CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN (B) - Like its subject, Julien Temple's documentary about the Pogues frontman is sloppy and disjointed but oddly satisfying. The video veteran cut his teeth on punk, first chronicling the Sex Pistols during their moment of glory, and Shane MacGowan will forever be linked to that scene, where he got his start as a famous local fan and then a band leader himself, first with the Nips and then the Irish traditionalists the Pogues.
It might be a chore to get through the hot mess of the first half hour, which takes us back to MacGowan's childhood in Tipperary (introduced to beer and cigarettes at a tender age by aunts and uncles), with the use of re-enactments, animation and faux-vintage footage. It takes about half the film, nearly an hour, for MacGowan to hit his 20s and form the Pogues, the band that would launch him to stardom and the brink of overdose by the end of the '80s. But that early anthropology is necessary, helping to explain MacGowan's mental health struggles and addictions.
Temple is like an alchemist with ADHD here, cutting up old audio interviews to let MacGowan narrate his own life over constantly shifting images. Temple also features vintage and current video interviews with MacGowan, which serve to chronicle his physical decline to the point of being a drooling drunk in a wheelchair. Johnny Depp, an old pal of the Pogue, is a producer here and insists on inserting himself into the proceedings as a drinking buddy, which comes off as both irresponsible and pathetic.
MacGowan's wife and family weigh in to add depth to the personality profile, though we don't hear from bandmates. (They famously kicked him out of the band in 1991 but welcomed him back for popular tours in the aughts.) The glory of "Fairytale of New York" is celebrated. (It is claimed to be the most popular British Christmas song of the 21st century and reportedly earns MacGowan a cool half million dollar a year.) Gerry Adams, the former Sinn Fein Irish resistance leader, stops by for a visit with MacGowan to reminisce about their bomb-throwing days fighting for Irish independence.
Like I said, this is all quite the Irish stew of rock 'n' roll lore, and you might not have the tolerance to sit with this subject for two hours. But credit goes to Temple for taking this hot mess and finding some gravitas in this portrait of a broken soul who wrote some of the best songs of the Heyday of the Planet of Sound.
THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART (B+) - This sympathetic HBO documentary gives due to a musical group that proved its mettle during multiple eras in popular music and which was much more than three brothers in tight pants singing disco songs in falsetto. With a broad sweep from the '60s to the '80s, we see the brothers Gibb transform from Beatlesque skiffle rockers from Australia to R&B balladeers to dance-era legends to mature songwriters for adult-contemporary artists.
Rather than chameleonic opportunists shape-shifting for various eras, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had serious chops as pop-music artists and a keen ear for soulful hooks that worked across genres and modes of a given day. This documentary shows them to be serious studio rats who wrote their songs together as they recorded, producing some of the most iconic hits of the '60s and '70s.
The film, endorsed by Barry Gibb and his brothers' widows, goes heavy on the family dynamics, including addictions and breakups. It tells fascinating little tales, including the role label-mate Eric Clapton played in encouraging the boys to follow his lead and record their 1975 comeback album in Miami (staying at the same house at 462 Ocean Blvd.), as well as the magic they conjured up when asked two years later to provide the core songs for the iconic "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. Bandmates and producers (including the transformative Arif Mardin) are finally given their due for their contributions to the '70s sound.
An odd amount of weight is given to Chicago DJ Steve Dahl's "Disco Sucks" counter-movement that popped the disco bubble by 1980; the filmmakers exploit that moment as a catchall shorthand for the general racism and homophobia that beset the club scene and its pulsing beats. But by that point in the film, the narrative has gone so deep into the Bee Gees' musical dynamic and their oeuvre that nothing can dim the glitz of their success. A final shot of the mature Bee Gees harmonizing on "Run to Me" might even bring a tear to your eye.
ZAPPA (C-minus) - God bless Frank Zappa. I'm glad he was in the world for a while (alas, only 52 years), but I'll never understand the appeal he had as a composer and performer. This two-hour documentary (from "Bill & Ted" actor Alex Winter) definitively confirms that I'm not really missing any secret message. Rather, Zappa comes off as a modestly talented but determined and prolific musical noodler who probably was a borderline workaholic asshole, if I'm reading between the lines of the talking-head interviews. His roles as a champion of the First Amendment (battlingTipper Gore and the lyric nazis) and as cultural ambassador for Vaclev Havel's Czech Republic get a gloss that adds nothing really new to the legend.
I can imagine even Zappa diehards straining to sift through the tedium of dumb home movies from the '60s and '70s, an era when video cameras were a novelty and the most creative reaction to having one trained on you was to stick out your tongue, make a face, flip the bird or drop your pants. Oh, those edgy hippies and veritable Mothers of Invention! There's nostalgia and then there's just blatant wastes of celluloid. None of the live performances sampled manages to approach any recognizable level of coherence. If anything, Zappa sports that disdainful sneer onstage more often than expressing any joy in connecting with a crowd.
I kept an ear peeled and my mind open for the musical genius to congeal and finally manifest itself. It doesn't help that Winter chops the music up into snippets that squelch any full appreciation that might be possible. The best example of compositional talent comes from about two minutes of the Kronos Quartet slicing through one of those typical pieces that sound like they come from a bad horror movie. Zappa, an ardent warrior for art over commerce, himself (twice) acknowledges that the music he recorded was done merely so that he could listen to exactly what he wanted to -- and if anyone wanted to buy it and listen too, then he'd be happy to ship a copy to them. We see his massive home-vault archives, which come off as obnoxious self-indulgence rather than an intriguing trove of hidden gems. You might even read the glint in his eye as a signal that his whole career was one big performance-art piece daring you to think the music was good.
So I finally feel like I'm off the hook. I'm not missing anything. "Don't you eat the yellow snow." Thanks for the advice. Rest in peace.
BONUS TRACKS
By 1989, Shane MacGowan had mostly checked out of the Pogues (this was the time of his infamous "Fuck you and your fucking Batman" phase), but they propped him up for this video tribute to '60s stomp rock, "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah":
Here's that snippet of "Run to Me" from the Bee Gees:
And the best part of the Zappa doc was the song over the closing credits, "Watermelon in Easter Hay":
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