended and they declared themselves winners while the other team protested to no avail. One can't help but wonder what would have happened if the Time had busted out Ice Cream Castles. One also can't help but wonder why Morris would abide by silly song contest rules when earlier he had no qualms about breaking and entering, threats, and destruction of personal property.

So Morris has this sudden change of heart, lets the Kid have his club, and goes to get it on with his annoying girlfriend. The Kid reprises New Power Generation, and we're out. As the credits roll, we're left wondering if Aura was an angel, and whether what we just watched could truly be considered a movie.

Questions and Comments:

Why couldn't Thieves in the Temple - the best song on the soundtrack - have been utilized better? It's wasted with a montage and band-less performance in which Prince apes some Michael Jackson moves in smoke silhouette style. And this is a cool, creepy song that could have had great resonance with the events of the movie. It seems like Prince was trying to save some money and double this as the video for the song.

What is the purpose of Tevin Cambell coming out and singing Round and Round to the Kid on the street early in the movie? It's a great song, yes, but seems to be in the movie only so it could be placed on the soundtrack. The performance is not built up to, nor does it have any repercussion later in the film.

Why isn't Can't Stop This Feeling I Got in the movie? If any song on the soundtrack would seem custom-made to go in a movie, this is it. It would have been a great performance scene a la Let's Go Crazy in Purple Rain. At least play it over the credits!

What happened to Apollonia? The Revolution? If you were going to call this a sequel to Purple Rain, shouldn't you at least attempt to address these things? A sequel only works when it feels like a natural continuation of the original story, and this doesn't. At all.

The most interesting thing about this movie is how it dovetails with Prince's career path at the time. By that I mean that in the late '80s he was on the commercial decline. The Batman soundtrack had given him a commercial success, but not a critical one, and he'd lost a lot of fans with the Lovesexy album (which was mostly concerned with spirituality and was reportedly inspired by Ingrid Chavez). So Prince turned that pain into art, and as a result put the final nails in the coffin of his movie career.

Jimmy Jam is the most jovial person to ever appear in a movie. Every scene he's in he looks like he's just damned happy to be there. Considering he'd already had several hits with Miss-Jackson-if-you're-nasty by this time, it can't be because he was so thrilled to have a taste of success. He just seems to be a joyous guy, which is nice to see.

In Conclusion:

Maybe we just need to wait for early '90s nostalgia to rear up and cast a rosy glow over everything from that era, but Graffiti Bridge just doesn't evoke that "those were good times" feeling yet. It's inevitable that this sort of rebirth WILL happen though; they're already showing Full House and The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air on Nick-At-Nite. But the sad fact is that even period nostalgia can't redeem the fact that this is a bad movie. Everything that Purple Rain did right, this movie does wrong.

The Wiz (1978)

2004-10-16T08:28:00.002-05:00

There's somebody home in Soulville

Two things about The Wiz:

First, I was completely unaware of it until the summer after my freshman year in college, when I worked at the tiny video rental section of Kroger's Grocery. The first time someone asked me if we had The Wiz, I tried to give her The Wizard of Oz, and then was completely baffled that when she informed that that this wasn't the right movie (afterall, I thought my movie knowledge rather complete). The woman, who was African-American, and an employee at the store, informed me gently but firmly: "It's the black version." It's strange how once something finally comes onto your personal radar screen, it's pretty much permanently there. After that, in one brief summer, I must have had six or seven requests for it, all from African-Americans.

Second, a friend of mine informs me that when he was young he watched The Wiz with a certain sense of fear, not at the events depicted on screen (which could very well inspire fright in a child) but because he thought as a white child it wasn't meant for him and he shouldn't be seeing it.

How unfortunate that a couple of white kids had to be so ignorant. Though this version of the Wizard of Oz story was created by African-Americans and features an all black cast, I feel that it's a big glib to reduce it to the description "the black version." It is also a modernized, urbanized version, with a surprising extra shot of pathos.

What Happens:

Dorothy is a 24-year-old Kindergarten teacher who lives in a New York apartment with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and she's played by Diana Ross. On Thanksgiving, family and friends gather together, but Dorothy is visibly distant from any sort of connection. While cleaning up, Aunt Em admonishes Dorothy for her fear of getting out in the world. Immediately after, Dorothy's dog Toto runs outside and she follows him into a nasty snowstorm. She's swept up by a snow tornado (!) into another world. That world is called Oz, and it's a wasted, twisted version of New York, replete with graffiti people, human crows, ruined amusement parks, and evil subways.

Here, Dorothy has accidentally killed the Wicked Witch of the West, and inherited her magic silver shoes. However, all she cares about is getting home, and sets about to visit the Wiz, who rules Oz with his magical powers. Along the way she picks up companions who all lack something: a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion.

They reach the Wiz, who directs them to kill Evelynn, the Wicked Witch of the East before he will grant their wish. They follow through on said mission, reveal the Wiz to be Richard Pryor, and find that they already possessed the things they had been searching so hard for. Dorothy goes home with a sense of self-assurance, strength, and love. Oh yeah, this happens amidst a startling amount of elaborate musical numbers.

What Really Happens:

Okay, let's get the negative out of the way first. I have to admit a bias about musicals, one that might be shocking from a person who would undertake a project like this. The bias is, I find most musicals boring. There are exceptions (My Fair Lady and The Wizard of Oz), but watching them at home I have a tendency to get antsy, and roll my eyes when people break out into song randomly. I'm sorry.

So my one question about The Wiz: Why so many musical numbers? I didn't clock it, but I would estimate that of the film's 135 minute running time, 115 are feature someone singing or dancing. This would be wonderful if all the songs were up to snuff, but most are just blandly inoffensive. And maybe some blame can be put on Sidney Lumet, a director with some distinguished films to his credit (Serpico, Network, and 12 Angry Men to name a few) but no musicals before or after this one.

Anyway, this movie's screenplay was written by Joel Schumacher, who also gave the world (gasp!) Batman and Robin (besides Simone, the single worst movie I've seen when expectation is taken into account). This did not bode well when I saw it in the opening credits, and yet I was able to set aside my bias against crap movies and realize that the dialogue is exceedingly well-crafted. Just the fact that the Scarecrow continues to pull relevant famous quotes from his body is impressive, but we get a lot of modernized, intelligent wordplay here.

Comparisons to the original Wizard of Oz are inevitable, and yet The Wiz holds up amazingly well against that classic. I won't bore you with all of the changes, but here are a few that really grabbed my attention:

Dorothy is very sympathetic. Much more than the Judy Garland version, you get a sense of emptiness and fear out of Diana Ross' portrayal. Perhaps it's because she's older, or because her eyes bug out. Anyway, all good stories are about characters who find something they never knew they had within, and this definitely gets across here. In the original version you just feel like Judy simply appreciated home more because of her adventure. Diana comes back a woman.
Casting Oz as an urban wasteland was brilliant and it carries through in most spots, especially in Munchkinland becoming a city park, and the vastness of the Emerald City as a hopping downtown. Just as the original twisted Kansas farm country into Dorothy's Oz, The Wiz takes New York and does the same, and the results are naturally richer.
Couldn't the lion have been changed into something more urban? Granted, there are no lions in Kansas (though there would have been plenty of scarecrows), but how about a big rat for the New York version? Now that would have been cool. Freaky, but cool. An aside: Were there no advancements in costuming between 1939 and 1978? The lion still looks like little more than a guy in pajamas. One improvement: In The Wiz, we learn that the lion's real name is Fleetwood Coupe de Ville.
There's a wonderful sequence when they get to the Emerald City where the current color of style keeps changing on the Wiz's whim. They go from green, to red, to gold each accompanied by a song and dance that tout that color's virtue. The costuming budget must have been astronomical, but the commentary on the fleeting nature of style is priceless.
The flying monkeys are just as weird and disturbing here as in the original. They have motorcycles for bodies, sunglasses, and huge mouths.
Finally, I must say something about the casting. For the most part it's great. Diana is good. Nipsy Russell (as the Tinman) often appears to be channeling Bill Cosby, but is effective nonetheless. Lena Horne is a bit too campy as Glenda the good witch (and what's with all the floating kids around her?). The idea to cast Richard Pryor as the Wiz was a great one, even if he doesn't have much to do in the role. Mabel King kicks ass as Evillene, especially in her one number Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News (don't try to figure out the double negatives in that title). Finally, I found Micheal Jackson to be very charming and he gets the two catchiest songs (of course) You Can't Win and Ease On Down The Road.

Questions and Comments:

Dorothy is 24? Yeah, right! Diana Ross probably insisted on this being the character's age, since she doesn't look a day under 44.

Is it me or does the melody of When I Think Of Home sound a little bit like I Just Can't Stop Loving You (from Michael's 1987 Bad album)?

The tape copy of the film I rented from Blockbuster was strangely worn out at the part where the lion is introduced. It's as if someone watched that part over and over again, obsessing over it for some unknown reason. I like to think about these sorts of things.

If you start Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album three minutes into this movie, it will play in synch with the happenings in the film. This is a complete fabrication.

In Conclusion:

Purely given the nature of this film (remake a classic, and use all black actors?!!), reaction is bound to be divisive. But disregarding race and tinkering, there are some movies that you just feel you could live in, like there's a rich world contained within. Few movies achieve it, but the ones that do are the ones that show attention to details, interesting dialogue, and character pathos. Even though it is flawed, this movie has all of that. And if you find yourself lacking a sense of wonder, watch it with a child…I'm betting it's a film that they will be both frightened by and irresistibly drawn to, just like the original.

Moonwalker (1988)

2004-10-10T20:46:00.002-05:00

Michael Jackson egomania when we could take it

In the future, lots will be written about this time in Michael Jackson's life. One of the most common sentiments I hear in reference to him besides revulsion is sadness. He made so much vital and exciting music that it would be a shame for it to be tainted by his significant personal problems.

Sadly, it's getting to the point where we forget how HUGELY popular Michael was, and for the right reasons. I mean, Thriller has sold 45 million copies world wide! He won eight Grammys in one night! Bad had five number one singles! Michael's transformation from a child star to an adult star was something the world had never seen before. At the apex (or at least plateau) of his popularity, Michael made a movie. It's not a continuous story, but more of a visual scrapbook.

What Happens:

We start off with a performance montage of Man in the Mirror which is replete with many shots of fainting audience members, and interspersed clips of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gahndi, JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa, starving kids, etc. It's kind of a downer opening, but it strives for some sort of relevance, punctuated by Michael standing like Jesus on the cross. Make your own interpretations and insert them here.

Next we get a well-edited retrospective of Michael's career, moving from the infectious sounds of the Jackson 5 (and the early proof of just how much talent this man contains), to the rat song Ben, to the highlights of his solo career. The best moment of this is easily his 1983 moonwalk at the Motown 25th Anniversary special. The crowd's reaction is a sort of elated gasp. Wonderful.

This is followed by three music video clips. The first is a shot-by-shot recreation of the Bad video (which was directed by Martin Scorsese) using all little kids. It kind of reminds me of the Lost Boys from Hook, and creeps me out a little.

The clip for the song Speed Demon makes gratuitous use of Claymation. I can't knock this too much, because that was the shit back in those days...remember the California Raisins?

The next one is my favorite. It's a video for a Bad b-side called Leave Me Alone, which is definitely in my top 5 favorite Michael songs. Not only is the song great, the production values of the video are outstanding. It was done in an arresting animated collage style (the Talking Heads used it in their And She Was video), and features Michael directly addressing the odd media image he has acquired. Not only do countless tabloid headlines fly by, but he also passes his supposed shrine to Liz Taylor (accompanied by Bubbles the chimp of course), and dances with the Elephant Man's bones. This sort of willingness to self-parody is what is desperately missing from modern-day Michael.

Here's where it gets boring. "Smooth Criminal" is supposed to be the meat in the sandwich, but it's processed instead of deli. This is a baffling bit of filmmaking that concerns Michael and his three child friends (one played by Sean Lennon!) and a drug czar played by an extremely hammy Joe Pesci. Turns out that Michael is some sort of alien with the power to transform in to cars and robots. The high point of this is that it segues seamlessly into the very cool video for Smooth Criminal. And yet, how this is related to the rest of the story is unclear.

After the Smooth Criminal performance, I'd recommend fast forwarding to the climactic showdown where Michael turns into a robot and his face momentarily breaks apart. It's very prescient.

Finally, we wind down with an overlong performance of Come Together, which was to appear a full seven years later on the HIStory album. Then the credits roll over the group that worked with Paul Simon on Graceland performing a song called Walking on the Moon. This is a nice touch.

In Conclusion:

If you can make the mammoth effort to separate the Michael of today from the nostalgia for his glory days, this is an enjoyable viewing experience. The amazing thing is that no matter your feelings on Michael, at some point you are just likely to feel creeped out (or at least uncomfortable) by this film. Like I said, prescient.

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (2002)

2004-10-02T18:54:00.002-05:00

Every little thing is gonna tear them apart

Novice filmmaker Sam Jones thought it might be a fun project to follow Wilco through the recording of their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Their previous albums, AM, Being There, and Summerteeth were all big critical favorites and had garnered them a dedicated, if small, fan base. Jones was one of those fans, and with the delusion of a fan felt the band was on just the verge of a commercial breakthrough. So why not document the making of the album that would bring them international stardom?

It didn't quite work that way, but Jones got something even better. As sometimes happens, the stars aligned and a wonderful story fell into his lap.

What Happens:

When Wilco completed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and turned it into their record company, the company flatly rejected it as not commercial enough. The band promptly bought the album back and sold it to another company which happened to have the same owner as their old label (in today's music industry there are really only three major labels). When it was released, the critics hailed the album as a masterpiece, and the first week sales were better than any previous Wilco album (which, granted, was still not a whole lot).

It's very rock 'n' roll to think of the record companies as completely clueless, and here we have concrete proof of it.

Questions and Comments:

For my money, no form of film has more potential for thrills than documentary. It is an often-abused, cliched, and parodied format, but when done right, like Hoop Dreams, or this film, it is riveting.

More than just the shake-your-head story of an innovative album being rejected, Jones also captures that old favorite, band infighting. Jay Bennett and Jeff Tweedy have a visible tension between them that grows as the film progresses and eventually leads to Bennett quitting the band. It's a shame really, because they obviously did great work together, but it's also thrilling to see. There's an argument between the two over a minute detail of editing that just completely sums up how silly things can get between two people. Jay's post-quitting interview is a textbook case of self-delusion. Watch for it!

It's a bit strange to spend so long looking at people you normally just listen to. So, I found myself my making mental connections to more familiar faces. For example, Jay Bennett resembles a more studious version of Scottie, from Boogie Nights. Also, the band's manager Tony could make some side money as a James Garner impersonator. Finally, the similarity between Jeff Tweedy and the Man Behind the Curtain from The Wizard of Oz is eerie.

Despite the wonderful music they make, this band can come off as a bit humorless and self-possessed, and this documentary bucks that perception with several small touches. The best of these is a scene in a Wendy's with Tweedy and his wife and kids ordering and attempting to put together enough cash to pay. It blows the roof off any perceptions of a debauched rock star lifestyle.

This movie also has the advantage of being the best-titled of the lot (Stop Making Sense taking a close second). It is, of course, the name of the first track on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but there's something more to it. I think it's the fact that the I and the Am aren't contracted. It sounds so formal. It's almost as though it's a response to something else.

Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory plays over the final credits. I can find no logical reason for this, but it's a brilliant touch nonetheless.

In Conclusion:

Beautifully filmed in black and white and expertly edited from what must have been a TON of footage, a fan could ask for little more than this. Even non-fans are likely to be sucked in by the sheer arc of the story and appeal of the people involved.

Can't Stop The Music (1980)

2004-09-25T20:02:00.002-05:00

Can't we at least try?

Though there should have been every indication that Village People's days as a mainstream commercial force were at their end by 1980, someone somewhere made the horrible decision to give them their own movie. Okay, maybe the idea wasn't completely horrible. They had a fan base that might have given the movie respectable earnings and cult classic status. But that "might have" hinged on the fact that they make a semi-decent movie. In that, they failed.

What Happens:

Steve Guttenberg plays Jack Morell, an aspiring songwriter who lives with a retired supermodel, played by Lex Luthor's girlfriend from Superman I and II. In the opening scene Jack quits his "demanding" record store job and then celebrates by roller-skating gaily through the streets of New York.

Jack has an opportunity to DJ at the "happening" club where they hang out, Saddle Cramps. As he does this, Samantha (the supermodel) dances with a series of strange men (including one name Phillipe, who dresses in full Native American garb...okay not "full" he tends to prefer extremely short and tight cut-off jeans over a loincloth).

Through a series of tedious events, Samantha and Jack decide to form a group with the aforementioned men as singers. The rest of the movie follows their attempts to achieve stardom with an increasing cast of characters joining the ride, including Jack's mom, a lawyer played by Olympian Bruce Jenner, a record exec, and the head of a modeling agency.

What Really Happens:

This movie is full of inexplicable things. For example, we have no idea how Jack and Samantha met and decided to live together, or how long they've done so. Therefore it's strange when they start talking about his songwriting dream as though it's something they've never previously discussed. It's like he woke up one morning and decided that's what he wanted to do. This leads to a series of delayed realizations, such as 1) Samantha has close ties in the record biz; 2) Jack can't sing; and 3) we could recruit all these singers we know (so what if they happen to have proclivities toward dressing like construction workers, cowboys, and Indians). Odd.

The scene where Samantha goes out to recruit the guys to sing is notable for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that she gets an ice cream cone before she starts, and it keeps changing flavors as the scene progresses. It isn't prominent enough to be a visual gag, so it just looks like sloppy filmmaking. The other is the fact that the Construction Worker gets his own dream sequence in which he sings a spectacularly horrible song called I Love You To Death, which by all appearances is about domestic abuse.

Bruce Jenner (this film was supposed to launch his acting career, but he only made one other film after this one) comes out of nowhere. There's no satisfying explanation for why his character becomes affiliated with Samantha and Jack. When he first meets them, he seems to be having fun, and then he just storms out. Then he comes back again the next day and engages in some slapstick comedy / sex with Samantha.

Ray the Policeman shows up at a party and joins the group impromptu. They note that he was formerly in a group called the Cop-Outs. Kind of humorous. Interesting fact I learned from the DVD: The original Policeman (who sang on all the hits) had left the group right before the movie. He was obviously a smart man.

After the group gets a chance to record a demo, they decide to add more members and this leads to an audition scene that outdoes itself. Nerd Alert: One of the comics books I used to read was called The Legion of Super Heroes. They had about 30 members, and they would periodically have try-outs where these complete losers with strange super powers would show up. This scene reminded me of that. Anyway, from this we get The Biker a.k.a. Leatherman, an obviously gay and obviously hairy fellow who does a knockout version of Danny Boy. The Army guy also comes in here, but for some reason he doesn't have to audition.

I guess one of the big complaints about the movie from the group's fanbase was the fact that the filmmakers "straightened it up" for mainstream consumption. So the movie rolls along on the pretense of straightness (at the initial party scene all of the Villagers save Phillipe seem to have lady friends), and then we get to the YMCA scene and GAYNESS bursts out like the sun after a brief rainstorm. Seriously, this has to be one of the gayest non-explicit sequences ever filmed. The montage includes showering, synchronized swimming, gymnastics, locker room hi-jinks, wrestling, dance boxing, push-ups, and weight-training. All featuring men. Not a woman in sight. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The band's rise to the top never really happens. They badger a beleaguered record executive into signing them to a contract, and perform in a milk commercial with Samantha (using "milkshake" as a euphemism waaaay before Kelis ever thought to). Then they perform a triumphant one-song set in San Francisco at the end of the film and the credits come, leaving us all feeling like we barely know the Village People any better than we did a couple hours earlier.

Questions and Concerns:

Is Jack supposed to be gay? The supermodel mentions several times how they have a strictly platonic relationship, and we never see him show any romantic interest in anyone, man or woman.

The fact that Steve Guttenberg still had a career (and how: Police Academy, Cocoon, Three Men And A Baby, and Short Circuit, all with ensuing sequels) after this film is simply amazing. His acting here is so horrible, and in one scene they have him wearing white overalls with no shirt.

Speaking of sequels, the record executive who eventually signs the group is played by Paul Sand, whose most famous role is the boxing coach in Teen Wolf Too. This is not a lie.

If the movie wasn't so afraid to be gay there might have been more lines like this one delivered by Jack: "Anyone who can swallow two Snowballs and a Ding-Dong shouldn't have any trouble swallowing a little pride."

This movie might be ageist. An old lady who hits people with her bag shows up twice, and in Bruce Jenner's introductory scene he gets mugged by an old woman with an accomplice who rides a moped and wears a jumpsuit and helmet (he looks like one of the Beastie Boys in the Alive video).

In one heartbreaking moment, Jack calls the Village People sound "the music of the '80s." Ironic that this line is in the film that killed their career (at least temporarily).

In Conclusion:

Village People were an inherently outlandish concept that lent itself to this sort of marketing, so it's sad that what could have ended up as a gay cult film ended up so pedestrian. There are only four or five musical numbers, and much-too-much time dedicated to boring characters that surround the band. Most of the Village People themselves probably only had one or two lines, IN THEIR OWN MOVIE.

Well, as Samantha says early in the film: "I didn't invent it; I'm just in it."

Tommy (1975)

2004-09-19T18:43:00.004-05:00

A musical rumination on fame, growing up, and testing an audience's patience

Pete Townsend has a story to tell you, and he doesn't really care if you "get" that story or not. The Who's discography is littered with high concept projects like Quadrophenia, Lifehouse (which, with the story abandoned, became their best album, Who's Next), and Tommy. The latter was a hit as an album when released in 1969, so Hollywood said: Let's make a movie!

It's hard to tell if this was a bad idea from the get-go, or if all of the decisions made thereafter just made it seem so.

What happens:

Ann Margaret, wearing the same sweater she wore in the beginning of Bye Bye Birdie, falls in love with a military man. They get married, have a baby named Tommy, and then the military man dies in war. I must say that throughout this movie, Ann Margaret is nearly consistently foxy, even 15 or so years out from her prime. Well done to her. Anyway, Ann meets a new man, who is instant trouble. In a scene that causes the first (but not last!) significant confusion of the film, Tommy witnesses either 1) his mom and this new man having sex, or 2) his new step-dad killing his father. Perhaps this is metaphorical. I don't know.

Anyway, Tommy ends up deaf, dumb, and blind.

From there, we go to Tommy pretty much grown up and now being played by Roger Daltry. There's something poetic in having Daltry play Tommy, in that he was the voice for The Who, and here he is stricken silent. Anyway, from here the film takes us on a disturbing series of adventures for Tommy, meant, I assume, to signify the slow corruption of growing up. Sadly, I'm not buying into Pete Townsend's worldview at all. At some point, Tommy becomes a pinball champion, gets famous, then rebels against his fame (controlled of course by his step-father) and gets his voice back. Credits.

Oh, and did I mention that there's absolutely no dialogue? None. The music plays in some form from beginning to end.

What really happens:

At 25 minutes in we get the first of many strangely interesting moments. This is not only the first appearance of the rest of The Who, but also Eric Clapton. And they're all wearing priests' robes and performing next to a big statue of Marilyn Monroe! What the mind really wants to know is that with both Pete and Eric playing guitar, who takes lead?

Tina Turner throws in a stunner of a performance as the Acid Queen, who introduces Tommy to drugs and/ or sex (not sure which, really, but it involves syringes, snakes, skeletons, and a sarcophagus). Can I just say that Tina Turner is the all-time champ of musicians at picking acting roles? I mean, this AND Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?! She needs some sort of special Oscar for this, or at least a Golden Globe.

Keith Moon appears again, this time as a nasty uncle in the hands down most disturbing scene in any music movie. He sings Fiddle About, which is about child molestation. You can't really blame the filmmakers for this one: It's a disgusting topic any way you film it. But what makes it so disturbing is how much Keith seems to be enjoying himself!

There's a scene in which Tommy confronts himself in a junkyard. The writer, producers, and director of Superman II should be ashamed for blatantly ripping this off!

In the most transcendent moment of the film (okay, it's the only transcendent moment), Elton John appears as Tommy the Pinball Wizard's opponent. Inexplicably, he's been given super long legs and huge-ass shoes, but he looks great and sings his heart out, and mugs appropriately to the camera. It shall remain one of the great mysteries of all time as to why Elton never got his own movie in the '70s. A shame, really. Anyway, The Who play along with him and then destroy their instruments at the end of the song…honestly, this scene almost redeems the whole film.

Jack Nicholson sings. I don't even need to say anything about this, do I?

Ann Margaret has an extended scene in which she's watching commercials in an all-white room. She begins to drink and hallucinate and ends up wallowing in baked beans and chocolate. It's sort of sexy and gross and baffling all in one big package.

In Conclusion:

Stephen Hawking needs to watch this movie, because it may defy the laws of physics as our universe knows them. Time actually slows down while you're watching. It's an amazing phenomenon really, and I must commend all involved.

Crossroads (2002)

2004-09-12T12:06:00.002-05:00

Author's note: This piece was written when my attitude toward Britney was much more positive. As of now, she has mostly frittered my good will away, but in better days I had somewhat of a crush… Anyway, the format differs from my other reviews in that I kept a running diary as I watched. That is reproduced faithfully below.

Okay, it's Friday night at approximately 9:45 PM and we're live from my modest apartment. I have spent the earlier part of the evening with friends, so I'm not a total loser here.

9:47 - 9:55 Previews. Orange County's contains a "Britney Spears is vapid" joke. Priceless!

9:57 Ad for Britney's latest album, Britney. Already have it.

9:59 All right, 12 minutes later the movie is about to start. The ratings board warning before it promises a PG-13 rating with "Sexual Content and Teen Drinking." Now we're talking! The credits start, listing not only Britney, but Dan Ackroyd and Kool Moe Dee too! I'm already wishing I'd seen this in the theater.

10:01 Britney's real life little sister is playing her as a kid, in a flashback sequence. Britney narrates, telling us exactly what is happening on screen before us. There are three girls who promise to be best friends forever.

10:02 We're into it already! Britney dances to Madonna (Open Your Heart) in her bedroom. She's wearing a camisole and panties! Oh no, she's putting on pants. This scene should have been MUCH longer.

10:05 Okay, so the girls are about to graduate from high school and aren't friends anymore. Points for realism. Now Dan Ackroyd makes his second appearance and Britney has her first chance to act. Verdict: Dan looks like he's been stung by a hive of bees. Britney cries convincingly. She's having a Diane Court-esque crisis.

10:07 Noticing that we haven't heard any Britney music yet.

10:08 Now we're getting somewhere! Yowza! Britney is wearing pink bra and panties and is about to lose her virginity with her lab partner. Less than ten minutes in and this movie is looking like a skin fest.

10:09 Britney isn't going to go through with it. How sad to be this lab partner guy…he gets so close to the sun. Like Icarus.

10:10 - 10:16 Plot stuff. The three friends reunite and decide to go on a road trip.

10:17 We meet the guy Britney is obviously going to sleep with. I already hate him. The movie has to make me like him.

10:19 Still no Britney music, but we do get N*Sync in the car. The guy doesn't like it; he's too cool for it! Plus, he refers to his car as "the cruiser." I'm liking him less and less, if that's possible.

10:24 Britney in the shower!

10:25 Britney wears a lot of pink in this movie. Oh, there goes the after school special alert: One of Britney's friends is pregnant.

10:28 Matthew Sweet just got some residuals off the appearance of Girlfriend, but we're still sans Britney music, dammit. Oh, and the interactions between this guy and Britney are SO lame. I'm going to be tempted to turn the movie off when they sleep together. Oh, and since he seems to not own a razor, I'm going to start calling him Stubbly.

10:30 Britney says "bitch" and "damn." I'm scandalized!

10:33 Kool Moe Dee appears!

10:34 The pregnant girl wants to be a singer, so they're going to do karaoke. But wait, she's choking! Who is she, the girl in The Devil and Max Devlin? Does Eliot Gould have to be there for her to sing well? And the audience is booing! Who boos bad karaoke? Isn't that the point? This appears to be the same road house audience the Blues Brothers played for.

10:35 Britney takes over the mic! She's looking foxy, and there's a stripper's pole right next to her! The look on Stubbly's face is unintentional comedy all the way to the bank!

10:40 An overzealous suitor gets fresh with Britney and Stubbly punches him out. It would have been a stroke of genius to have this guy played by Justin Timberlake. You hate a wasted opportunity like that.

10:41 - 10:46 As promised, teen drinking. But wait a minute, isn't one of them pregnant? And oh, now they seem to have gotten sober really quickly. They're sharing.

10:47 Stubbly takes his shirt off to reaveal tats on his back. Oh he's so dreamy (insert sarcastic tone). Blech!

10:50 Some classic over-acting from Stubbly. Who is he, Charlie Chaplin? You get the feeling that this is his big scene in the movie….and it sucks! My goodness what a whiny guy: "My car…it's the only thing that hasn't been taken over by chicks." Look dude, some of us enjoy the company of women.

10:52 Not only does Stubbly manage to maintain a permanent 5 o'clock shadow (he must have a beard trimmer set to "mildly rugged") but he insists on wearing a stocking cap, in Texas, in the middle of June. Is this really necessary? Okay, so now he's going to tell us why he really went to jail…

10:53 That was so lame!!! Is it just me or is Stubbly RUINING THE MOVIE?!?

10:54 - 10:58 They camp out at the place where Britney filmed the Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman video.

10:59 Kim Catrall makes the briefest of appearances. There is a David Lynch-ian moment where the phone rings and both Kim and Britney react as though the sound is foreign to them.

11:01 Britney, wet from the rain and emotionally distraught seeks comfort in his Stubbly's arms. They kiss. Ugh! Get a clue Britney! This is too close to reality for me.

11:04 Stubbly sits in an atrium type area at a white piano. Is he John Lennon? Stop right now! See, he's putting music to the poem Britney wrote…it's called Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman. I bet Max Martin and Dido sat at a piano just like this when they wrote it.

11:08 Capitol Records building makes an appearance.

11:09 They're at the beach. Britney is looking especially cute in a bikini and a little hat. She gets diarrhea of the mouth, and Stubbly is utterly uninterested in what she has to say.

11:10 There's an odd cameo from a man who appears to be former MTV veejay Jesse Camp. It's very disorienting. Sidebar: I actually saw Jesse Camp here at a record store, just walking around. My friend Richard was also there and claimed it wasn't him, but really, how many supper skinny guys trying to look like the offspring of Keith Richards and Steven Tyler are there?

11:11 I just realized I don't know any of the character's names. Oh no, and here's the scene I've been dreading. Stubbly and Britney are going to get it on…and we're not going to see a single moment of it! I'm strangely conflicted about this.

11:15 Plot convenience alert! I won't even go into it. It's not worth it. Suffice to say that even M. Night Shamalyn wouldn't have this happen in one of his movies. Shameful! I find it interesting that while Britney is throwing away her virginity, her two friends go through huge traumas! Is Britney causing this? Is this some sort of twisted take on morality?

11:18 Dan Ackroyd appears again and gives a speech almost as lame as Stubbly's "chicks / car" speech. Dan has a southern accent that appears for only one word of this whole diatribe. He is REALLY mailing it in. They should give a special award at the Oscars for mailing it in. Or at least a Golden Globe.

11:20 Britney claims that all Stubbly did was "give us a ride." Well, at least he gave her one. Ohhh, too easy.

11:25 Britney performs Not A Girl… Wow, this really came together quickly and without any practice. We're dealing with prodigies here. All of that practice that Britney has lip-synching really came in handy for this scene. But, Britney looks good, so who really cares about all of that? Oh, I think I just inadvertently discovered the filmmakers' philosophy for this movie.

11:29 The three girls reaffirm their promise to be friends forever. I want to see a sequel where Britney has become tired of Stubbly's irresponsibility and has grown away from her friends again.

11:30 Britney performs Overprotected as the credits roll. Fine way to end things. Oh wait, yes, we've got the Purple Rain frozen frame for the end. Kudos to the filmmakers for that.

11:32 Tape rewinding. I don't feel like I've wasted my time, but it could have been spent slightly better. This was a bad movie, but Britney was in her underwear. Stubbly was the worst boyfriend in a pop star movie this side of Glitter, but that underwear was pink. Okay I'm too conflicted about this movie. Best to just end it here.

Krush Groove (1985)

2004-09-06T08:19:00.002-05:00

There are some higher

Krush Groove is the first rap music movie. For that alone it gets props, but unfortunately, its notoriety stems mostly from the fact that it was a flop (especially stinging because it came in the wake of Purple Rain, and probably labored under unrealistic expectations of the same level of success). You might remember that it inspired the famous exchange in Dogma where Ben Affleck attempts to use Matt Damon's faith in the film's box office prospects to prove that he is more often wrong than right.

What Happens:

We've got several storylines going here, all interconnecting in some way. The main plotline centers around Run D.M.C. who have just made their first hit record King of Rock. Their small record company, run by Run's brother Russell and Rick Rubin (playing himself) is struggling to meet the demand for the record and Russell makes a shady deal with the guy who plays the shady promoter in Rocky V.

Next we throw Sheila E. into the mix. She's just starting out and both Run and Russell take an interest in her career and her romantic availability. Sheila likes Russell better than Run. This obviously leads to tension and with Russell being pressured to pay back his loan, Run takes his group to a bigger label and a lucrative contract.

Finally, we've got the Fat Boys (at this point calling themselves the Disco Three), who are attempting to break into the business. Throw in Curtis Blow and lots of cameos and performance scenes, and mix well.

What Really Happens:

Anyone with at least rudimentary knowledge of Def Jam Records will know that the character Russell Walker is a thinly-fictionalized version of Russell Simmons. And in case you don't pick that up, the movie's credits inform us that "The Russell Walker character was inspired by the life of Russell Simmons." What's amazing to me is that Simmons exhibited enough restraint to not play himself, and let Blair Underwood have the job. You might think that it was a movie studio and/or director decision to have a famous actor playing this important role, but this was Blair Underwood's first movie. At that point, L.A.Law wasn't even a glimmer in Susan Dey's eyes.

Anyway, the first thing that strikes me about this movie is the style. The clothes and lingo still seem fresh. Maybe this is because eighties hip-hop culture has made a comeback, but I tend to think that there are just certain things that will always be classic: Volkswagen Beetles, Converse Chuck Taylors, black stocking caps, and Adidas tracksuits.

The other thing that strikes me is how many performances there are. It's obviously taking a page from the Purple Rain book. However, as fun as the songs may be, they have no real resonance in the story (save All You Can Eat by the Fat Boys). Like I said, we get a lot of performance clips, and some are great (Fat Boys doing Don't You Dog Me in the staircase of their high school, Sheila E. performing Love Bizarre looking and sounding so much like Prince that it's a little disconcerting, and some cameos I'll mention later). But because the movie packs so many artists and storylines into such a small place, you ultimately feel like you didn't get enough time with any of them, save maybe the Fat Boys. Run D.M.C. get especially short changed, and Jam Master Jay specifically. In fact Jay only has one scene where he isn't background decoration, and unfortunately (considering how he died) it features him threatening to pull out a gun in a relatively benign situation.

That said, Sheila E. cuts a particularly appealing character in the time she's given. There's one scene at her apartment (which features a Prince poster on the wall I must add) where she claims that anybody can rap and then proceeds to demonstrate her skills. She's not as convincing as a love interest, and there's a love scene between her and Blair Underwood that didn't do much for me, even with the Force MDs' Tender Love playing over it. Kurtis Blow is also a very decent character and a voice of reason in the film's events. I didn't realize before that he was the real-life guru behind the Fat Boys, but apparently he got them together and did their beats. This is played out rather tenderly and briefly on screen.

Finally, let's talk cameos. About an hour into the film there's a succession of cameos that is fairly mind-blowing. First we've got LL Cool J with a surprise appearance in the Krush Groove offices, begging for an audition. He's skinny, but throws down a bit of Can't Live Without My Radio and impresses nicely. Immediately following this we see New Edition in shiny silver matching suits performing My Secret. I'm intrigued by New Edition because they keep trying to reunite, and keep meeting with complete apathy. Then right after that, you have the Beastie Boys! They come out doing their very first single, the little known She's On It. Who could've predicted at this time that they'd become what they did? Amazing.

Questions and Comments:

Hoop Dreams fans, look for an Arthur Agee lookalike in the background of the scene where the Fat Boys try to get into the Disco Fever club for the first time.

There's a boggling loss of decency in a brief high school scene where one of the Fat Boys is roasting a fetal pig. I seriously believe cinema could have done without that…even Jon Waters would have left this on the cutting room floor.

Rick Rubin is an odd guy. He started out doing the hip-hop thing and now is an in-demand rock producer. This is foreshadowed in one scene where he can be spotted in a Husker Du T-Shirt. Shout out to Minneapolis!

Run D.M.C. actually work at a car wash at the beginning of this movie, and that's sort of inexplicable. But, it does inspire the great line: "You won't see Lionel Richie working at no car wash."

In Conclusion:

The movie only runs 90 minutes, and with so many things going on, it can't help but sink under its own weight. Watch it for the performances, cameos, and that slice of eighties hip-hop style, not for plot or character development.

Madonna: Truth Or Dare (1991)

2004-08-29T16:23:00.002-05:00

We're just living in her material world

Had it gone in a different direction, this project could have easily focused purely on the film oeuvre of Madonna in all of its shame and glory. Is there another actress who has received more Razzies (the ceremony which presents itself as the complete opposite of the Oscars, rewarding extraordinarily bad film work), and yet also won a Golden Globe? She's got Shanghai Surprise, Body of Evidence, The Next Best Thing, and Swept Away to her credit, and yet also can lay claim to Evita, A League of Their Own, and Desperately Seeking Susan.

I'll admit my bias right here: I have a lot of love for Madonna. I think if I could only own one album it would be a serious decision between The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and The Immaculate Collection. But, like any superstar, it's impossible to adore her fully and completely (especially the newer calcified version). There's too much baggage there, as we'll see.

What Happens:

The filmmaker followed Madonna around on her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour supporting the Dick Tracy (also a stinker) soundtrack I'm Breathless. Along the way he captures Madonna at her most candid. He also documents the troubles and triumphs she experiences, including a visit to her roots in Michigan, controversy in Canada, the tedium of touring and pulling off an ambitious stage show, and of course sex and romance. What emerges is a portrait of Madonna as a tough, sometimes raw young woman who has been through a lot and is still in the process of growing up. There's also a strong presentation of her with her dancers and entourage as a caring den mother. And this was before she even had kids!

The documentary bits in black and white are interspersed with color scenes of various song performances.

What Really Happens:

This movie, though it first showed Madonna as the shrewd businesswoman she is, also documents her careening into the worst point of her career. In some ways she was still very much searching and unsure of herself, as evidenced by the Sex book and Erotica album that came out the next year. Knowing that this will happen, and that she will rebound in typical heroic fashion makes for compelling viewing.

That said, as a documentary, this is rarely as gripping as the format has the potential to be. Perhaps it's because the events that occur are hardly ever dramatic. As a result, the beginning especially seems like we are in for a long tedious ride. Initially, Madonna comes off as a self-absorbed bitch-on-wheels. She plays bullying games with her staff, complains about audience members, and her narration seems like what hyper self-analytical college students sit around and talk about.

On top of that, the first couple of musical numbers are lip-synched and choreographed and do nothing for me. But as the movie progresses and we see more of these numbers that were in the show, the cumulative effect is an appreciation for how much work it must have been to pull that off every night. Personally, I prefer the band that comes out on time, says little but "Hello" and "Thank you" and kicks the ass out of their songs, but I can appreciate "high concept" too.

The same happens with the documentary. Slowly the scenes add up and we begin to get a more fully realized portrait of Madonna. There's a scene where her father (who looks startlingly like Ralph Nader) visits with her, and it's as awkward as any other parent-grown child interaction. There's another scene where she visits her mother's grave. It's a bit overwrought, but still affecting.

When she plays in Detroit she meets with a childhood friend named Moira, and it's a very sad scene. Moira is obviously living a hard life, but wants Madonna to be the godmother of her baby. Madonna somewhat gently brushes her off. It gives a taste of some of the lesser side of fame.

Finally, also contributing to the emotional investment of the film is the afforementioned relationship she has with her dancers. She obviously cares about them, and even has to play peacemaker. She's like a really hot teacher. But then this is all negated at the end with the famous titular truth or dare game, and a bizarre sequence where she has them visit her bed one by one.

Questions and Concerns:

Warren Beatty (he and Madonna were famously involved at this time) is actually a voice of reason in the film. At one point he remarks that Madonna "doesn't want to live off camera."

The parade of celebrity guests that visit backstage is dizzying. We get Al Pacino, Mandy Patinkin, Lionel Richie, and Kevin Costner (sporting a righteous mullet). He calls the show "neat," and after a few seconds of awkward conversation leaves, only to have Madonna stick her finger in her throat behind his back. How would you like to be him and have this moment immortalized? Terrible, yet satisfying.

I wonder what the percentage of this movie involves Madonna getting her make-up done. I'm guessing 18.5 at least. This is a project for somebody.

In Conclusion:

Though not a thrilling documentary, it will be important someday for the depiction of a certain time of Madonna's life. However, non-fans and hatas should approach with caution.

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

2004-08-29T10:11:00.002-05:00

It was all downhill from here

What Happens:

Desperately Seeking Susan is a stylish, surprisingly good movie about a rich woman who discovers the joys of letting your soul fly free and bohemian. It's a very '80s update of The Prince and the Pauper or City Mouse Country Mouse stories. Rosanna Arquette has a comfortable but soulless life until she starts following a series of ads concerning the titular Susan (played by Madonna of course). A complex series of events leads to her being mistaken for Susan, the two women switching places, and high jinks ensuing! She falls in love with Aiden Quinn, has some trouble with some thugs, and works in a nightclub. Susan, meanwhile, enjoys the high life for awhile.

What Really Happens:

Rosanna Arquette looks rather foxy in this movie. I've always been a Patricia man myself, but watching this, I can see why Toto made that song about Rosanna. What was that called again?

Don't freak out, but Madonna is actually good in this movie! Sure, she tends to speak in one liners (a perfect way for non-actors to come across well in movies), but she is effective, funny, and seductive. It makes me wonder if she'd just stayed in smallish roles, such as A League Of Their Own, how much movie-going pain and heartache might have been averted.

Questions and Comments:

Be sure to watch for the parade of pleasantly familiar faces. Here's a rundown of who to look out for: Rosanne's sister, Steven Wright (!), Dana's orchestra friend from Ghostbusters (the one who Bill Murray describes as "still very pale though"), Jon Turturro, and Richard Hell.

Marshall Crenshaw's song Someday, Someway plays over a diner scene. This is just wonderful.

Madonna dances to Into the Groove in a club scene. This is an odd moment, because we're not supposed to be thinking of this character as a massive pop star, but how can we ignore it? She seems to enjoy her own music a bit too much.

And finally, nudity:
11 minutes - Madonna's nipple
26 minutes - Rosanna's nipples
1 hour 18 minutes - Madonna's nipple (back again for an encore)
1 hour 23 minutes - Aiden Quinn's ass (for all the fellas)

In Conclusion:

Open your heart and tune in next time this movie is showing on cable.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

2004-08-21T16:43:00.002-05:00

It couldn't get no worse!

When I was in high school, at the tail end of my initial obsession with The Beatles, I bought a country tribute album to the band. This was when "country music" was a four-letter-word in my vocabulary. My Beatles obsession was such that I probably bought it just because it had a charming John Lennon drawing on the front. But a listen to it proved something I'd always suspected: It was impossible to ruin The Beatles. Little did I know that in 1978 Robert Stigwood, Peter Frampton, and The Bee Gees nearly accomplished just that.

What happens:

Sergeant Pepper is a Glenn Millerish figure who, as the song says, taught the band to play 20 years ago today. And they were the toast of wartime; an inspiring bunch. This is all told to us by a narrator who sounds like George Carlin, but actually turns out to be George Burns. Now, in modern times, his grandson Billy Shears (played by Peter Frampton, looking exactly like Roger Daltry) is getting the band back together as a modern rock group! The other three members happen to be Robin, Maurice, and Barry Gibb, The Bee Gees!

The band's first gig is a revelation, and of course they're ushered off to California to become big rock stars. Unfortunately this means the Billy must leave behind his foxy, foxy girlfriend Strawberry Fields. Why she can't go along to California, other than for dramatic narrative purposes, shall remain a mystery. As happens with any well-brought up, level-headed band, they are immediately corrupted by the bacchanalia of the record executive lifestyle, which involves lots of loose women, gorging at medieval style dinners, and large spinning record coffee tables. Billy cheats on Strawberry right away.

Despite this lack of focus, the band becomes immensely popular, and gains the attention of the malevolent Mean Mr. Mustard, who is played by a British actor Frankie Howerd. He's is a tremendous ham (mmm, mustard and ham). This leads to a series of misadventures and elaborate musical numbers. Actually to call them musical numbers is a bit misleading, because like Tommy, this whole movie is dialogue-free. There is Beatles music from wall to wall.

In the end, the band rediscovers the power of love, Huey Lewis style, and this leads to the defeat of Mr. Mustard and his minions, but also to the death of sweet, hot, innocent Strawberry Fields. This is a maddening moment, because she is the ONLY likable character in the movie. But fear not! Billy Preston shows up, playing some Jesus/religious icon figure, and brings her back to life.

Choir sings, roll credits.

What Really Happens:

Okay, this movie really fucking sucks. Almost everything about it is annoying, from the bad acting to the poor film stock. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to hit fast forward. I don't think there is any other movie besides Showgirls that featured so many career lows in one place. Here are some of them:

George Burns performing Fixing a Hole. This scene is the dictionary definition of surreal. He doesn't really even sing…in fact, he comes dangerously close to inventing white rap.
Steve Martin singing Maxwell's Silver Hammer while playing a crazed doctor. He seems to have an odd fascination with this, having played variations on the role in The Man With Two Brains, Little Shop of Horrors, and Novocaine.
Performances by Earth, Wind, and Fire (by far the coolest thing in the movie, but still a career low), Alice Cooper, and Aerosmith. In fact, Steven Tyler appears to die at the same time that Strawberry Fields does, but no one is really concerned.
A band called Stargard appears, but for them this was probably a career highlight.
A huge choir of "stars" singing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Watch for Dame Edna, Edgar Winter, Robert Palmer, Curtis Mayfield, Bonnie Raitt, Donovan, Etta James, Heart, Seals & Croft, Bruce Johnston, and Hank Williams Jr. The sad thing is how many of them flub the lines of the song as the camera swings past them. I'm assuming this was done in one take with no practice.
Peter Frampton is simply horrible, whereas The Bee Gees come off as okay. In fact, hearing them sing some of The Beatles stuff is pretty cool. Is it any wonder that they still had a strong career after this and Frampton didn't?

In Conclusion:

This movie does the unthinkable. It makes you annoyed with The Beatles. You'd like to think that this shameless manipulation of their work was fought tooth and nail by The Beatles themselves. For heaven's sake, John was still alive when this was made! I'm guessing that it was probably Paul's decision, to fund his pot habit through the '80s. A splendid time is guaranteed for none!

The Bodyguard (1992)

2004-08-14T20:33:00.002-05:00

She's got the stuff that he wants

If there's such a thing as suffering in comparison, then it follows that there must also be such a thing as benefiting from comparison. That's the case here. In no way am I deluded into thinking that The Bodyguard is a great movie, but when pitted against some of the dreck I've watched for this project, it might as well be a masterpiece.

What Happens:

Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner) is an elite personal bodyguard. We know this because the opening scene shows him sitting on a man in a parking garage, having apparently just fended off an assassination attempt. Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) is a massively popular singer and actress whose life is in danger. We know this because in the second scene a television in her dressing room blows up. So of course Frank is hired to protect her and her son, who is played by Bobby Brown (okay, not really).

We find out that Rachel has been receiving strange ransom note-style letters, and that someone has snuck into her mansion and "masturbated on the bed." Rachel comes with a large entourage, including an existing bodyguard, a manager, a family friend, and a bitter sister. Frank immediately clashes with almost every single one of them. So basically we follow as Frank follows Rachel through a series of outings and appearances and bits of danger.

Along the way they fall in love, though why that happens isn't completely clear. It must be physical, because he seems disgusted by her personality, and he doesn't have one himself, so she can't like him for that reason. Anyway, as the googly eyes go on, the mystery of who is threatening Rachel deepens. At first it appears to be a David Spade lookalike, then someone else. Anyone with minimal powers of deduction will be able to figure out who the villains are here.

The movie culminates in a murder, and a climactic final scene at the Oscars, where Rachel Marron is the favorite to win Best Actress (wishful thinking on the part of the film's producers?). The mystery is solved, Frank saves the day, and I Will Always Love You is sung.

What Really Happens and Thoughts:

Let's talk about the actors. Kevin Costner is sort of an enigma to me. I'm deeply ambivalent about him. He's not going to entice me to see a certain movie, nor is he going to dissuade me from seeing it. This movie might actually help me get over that ambivalence a bit, because he bothers me here. First, he looks like he was filming JFK simultaneously, because though it takes place in the '90s, his look is pure early '60s with the suits and the short hair. It's disorienting.

The other problems I have with this character are probably not Kevin's fault. We are supposed to buy him as a badass, but it just isn't convincing. Sure he likes samurai movies, orange juice, drives an El Camino, and he has NO sense of humor, but do I trust him with my life? He is supposedly a tortured soul because he wasn't there the day Reagan got shot, and he blames himself. Man, aside from the guilt about Brady, you'd think it'd be a source of pride! Anyway for me the telltale sign when he took a bullet for Whitney in the end, I really hoped he would die. Maybe I was just in a tragic mood.

As for Whitney, she doesn't have to do much other than play herself, but once again, let's look at this in comparison. If you take her versus Madonna, Mariah, and Britney in their first starring roles, she easily bests all of them. And the songs for this movie are top notch. I Have Nothing is, for my money, the best song of the lot, and they sure get a lot of mileage out of it. I think the filmmakers underestimated how popular I Will Always Love You would be, because it definitely gets second class treatment (we don't even hear Whitney's version until the end). Anyway, I wanted to go out and buy the soundtrack right away, which is what any pop star vehicle should compel one to do.

The interesting thing about this movie as a pop star vehicle is that it picks and chooses what conventions it wants to stick to. Having the pop star play a barely autobiographical version of herself? Check! Making the pop star the center of the movie? Nope. Lots of songs by the pop star? Check! Lots of performance scenes? Nope. So what's going on? Thinking outside the box? Shame on them. I would be inclined to label this movie a hybrid: part pop-star vehicle, part movie featuring a pop star as one of the cast. So this leads me to one of two conclusions: 1) the filmmakers were brilliantly playing off of expectations, or 2) the filmmakers were completely clueless.

I did a bit of research on the filmmakers, and this actually has a pretty good pedigree going for it. The writer was Lawrence Kasdan, who is responsible for The Empire Strikes Back, Body Heat, and The Big Chill, among others. He's also a director, and I'm not sure why he didn't take the reins here. Instead we get Mick Jackson, who has a very undistinguished resume, besides one gem: L.A. Story. So I don't know why this movie wasn't a bit better.

Anyway, going back to conventions, there's one this movie does stick to, in a bizarre way. I've written about the Purple Rain blueprint of ending the film on a freeze frame shot of the pop star triumphant. Well, this movie ends in a freeze frame, but it's of Costner, standing stone still with a completely sour look on his face. The freeze goes on past the point where you're comfortable with it.

Finally, one thing I loved about this movie was that it chose to exist in a world of fake celebrities, songs, and movies. This brings up fond thoughts of Seinfeld and the strange fake movies they would see, such as Death Blow, or Chunnel. In The Bodyguard we get things like Queen of the Night, and Hot and Cold. Who wouldn't want to see these Oscar-nominated movies?

In Conclusion:

Good songs, good show by Whitney, but not probably not enough to completely satisfy the fans, because the movie can't decide what it wants to be. But once again, it could have been A LOT worse.

The Jazz Singer (1980)

2004-08-08T10:59:00.002-05:00

I'm amazed, and confused

In 1980 Neil Diamond's star had faded somewhat, yet someone somewhere with money and influence (probably Neil himself) thought it would be a good idea to remake the 1927 Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer, with Neil in the title role!

What Happens:

Neil plays Yussel Rabinovitch, a Jewish Cantor. In fact, he comes from a long line of Cantors. But he has a dream of becoming a singer/songwriter, despite the objections from his wet-blanket wife and traditional father (a paycheck-seeking Laurence Olivier). When he gets an opportunity to have one of his songs recorded he flees to L.A. and his career takes off, at the expense of his former life. Will he be able to balance the expectations of family with his dreams of a music career?

What Really Happens:

To satisfy his performance jones in New York, Yussel does shows at an all-black club under the name Jess Robin. The rub is that he has to use make-up to pass himself off as a black man. Thankfully there's only one scene of this, and it ends with Neil's whiteness being discovered, getting into a fight with Winston Zedmore (from Ghostbusters), and going to jail. All this after a stirring rendition of You Baby, which sounds like a lost Motown classic. Following this, Neil must listen to both his wife and his father tell him how ridiculous his dreams are. This is always a good thing to do to your loved ones…crush their spirits!

When Jess gets an opportunity to have his ballad Love On The Rocks performed by a real recording artist (the dreamy Keith Lennox) he jumps at the chance and goes out to L.A. At this point the film presents the viewer with a real moral conundrum: Is Jess being selfish by leaving behind his commitments, or is he right to follow his dreams? The events that follow try to make that a simple question in favor of the latter, but I'm not convinced.

Anyway, it turns out Lennox wants to ruin Love On The Rocks by performing it as a screaming rocker. So with the help of Molly, a record company rep played by Lucy and Ricky's little girl, Jess decides to make a go of performing his own music. He nabs a spot opening for Zany Gray (?) and despite his metallic maroon shirt, impresses. This leads to a record deal!

As things snowball with Jess's career, he and Molly spend so much time together they can't help but begin making goo-goo eyes at one another. But, oops, Neil's wife is still in the picture and is still NOT happy about this whole becoming a rock star thing. This leads to divorce.

Of course Jess goes immediately to Molly after his divorce is finalized (the ink probably wasn't even dry) and declares his love. It comes off as desperation, but quickly pays off. Then we are treated to a goofy "in love" montage replete with cultural misunderstandings, dreamy looks, tandem bicycle rides, and a chest-hair-heavy sex scene.

Then dad comes to visit, and promptly disowns Jess for a variety of complex reasons, but mainly because Molly isn't Jewish. This leads us into the classic A Star Is Born arc, wherein Neil becomes a complete ass (treating Molly poorly, throwing fits during recording and rehearsal). Then, inexplicably, Neil sets off to wander across America alone. He grows a beard, buys a cowboy hat and takes up smoking.

But it turns out he left Molly with a bun in the oven, and she goes ahead and has the baby while he "finds himself." When he finally returns, to find Molly and his son frolicking on the beach, Molly embraces his return. He patches things up with his dad at Yom Kippur, resumes his rock star career, and the credits roll to the strains of America.

But wait, let's do the math. If Jess had no clue Molly was pregnant when he left, then she couldn't have been very far along. So let's say she was one month pregnant when he left. The kid appears to be at LEAST six months old when Neil returns. That would mean he was traveling for 14 months. If someone disappeared from your life for over a year, leaving you to take care of a child alone, wouldn't you at least give them a right hook in the jaw before you let them move back into the house? Come on!

Questions and Comments:

To be fair, Jess does attempt to get his wife to come out to L.A. with him, but what's strange is that Hello Again is used as a theme for Jess and Molly, when it actually describes loving someone long distance, and this applies much better to his wife.

I hate to be a prickly pear, but Neil technically isn't a "jazz singer" at all. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find any jazz in this movie anywhere, save the brushed drums on Summerlove! Would it have hurt anyone to change the name to The Pop Singer?

Does disowning still happen? We see it in movies and T.V. all of the time, but you rarely meet anyone who has actually been disowned. And at what age do your parents actually stop owning you?

Before watching this movie I'd never before noticed just HOW much Neil resembles Larry from Three's Company.

In Conclusion:

Despite some tasteless moments and misogyny, this movie will be supremely entertaining for any Neil fan. You can tell he really cared about this story, and connected with it. And there's no denying that the soundtrack produced some of Neil's best songs and gave him a strong comeback!

Glitter (2001)

2004-07-31T15:10:00.002-05:00

Me and Mariah go back like babies and pacifiers

If Purple Rain showed us how to do it right, Mariah Carey's bomb Glitter is a clinical in how to screw everything up. This movie is spectacularly terrible, and I know because I've seen it twice! The first was voluntary (for this project) and the second was in a hotel when there was nothing else on. It would be much too easy to gleefully rip into this film, but I'd like to avoid that temptation. Okay, so I'll do a little ripping, but I'm going to use the platform to talk a bit of theory. First…

What Happens:

We start with a flashback wherein Mariah's mom is singing in a bar, and calls her young daughter up on stage to display some impressive pipes. You hope she learns that if she hangs out in smoky bars for much longer she'll sound more like Joe Cocker than Whitney Houston. This scene feels kind of like a VH1 Divas Live special. Oh, then we learn that her white father wants nothing to do with her.

Credits rolling around this point reveal Mariah as the "executive movie producer." This can mean nothing but trouble.

Mariah's mother gives her up, and she goes to an orphanage where she meets a sassy Hispanic friend AND a sassy black friend. Kudos to this movie for avoiding the temptation of having only one broad racial stereotype. Then, all of the sudden it's the early '80s and the three friends are hanging in a trendy club. They get involved with a guy who wants them to be back up singers for a (surprise!) bitchy Appolonia-esque woman who can't carry a tune. The producer takes Mariah's part, substitutes the vocals for the bitch. And you thought that kind of thing didn't start happening till the late '80s and early '90s (sorry Milli Vanilli and C & C Music Factory fans)!

The song becomes a hit, Mariah is discovered by a creepy, creepy DJ named Dice, and played by an actor who is honestly a poor man's version of Donnie Wahlberg. Not even Marky Mark. Donnie. He is apparently a musical genius and decides to mold Mariah's career. Also, they fall in love! Tommy Mottola, are you watching?

Under Dice's tutelage, Mariah gets sort of popular. We never really see how popular, but apparently enough for Dice to afford a diamond encrusted bling bling necklace spelling out his name (and you thought the Cash Money Millionaires came up with that one!) which he wears throughout the rest of the film. You get the idea that it cost a lot to make and the filmmakers wanted to get their money's worth.

Blah blah blah, they move in together, Mariah makes a video (get this, they want her to show clevage...Mariah would never do that!), the record company becomes dissatisfied with the dance direction of her music, so she is forced to drop Dice as a svengali. They stay together as a couple for awhile, but she gets even more popular (I think), and then they break up. Apparently in this time she gets so popular she can sell out Madison Square Garden, though the film shows no real evidence of this.

Meanwhile Dice is in trouble after consistently mishandling a money situation with Mariah's old producer. The producer kills him (more on that below). Mariah hears the news right before the MSG concert, goes out to perform anyway, and sings a song that has absolutely no emotional resonance at all. Then she goes and finds her mother somewhere in the suburban countryside. Roll credits.

What Really Happens:

Okay, here's the theory stuff I promised. First, I want to talk about formula. Glitter is odd in that rather than sticking to one formula, it dabbles in a couple without ever really committing. First you have the A Star Is Born formula, in which a woman with talent hooks up with a man who can get her places, she gets to those places, gets too big for her britches and he can't handle her fame, so they break up. Later she comes to her senses, they reconcile and she makes a triumphant return to public adoration. Second you have the Purple Rain formula, in which a mostly good character is pinballed around by outside forces before ultimately triumphing over them.

Glitter mostly sticks to the former formula, with a few unwelcome twists, but neglects to add the "too big for her britches" part, thus negating any impact of the conclusion. Mariah wanders through this film as though she's eternally mystified by everything that's happening. It's not that she's a bad actress as much as it's the fact that she doesn't even try.

There are also some disturbing similarities to the Britney Spears film Crossroads, including a "three friends and a flashback" beginning, and a scene wherein two romantically involved people write poetry and perform it at a piano.

The other bit of theory I'd like to discuss concerns character development. Given the ending of the film, I'm assuming we were supposed to like Dice as a character. FORGET IT! It's not only his poor acting (with a Brooklyn accent that comes and goes as it pleases) or his constant shirtlessness that cause annoyance. He is badly written, bottom line. In fact, at one hour and 17 minutes in, right after he and Mariah have attended some type of awards show (and he has already been removed as her producer), he bitches out Mariah and calls her friends slutty and fat respectively.

At some later point, in the scene that leads to his death, he beats the stuffing out of Mariah's former producer, and then goes to jail for it.

When the producer came back at the end of the film and shot Dice, I cheered. I actually CHEERED for the death of a character who wasn't supposed to be a villain! The movie gave the character zero redemptive quality and then asked us to feel sad when Mariah sings a song for him? NO WAY! Bad, bad character development.

Questions and Comments:

What's with the odd camera movements throughout? Did Paul Thomas Anderson direct this under an assumed name? Or was it Paul Thomas Anderson's less talented brother?

There's this cat that appears sporadically in the movie, usually at points where Mariah is traumatically leaving. Other times we see no evidence of it. Watch for this!

Mariah's eyebrows are consistently distracting.

Da Brat displays baffling dance moves nearly every time she's on camera.

Eric Benet (the former Mr. Halle Berry) also appears, but really is a pointless character. He plays a musician who Mariah works with after ditching Dice. It seems like he and Mariah will either fall in love, or he will double cross her. Neither happens.

Why wasn't there more focus on the music? There are several Mariah songs in this film but never are they brought front and center. Oh, except right after Mariah and Dice have sex for the first time a Mariah song plays over the pillow talk. Is it me, or is that creepy?

In Conclusion:

Besides Mariah's music, The Message is played about 5 times in this movie. So at least Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five made some money off of this thing; in the face of such hideousness, you MUST find a bright side.

Purple Rain (1984)

2004-07-26T11:51:00.002-05:00

Baby, I'm a star

One of many astonishing things about Purple Rain is that, yes, Prince was pretty well known at the time - he'd made five albums and had a couple of pretty big hits, including Little Red Corvette and 1999 - but rather than simply cashing in on a star that had already reached the apex of his popularity (like most pop music movies) Purple Rain vaulted Prince into a realm of popularity and renown that even most best-selling popular musicians never reach.

How did this happen?

I hesitate to declare this movie a masterpiece, but it is the modern-day blueprint for a pop star movie vehicle. It does so many things right, and features so many great moments and songs and performances that to regard it as anything but the prototypical rock star movie would be to terribly undervalue it.

What Happens:

The Kid (played by Prince of course) has a band, The Revolution. They play every night at a Minneapolis club called First Avenue, but they have competition in the form of a stylish band called The Time, led by the egocentric Morris Day. Both bands fight over an audience, but the Revolution is falling behind, and the Kid's aloofness to both his band members and the club owner is not helping matters.

Maybe the Kid is distracted by his rough home life, where his father and mother oscillate between fistfights and lovefests. Though his father is abusive, the Kid obviously admires him, and sees reflections of himself. Unfortunately, his dad is a failed musician, sabotaged by his own desire for control.

Meanwhile, the mysterious, sexy, and cape-wearing Apollonia has arrived in town intent on becoming a star. The Kid notices her. So does Morris. Thus begins a battle for her heart, a battle to gain a following, and the discovery of a path to artistic transcendence.

What Really Happens:

From the very beginning of this film, you know you're in for a treat. As the Warner Bros. logo appears we hear a voice say "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Revolution…" and then the opening organ lick of Let's Go Crazy comes on and the ride begins!

The very first thing worthy of mention is the abundance of performance scenes, with the Revolution just kicking it on stage. This is what every rock star movie needs to have, and yet way too many cut corners out of fear that it will bore the audience. This is a legitimate concern. If the songs or performers aren't going to be able to pull it off, you've got to cut your losses. Purple Rain's advantage here is twofold:

1) The band was tight and visually interesting (I mean, what a strange band… you've got a guy who dresses like a doctor, a hot lesbian duo on keys and guitar, and an androgynous leader, all dressed in shiny variations of stripes and paisley, and they were inter-gender and inter-racial!). The show was choreographed, but didn't look it. My former boss is a lifelong Minneapolean and was around in the heyday of Prince. She had seen him at First Ave. soon before the movie came out and was very excited by the stage show…the way Prince moved and interacted with the Revolution. She claims that when she saw Purple Rain she was disappointed because it was all the same stuff. Frankly, I think she's a little nuts, in no way should familiarity diminish the greatness of the performances.

2) The songs had emotional resonance within the context of the film's events (it helped that Prince wrote the songs specifically for the movie). There are several examples of this. When Apollonia is courted by Morris in plain sight of the Kid, he leads the band into a gut-wrenching version of The Beautiful Ones that culminates with the line "Do you want him (point to Morris) or do you want me (points to self), 'cause I want you! (points to Apollonia)." You can tell by the look on the characters' faces that this isn't just a song, it's a message.

Speaking of that, there are a couple of moments where the reaction to the song is curious. For example, after Apollonia has decided to join Morris' girl group, and the Kid is pissed at her, he tries to get her goat by performing Darling Nikki replete with gyrations on top of the speakers. It works, and she storms out of the place. But why? Is she upset by the insinuation that the Kid has had sex with other women? Is she secretly conservative, like Tipper Gore?

Even given this misstep, the movie does very well with the songs, and that is a make-or-break proposition when it comes to a rock star movie. It wasn't until my third viewing of the movie that I noticed that in one of their fights, the Kid's father says "I would die for you" to the mother. Of course it shows up as a song…brilliant.

On the topic of sex: Purple Rain broke the barrier on it (and 8 Mile took to the bank). Previous rock star movies didn't have much to work with in terms of the sex, drugs, and foul language that are the trademarks of youthful rebellion. They were trying to achieve a rating that would allow the younger audience in, but to do so they had to sanitize and risk losing the very youth it wanted to attract. Purple Rain says "fuck it" (literally) and goes for the R rating with generous profanity and a couple of steamy, nudity-included sex scenes.

For the most part, the acting in this movie is very engaging, which is not always something you expect in a rock star movie. Prince is a good actor…that's evident here and in his other movies. You get the feeling that if his look wasn't so iconic (i.e. people wouldn't see him and immediately say "There's Prince"), he could have easily been a movie star for years. He shows flashes of the comedic ability that would blossom in Under the Cherry Moon (shown here when interacting with Apollonia in the Take Me With U scene and doing some ventriloquism before a show). But mostly he's brooding and serious.

So to take the edge and burden off, we've got Morris and Jerome, who are just damn funny, even as villains. I love that in the first glimpse we get of Morris he's vacuuming. And I know the "what is the password" scene is a ripoff of the classic Who's On First bit, but it still shows great comic timing. I also like that their relationship dynamic seems to be based on that of James Brown and the guy who keeps putting the cape back on him.

So there's the blueprint…we've got lots of great performances of songs that have resonance in the film itself, we've got sex and profanity, and we've got good acting. Other, smaller things help make this film the blueprint, but these are the ones that really matter.

Questions and Comments:

How does the Kid afford his dope purple motorcycle? Sure he lives in his parents' basement and therefore doesn't pay rent, and he has a regular gig. But you'd think all of that money would go into clothes, equipment, paying the band members, etc. I guess its best just not to think about movie characters' finances.

How does the band play Purple Rain so flawlessly without any practice? Of course the Kid, Wendy, and Lisa all know it, but how are the others keeping up with the changes? Are they just that good? At any rate, this song is just a knockout, especially the way it's presented. The lyrics are meant to be regretful but redemptive, addressing his father. Even the performance of the song is healing, because it represents the sort of surrender of control that the Kid has been fighting against (Wendy and Lisa wrote the instrumental part and have presented it to the Kid, but he is resistant to material other than his; but you can tell he's haunted by the melody throughout the film, because he keeps playing the tape).

Is it just me, or does Baby I'm a Star feel tacked on? Of course Purple Rain is the emotional musical climax, and I Would Die 4 U has to be there to stoke the fire and end on an up note, but "baby, I'm a star"? No, you're not. Not yet. Prince is, but the Kid isn't, and the denouement doesn't need to be this long. It's almost as if they knew they needed one more song for the album, so they threw this in there.

The iconic final shot, with Prince frozen in triumph and the lights shining behind him, is another part of the blueprint. A shocking number of rock star movies attempt to duplicate this!

Why didn't Apollonia 6 become the new Supremes? This is a joke.

The theatrical trailer included on the no-frills DVD has no less than three moments that hint at deleted scenes. I'm intrigued by trailers, and love to imagine seeing this as a preview back in the day and wondering if I would have gotten hyped for it. Anyway, the scenes we see are 1) Morris being harassed by the cops as he talks to Billy the club owner, 2) the Kid's dad interrupting a rehearsal and the Kid punching him (!), and 3) Morris sneaking around the Kid's house. As exciting as this discovery is, I'm very torn when it comes to deleted scenes on DVDs. Certain movies have become so familiar that the idea of there being more that we haven't seen is like discovering additional chapters to the Bible, or a hidden room in the house you've lived in for 20 years. Just the thought that there are deleted scenes to The Karate Kid sends my head spinning because the film seems so perfect as is. But in the case of a movie like Say Anything, watching the deleted scenes felt sort of dirty, like I was never meant to see them. The only one in Purple Rain that might be of substance is the father visit, which I am clamoring to see. Come on Warner Bros., where's that collector's edition?!

In Conclusion:

The world of pop music movies would be much less interesting without Purple Rain.

"Ladies and Gentlemen..."

2004-07-25T22:15:00.000-05:00

It's a poorly hidden fact that I am possessed of an addictive personality. Indeed, as I reflect back on my life thus far, it can be fairly accurately described as a series of obsessions supplanting obsessions. This affects nearly every aspect of my life, but settles most heavily on romance and entertainment. For brevity's sake I won't get into the former, but the latter is where the following project stems out of.

In no way do I consider it odd to have a series of entertainment obsessions. Most people in American and British culture have experienced some form of this in their lives. Mine have been fairly typical: toys, cartoons, comic books, and music, with movies running constant throughout. But there are levels of obsession, and I think that I'm up there near the top. From the start, I was into collections: stuffed animals, baseball cards, 32 oz. plastic cups, bottle caps, McDonalds Happy Meal toys, comic books again, and now music.

The exciting - and sometimes frustrating - part of being a music fan is that just having the CD is rarely enough. The real fan wants every bit of ephemera he or she can get their hands on: books, import singles, posters, t-shirts, stickers, bath soap. The fan that is really lucky is into an artist with such mass appeal that the Hollywood powers that be decide to give them their own movie. A movie, starring the musician, with music by the musician, and somewhat based on that musician's own life experience.   Could there be a project more ego-based than this? Could there be a project any more likely to fulfill a fan's obsessions?

So this is where I come in. One fateful day, after partaking of Prince's baffling 1991 film Graffiti Bridge, I felt the need to put my confusion and bewilderment to paper. From there, of course, compulsion took hold, and I decided that it would be a worthwhile venture to watch as many music-related films as possible, and to write about each and every one.

It took some research and whittling to get a suitable list. I work off the criteria bolded above for the majority of the films.  However, the biographical ego-project may be the most compelling of all forms of music movies, but it is not the only one. I will also be dabbling in other categories, including concert films, documentaries, regular movies starring musicians, biopics starring other actors or musicians, and films about fictional bands or musicians.

I plan to publish one new review per week until I run out of them. The first review will be up very soon, and the title of this post is a clue as to what that film might be. Any guesses?

As you'll see, the field of music movies is full of land mines.   Allow me to be your guide.