BEFORE: OK, just fourteen more documentaries to go, I swear. This has been the longest and most interconnected Rock and Doc Block since the first one, back in 2018, which now feels like a lifetime ago. But that first one centered on JUST rock and roll, all the classic performers (OK, most, not all) and now my docfests are a lot more diverse. Painters, politicians, chefs, oceanographers, everybody's welcome now - I'm going to get to chefs next week, and then a couple of politicians after the big concert. For now I'm still on Hollywood types, and then before you know it, I'll be back on westerns and dinosaurs and superheroes, I've just got to hang in there, the sweet world of fiction will return.
John Travolta (and several others) carries over from "The Kid Stays in the Picture".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" (Movie #3,903)
THE PLOT: The untold story of Robert Stigwood and how he amped the disco era.
AFTER: Well, this movie answers a lot of questions, like what happened to Paramount after Robert Evans left? The company moved forward with hits like "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease", that's what. How did John Travolta make the transition from a TV sitcom star to a real movie star? And did he stay in touch with his friends from "Welcome Back, Kotter"? Probably not. And how did the Bee Gees become disco stars, and then survive the dreaded Disco backlash of 1980? Well, I already know the answer to that one, because that was covered in the documentary about them, which I watched in late July last year.
Here's the biggest question, who was Robert Stigwood, and where did he come from? He was just a kid from Australia who hitchhiked to England (which must have taken some time) where he worked a bunch of dead-end jobs, before forming a small theatrical agency. It must be one of those right place, right time things, because he started managing small bands in the early 1960's, then when the Beatles took off, it was probably like selling ice during a heat wave, everybody was looking for the next British group that could hit the charts. Stigwood put the band Cream together from two other acts he had signed, and putting Clapton together with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker was like catching lightning in a bottle - and then he became the booking agent for The Who, so he was off and running. Stigwood's company merged with Brian Epstein's company, and so he had a shot at managing the Beatles after Epstein died, the only problem was, the Beatles didn't like him, so he left the company and took his half of the acts, which included the Bee Gees.
Then came stage production, Stigwood produced the West End versions of "Hair" and "Oh! Calcutta!", then got an even bigger break when he produced the first stage version of "Jesus Christ Superstar", establishing a working relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice which would continue for years. Meanwhile he was also managing the very difficult Eric Clapton through several other bands and pushing the Bee Gees toward their disco sound. The only medium left unconquered was film, and so he went back to the well and turned "Jesus Christ Superstar" into a movie, then convinced his buddies in The Who to make a film out of their film "Tommy". All this lay the groundwork for "Saturday Night Fever".
Stigwood put all the pieces together - he licensed the rights to a New Yorker article about the rise of disco culture in New York City, he signed John Travolta to a three-picture deal, got his RSO associates to hire a director, then a crazy screenwriter, then another director, and while the process wasn't easy - nothing ever is - at the end of it all, they had a hit movie. This is what a true producer does, the hiring, the firing, the arguing with the talent and the director, but still somehow keeping the whole production on schedule, on budget and moving forward. So he really was the next Robert Evans, I can see the connections, only Stigwood wasn't as easily distracted by the female stars, you could say he preferred the male ones.
The rest was all marketing - they released the movie soundtrack early, so people could go crazy over the Bee Gees songs, and then they just HAD to go see the movie. Or people saw the movie and then ran out to buy the soundtrack, and it became the best-selling album ever. Nobody ever really cross-marketed a movie's album to this degree before, Stigwood had all the album rights and profits because Paramount didn't think there was much money in soundtracks, and boy did they get that one wrong. Stigwood repeated that formula and that success with "Grease", saying that as long as there were two hits on the album, he could sell the hell out of it, and he was right again.
But then, something changed - disco became unpopular for some reason (honestly, it might have been dying when "Saturday Night Fever" came out, and the film extended the lifespan by a bit), and the third Travolta film, "Moment by Moment", was a bomb. After making sequels to both "Grease" and "Saturday Night Fever", Stigwood was essentially done, so he did the only thing he could do, hopped on his yacht and headed to Bermuda to live out the rest of his days. Sure, why don't we all just do that when times get tough? Must be nice...
There's not nearly enough time devoted here to the Stigwood-produced movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which for my money is the best film ever made entirely of Beatles covers songs that stars the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. I ask you, when else are you going to see George Burns, Steve Martin and Aerosmith in the same movie? The general opinion is that this film is TERRIBLE, which it is, but if I just play a Beatles song sung by the Bee Gees, anybody else in the room starts asking, "What is this? WHO is this? It's so great!" But the movie has managed to turn off so many more people than it turned on, but if you were stoned in the late 1970's, it was probably THE thing to watch, critics be damned. Stay for the definitive cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life" performed by Earth, Wind & Fire.
I've made it MOST of the way through all of the documentaries that ended up on HBO's "Music Box" series after their festival appearances at last year's Docfest, which really inspired a bunch of my programming choices this year. I think "Jagged" and the "Woodstock 99" films were both on "Music Box", and I'll get to the one about Kenny G in 2 weeks. (The one about DMX I didn't care about.). But I think "Adrienne", "Becoming Cousteau", "Dean Martin: King of Cool", "The Velvet Underground" and "The Automat" all played at Docfest last fall in the theater where I work, but I was so busy working the event that I couldn't watch them on the screen. Instead I had to keep a mental list and then wait for them to become available on cable or the various streaming platforms. After that, I was just lucky to find enough bridging material to connect them all together - but when the casts are THIS large, that becomes possible.
Also starring Bob Adcock, Vince Aletti, John Badham, Patrick Bywalski, Nik Cohn, Elizabeth Curcio, Joey Curcio, James Dayley, Michael Eisner, Ahlby Galuten, Freddie Gershon, Richard Goldstein, Kevin McCormick, James McMullan, Bill Oakes, Tim Rice, Deney Terrio, Earl Young,
with archive footage of Robert Stigwood, Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb, Colin Petersen, Vince Melouney, Jack Bruce, Steve Dahl, Brian Epstein, Meat Loaf (all last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Carl Anderson (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Ann-Margret (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Army Archerd, John Avildsen, Ginger Baker (last seen in "Count Me In"), Roger Daltrey (ditto), John Entwistle (ditto), George Harrison (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Keith Moon (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), Warren Beatty (also carrying over from "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Faye Dunaway (ditto), Dustin Hoffman (ditto), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Al Pacino (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), John Lennon (ditto), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Joseph Cali, David Cassidy, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Dick Clark (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Merv Griffin (ditto), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Barry Diller (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Sarah Ferguson, Peter Finch, John Fogerty (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "The Boondocks Saints II: All Saints Day"), Karen Lynn Gormey, Mark Hamill (last seen in "Spielberg"), George Lucas (ditto), Roy Scheider (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Elton John (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Diane Keaton (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Sherry Lansing (last seen in "Mel Brooks Unwrapped"), Arif Mardin, Penny Marshall, Harold Melvin, Barry Miller, Marvin Moss, Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Bill Oakes, Donny Osmond (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Ron Palillo (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Paul Pape, Valerie Perrine, Donna Pescow, Billy Preston, Dan Rather (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Oliver Reed, Karl Richardson, Nile Rodgers (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Kurtwood Smith, Dee Snider, Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Tina Turner (last seen in "Tina"), Dick Van Dyke (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Andrew Lloyd Webber, Norman Wexler, Cindy Williams (last seen in "The Conversation"), Tom Wolfe.
RATING: 5 out of 10 knee-drops on the dance floor
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