Purple Rain: Music on Film Excerpted at Movieline

My latest film book, Purple Rain: Music on Film, is currently being excerpted over at Movieline.  If you want to get a taste of this book in Limelight's ongoing Music on Film Series before purchasing it, you might want to check this excerpt out.  In particular, the section featured at Movieline involves director Albert Magnoli's first meeting with Prince in Minneapolis, in an introduction that might have gone...badly.

Here's the link again.

And don't forget, Purple Rain: Music on Film is now available at Amazon.com and other online retailers.

The Five Most Ludicrous Musical Numbers in Movie History

I recently watched Saturday Night Fever (1977) again and despite the 1970s fashions (or perhaps because of them...), it remains an endlessly entertaining film. In some other quantum reality, perhaps, we're all still emulating Tony Manero: wearing white jackets with lapels down to our shoulders and pants three sizes too tight.

But in this reality, something happened that stamped out forever the glitzy night-time world observed so brilliantly in John Badham's disco classic.

Well, not something...five somethings. They are (in no particular order): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), The Apple (1980), Can't Stop The Music (1980), Xanadu (1980), and the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive (1983).

Et tu, Travolta?

Simply stated, these films -- all of 1978 -1983 vintage -- remain the most bizarre, garish and lurid movie musicals ever made. It's not just that these films are run-of-the-mill bad, it's that they each elevate badness to a fine art in unique, staggering ways. Believe me, if you haven't seen it, you can't even begin to conceive of The Apple.

And I might as well admit it: I'm unhealthily taken with these cult movies. They whisper to me of a time and place -- nay a world -- of extreme possibilities. Could you imagine the bad luck of seeing Sgt. Pepper in 1978? Then returning -- wounded and vulnerable -- to the theater in 1980, only to reckon with Can't Stop The Music? Then, after years of recovery, catching Staying Alive on the big screen? It's...madness.

Now, I wouldn't recommend you watch all of these films (well, actually, okay, I would...), but for your viewing pleasure, I have compiled the most ludicrous musical numbers from each production for your viewing pleasure today.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

1. "Get Back"

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) stars the Bee Gees. Here, the group sings entirely from the catalogue of the Beatles, an homage turned fromage. The film concerns the evil Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howerd), who plots to steal the magical coronet, drums and other musical instruments of the original Sgt. Pepper, the revered former leader of Heartland U.S.A. The Bee-Gees -- as the Lonely Hearts Club Band --- must retrieve the instruments, and also contend with such personalities as Father Sun (Alice Cooper) and Future Villain (Aerosmith).

In our first selection, Peter Frampton's heroic character, Billy Shears, attempts suicide after the alleged demise of his girlfriend, Strawberry Fields, only to get resurrected by Sgt. Pepper (Billy Preston). Sgt. Pepper then sings "Get Back!" while jazz-ercising and firing lasers out of his fingers.

#2."The Apple"

Set in the distant year of 1994, The Apple is the Golan-Globus epic of Moosejaw denizens and babes-in-the-woods, Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alphie (George Gilmour), who star in the futuristic equivalent of American Idol called The World Vision Song Contest. After their performance, these innocents are seduced by Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybel), a music/Hollywood agent and Lucifer himself. In the following song, "The Apple," Bibi makes a Faustian deal for fame. If nothing else, this hellish musical number forecasts the production design of "Satan's Alley." The lyrics from "The Apple" suggest "you'll be hypnotized. You'll be victimized." Consider that truth in advertising.

# 3. "Do the Milk Shake."

This number is from the fictionalized Village People bio-pic Can't Stop The Music, starring Steve Gutenberg and Bruce Jenner. The film was directed by Nancy Walker, who was famous for paper towel commercials. Otherwise, I don't really think I should comment on this one. Just ask yourself: knowing what you know about The Village People, what is this musical number really about?

#4. "Xanadu"

All kidding aside, Xanadu (1980) starring Olivia Newton John is really one of my personal guilty pleasures (and it's the only movie on this list I actually saw theatrically.) So I humbly ask you to "open your eyes and hear the magic!" as the movie's marketers suggested; mixing their metaphors with confusing razzle-dazzle. The number I selected from Xanadu is the triumphant denouement, showcasing the opening of a new roller-skating rink/night club. I dare say that this is the only musical number in history featuring Gene Kelly on roller skates, women in spandex, and split screens. And you know what? I love every goddamn minute of it.

#5 "Satan's Alley"

The Apple was just a warm up. Here's a (thin) John Travolta in the closing musical number from Staying Alive. It was supposed to represent a Broadway stage show entitled "Satan's Alley," but just try to imagine the logistics of presenting this number on stage (and without cuts?) It's like a three-ring disco circus. David Denby wrote one my favorite movie reviews ever regarding this film.

He wrote: "This is no ordinary terrible movie; it's a vision of the end. Not the end of the world, which will probably be much quieter than Staying Alive, but the end of movies...As you watch it, the idea of what a movie is - an idea that has lasted more than half-a-century - crumbles before your eyes." (New York Magazine, August 1, 1983, page 54).

Encore Magazine Likes Singing a New Tune

Another review for Singing A New Tune, my Applause study covering the "new" movie musical format (and featuring detailed interviews with Sir Alan Parker, Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Joss Whedon, Keith Gordon, Todd Graff and others...), just came in.

This one arrives courtesy of Encore, "The Performing Arts Magazine," which covers various performing arts venues throughout the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area (on web and in print magazine), so this is great. Especially because the magazine likes it...

The review reads, in part:

"Movie musicals reached their zenith with Busby Berkeley (42nd Street) and the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Post-war, Americans were past the point of fantasy. Yes, there were gems like The Sound of Music and West Side Story, but after Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz in 1979, successful film musicals were few and far between. By the late 1990s, filmmakers were creating movies with musical numbers that defied the old conventions.

Muir delights in the creativity of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, an animated movie musical that combined political parody with a musical send-up. And that was just the beginning. Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, a hallucinogenic tour of a 19th-century Parisian hot spot—and Nicole Kidman, too—came in 2001....Muir lovingly details the genre’s hits, flops and near misses—from the kitsch of Xanadu to the overblown Phantom of the Opera. Forget the groaners....For movie lovers, Singing a New Tune is the literary equivalent of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”