Envy, greed, fraught race relations, and throbbing soundtracks
Jul 27 '04
The Bottom Line What's race got to do with it? A whole lot, though this list only scratches the surface.
I don't think there really is a distinct genre, "rock 'n roll movie. However, as my list of best musicals was overflowing, I was glad to find such an epinions category. Most of the movies on this list are biopics (one an autobiopic). The machinations of exploitative, resentful kin and non-kin impresarios is as central to movies about the makers of classical music, opera, ballet, or traditional musical theater as in those about rock musicians.
Not all the movies on my list are biographical. Most, but not all focus on performers. I have restricted my list to movies dealing with the commodification of rock n/roll, including impresarios and connoisseur sellers, as well as performers I do not stretch quite far enough to include "Saturday Night Fever" with its protagonist played by John Travolta living to dance to (post-rock?) music, though Ricki Lake's reorganization of what is acceptable in music and dancing for Baltimore television audiences in "Hairspray" is only slightly within the bounds of commodifying rather than consuming commodified rock 'n roll. It was easier to exclude movies in which rock music is vitally important to the viewer and/or the onscreen characters, but not about making or selling rock music (that is, movies with soundtracks such as American Grafitti, Apocalypse Now, The Big Chill, Peggy Sue Got Married). Envy and changing racial dividing lines are recurrent themes in the list that follows. Most of the movies on my list have outstanding acting along with enjoyable soundtracks.
(1) Written and directed by Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit), La Bamba (1997) is a biopic about the Chicano singer christened Ricardo Valenzuela, whose name was Anglicized to Ritchie Valens and who had hit songs "Donna" and "La Bamba" during the late 1950s before dying at the ripe old age of 17 in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Lou Diamond Phillips is charismatic (driven but looking to be at ease) as the suddenly successful Southern California youth. Esai Morales plays Ritchie's smoldering, self-destructive step-brother Bob. One might say he is overshadowed; he is certainly resentful of his brother's success and ease in white circles. However, Bob is more a shadow on Ritchie's gleaming image and success than in Ritchie's shadow. Bob and Ritchie have a complicated relationship with each other, with their loving mother (Elizabeth Peņa), and with Anglo and Mexican culture. There's a lot of heartache before the fatal crash. In addition to compelling performances by Phillips, Morales, and Peņa; Joe Pantoliano is outstanding as the manager/producer who propels/rides Ritchie's rise to fame.
(See Scott29's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_93752692356)
(2) A major milestone in Ritchie Valens's career was appearing in a revue put together in Brooklyn's Paramount Theater by the legendary early rock impresario, Alan Freed. Freed's rise and payola fall are the subject of another biopic, American Hot Wax (directed by Floyd Mutrux, 1978), which has the best soundtrack of 1950s rock (flavored with doo-wop, which may be why I favor it). Before staging shows in the Big Apple, Freed was a Cleveland dj (the basis for "Cleveland rocks"?). Freed's integrated shows riled some, and more than a few law enforcement types were appalled by the lascivious dancing to "the devil's music" (1950s incarnation; jazz was earlier reviled with the same label). Tim McIntire conveys both the enthusiasm Freed had for rock-n-roll and an innocent incomprehension of those who wanted to stop him and it. Chuck Berry, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis are among those who recreate the old-time "devil's music." The cast also includes Fran Drescher and Jay Leno.
(This isn't on VHS or DVD?!? so not in the database able to be reviewed, alas)
(3) Almost Famous (written and directed by Cameron Crowe, 2000) is a more recent and presumably better remembered autobiopic (of sorts) showcasing a San Diego teenager named William Miller (Patrick Fugit), who manages to get an assignment from Rolling Stone to travel with a 1970s rock band called Stillwater and to write about it. The lead guitarist (Billy Crudup) becomes an amalgam of father figure and big brother, memorably read the riot act by Mrs. Miller (Frances McDormand). The youth falls for a groupie called Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), gets nagged by his mom (Frances McDormand) and, naturally, learns something about himself along the way. With rock stars, rock journalists, and groupies on board, this is the very definition of a rock n' roll movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Frances McDormand pretty much steal the movie, not least because Fugit's character is more observer than person.
(There are many analytic reviews of this, e.g., Macresarf1's at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-3B8E-4246B8A-39B04B08-prod1)
(4) The Buddy Holly Story (directed by Steve Rash, 1978) gets my list not only back from the promotion of rock music to its production... and onto the same doomed flight as the young hero of my #1 pick. Gary Busey is outstanding as the myopic guitarist who broke away from the Crickets and got back together before the doomed flight on an icy Iowa winter night. Alan Freed was involved in promoting the Crickets, and this movie also shows the mixing of white rock performers with r&b (not least, performing at Harlem's legendary Apollo).
(See George Chabot's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_48164802180)
(5) A Hard Day's Night (directed by Richard Lester, 1964) is a pseudo-documentary about a typical day in the life of the suddenly very famous Beatles (before they wrote and recorded "A day in the life"). Some of the same whirlwind of hotel rooms, hack journalists, and entourage central to "Almost Famous" is shown in frenetic jump-cut fashion... with a real group and even an actual relative (Paul McCartney's grandfather). The sequel, "Help!", has a semblance of a plot and the great Leo McKern flummoxed by the lads, but the first one remains the freshest and wittiest portrait of the Beatles being the Beatles (which at the time was regarded by some of those who shut down Alan Freed as subversive, though their hair and sarcasm seem fairly mild from a later millennium's viewpoint).
(See Brendan2's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_145916661380
and HowardCreech's at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2590-467FFDC9-3A4E8869-prod3)
(6) It is stretching to include The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, directed by Jim Sharman from Richard O'Brien's London hit play) in this list. As many times as I have seen it, I'm not sure that Eddie (Meatloaf) is a rock performer outside the extraterrestrial's castle, but I think he is. Some of the music is not rock (I'd say "There's a light" is blue-eyed gospel, and "I'm going home" is Garlandish, while everything in the movie is outlandish). For sure, it's not a biopic.
(See my review at http://www.epinions.com/content_75683565188)
(7) The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (written and directed by Stephan Elliott, 1994) is less of a stretch. It is even more about transvestites than "Rocky Horror," but the cross-dressed, not-so-young boys are definitely performing to rock-n-roll music, even if they are lip-synching rather than singing. Terence Stamp got an undue share of praise as the transsexual Bernadette Bassenger. Perhaps I have an unhealthy attraction to those who get in trouble, but I preferred to look at Felicia Jollygoodfeather, the gay rather than transsexual performer played by Guy Pearce. He clearly had the best legs. (If I recall, the third performer was heterosexual, played by Hugo Weaving.)
(See Mangiotto's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_28417298052)
(8) High Fidelity (2000, directed by Stephen Frears from Nick Hornsby's novel) is about love and commitment rather than about making music, though Rob Gordon (John Cusack) runs a not-all-that-successful record store (some people remember vinyl and some even collect it) in Chicago and is obsessed with the rock music of his youth. (He's also a major maker of lists...In fact, the movie is structured around his list of his five most traumatic breakups.) Jack Black hijacks the movie as Barry, an aggressive (rude) employee in Rob's store, who breaks out of clerkdom (life imitated art in that Jack Black's career broke out with this role and that of the orderly in "Jesus' Son"). It also has Tim Robbins and Catherine Zeta Jones around for some fun.
(See Janesbit's review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-694F-C14D7D3-38E785DC-prod2)
(9) John Waters is even more rooted in Baltimore than John Cusack is in Chicago. Cry Baby Waters's movie about a northern sort of Elvis-looking, Johnnie Ray-sounding “Cry-Baby” Walker, played by the chameleon Johnny Depp. There's an across-the-tracks (that is cross-class) liaison like the one in "La Bamba." Being a John Waters movie (or being a Johnny Depp movie...), the singer is more like Bob than Ritchie. (The group is called The Drapes, apparently 50s Baltimore lingo for "greaser.") The more popular John Waters movie about teen rock angels (or devil worshippers) of the 1950s is Hairspray, since turned into a Broadway (and touring) musical. It stars John Waters's muse, Divine (who died shortly after making the movie). However, it is Edna Turnblad's less epically fat daughter, Tracy (Ricki Lake), who is the motor of the plot. Her dream is to be on the local version of "American Bandstand," the "Corny Collins Dance Show." Race is central to the conflict with Tracy being a n___-lover in the view of her rival for the title of Miss Auto Show 1963, Amber Von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick) and Amber's viciously racist parents who are determined to save Baltimore from the horrifying spectacle of interracial dancing couples (or of black youth dancing together).
(On "Cry. baby" see rfr's review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2C87-8742BC1-397D13C0-prod1; on "Hairspray"{ see Thevoid99's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_109858819716)
(10) Many of the movies on my list have racial dynamics, which is not surprising in that rock-n-roll had more than a few black roots and in an era of pitched battles to preserve racial segregation was highly suspect for race "mixing," whether sharing the same stages or dancing to "n_____ music." I'm closing out my list with yet another biopic about a performer, Tina Turner, who crossed over from the r&b of her husband to full-throttle rock, What's Love Got to Do With It? (1993, directed by Brian Gibson)> The movie is based on Tina Turner's autobiography, and adopts her perspective that domestic problems and "artistic differences" with Ike rose from his not being able to deal with her being the one the fans wanted to see and hear. There's substance abuse and industry racism, too, but the focus is on a battered woman breaking out. Angela Bassett does a whole lot more than lip-synch Tina Turner recordings. She shakes her groove thing, for one, and solicits audience sympathy left, right, and middle. Laurence Fishburne exudes charm early on, but between cocaine and not being able to handle the adulation for his wife and the increasing indifference of the audience to him, turns very nasty (almost cartoonishly so, though I do not doubt that he mistreated the woman he increasingly could not control). I guess resentment is even more a leitmotif across these eleven movies than race and class tensions!
(See Skbreese's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_39781305988 and GeorgeChabot's at http://www.epinions.com/content_72802668164)
Runners up:
the mockumentary "This Is a Spinal Tap"
"Phantom of the Paradise" (about musical commerce, rather than the organist playing for himself in "Phantom of the Opera" in its many incarnations)
BTW, there is also a category for 10 best rap movies.
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