The Sparks Brothers

Ahead of the Curve

or

"I've Never Understood Why Music Has To Be So Stinkin' SERIOUS"

Edgar Wright has been re-writing rules for film-making for a while now, combining fantasy with reality, comedy with action, gangster pics with musical-dance, turning genre on its cliche, combining, mingling, crunching, like splicing the DNA of film to create new life in the medium.

But, what would an Edgar Wright documentary look like?

 

The answer comes with his new film, The Sparks Brothers, which details the career of Ronald and Russell Mael, two brothers who have been blazing a trail in music (while never catching popular fire) for over 50 years as the band Sparks. Starting under the name Halfnelson (and changing the name after an A & R suggestion with the first album), the two have put out 25 albums since 1967, changing their band through various adjustments in style and technique that always seemed to be slightly ahead of trends from glam rock to disco to techno to art pop to house to orchestral to stripped down rock, on through the ages of videos—they were doing them before MTV was established—thanks to their early interest in film, only to see other bands emulate their sound and style and hit the pop charts.*

But, they never had that "break-through" hit. The Mael's were born in San Francisco and started their career in the U.S., but traveled to England in 1973, where they charted with the song "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us," and achieved notoriety for their TV appearances—Russell was the "cute one" while Ronald dressed like a 50 year old, sported a Hitler/Chaplin mustache, and gave off the vibe of a 30's creep/gigolo. The contrast has a bizarre ying-yang effect, not unlike Cheap Trick. As the poster for the doc says it's the story of "Your Favorite Band's Favorite Band."

Part of their "never-quite-achieved-the-success-their-reputation-inspired" result may be that Sparks never took themselves too seriously, abandoning the narcissistic singer/songwriter mode of "This is my story/It's sad but true" strategy for third person narratives with a sardonic, satirical—and funny/ironic—sensibility. That trick never works—as the career of Randy Newman attests. When an A & R rep whined "Why don't you write music you can dance to?" they titled their next project "Music You Can Dance To." And when a chance-meeting led to a joint project with the Scottish group Franz Ferdinand, Ron Mael's first song submission to them was titled "Collaborations Never Work."

Music listeners/fans prefer the illusion that songs are "The Truth," and that they relate to them, as they relate to the performer. Sparks was rarely about that. They were more about experimentation and putting on a show. They attracted attention in Europe and England, not so much in America, despite appearing on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" a few times—probably because they were articulate...and funny! They appeared as the band in the 1977 disaster film Rollercoaster, which played in theaters in "Sensurround". I wonder if the Sparks segment used it?

Wright's film has 50 years of clips to use for the film and uses them liberally, as well as a lot of talking head segments with the Brothers and fans/producers/rockers/collaborators and they're all filmed in black and white. There's abundant use of animation in various guises and Wright book-ends the film with "YouTube"-friendly segments "Frequently Asked Questions about Sparks" and—during the credits—a whimsical "Don't Trust This" "Ten Things You Don't Know About Sparks."

I loved it. I remember seeing Sparks albums coming through the radio stations I worked at and the cover art was always weird and gave you no sense of what the album was like inside. I never played them, never listened to them, and I find myself wishing I had. I was missing something and it would have thrown a different light on the music that was to become omnipresent in the years to come. The film evokes an odd sense of nostalgia for something you never experienced—although the trends in music all spring to mind when the next Sparks song is brought up with the resulting thought of "Oooh, THAT's where THAT came from...."

It is smart, ironic, and celebratory. So much so that one is disappointed to see it end. One hopes that, like the group it lionizes, it can go on forever, running just ahead of fame and idolatry, but never losing the energy (in whatever forms it takes) that keeps it running through the decades, as per the Mael Brothers, now in their 70's.

They've just collaborated with Leo Carax (which is perfect) on his first feature film (starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard) since Holy Motors that's coming out this Summer.** What will THAT look/sound like? Can't wait to find out.

* Oh gosh, there are so many comparisons—Queen (they opened for Sparks in one marquee photo), Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Devo, B-52's, Depeche Mode and on and on. Paul McCartney dressed up as Ronald in his "Paul portrays everybody" video of "Coming Up" in 1980.

**  Their interest in film-making and their bizarre outlook led to almost collaborations with Jacques Tati and Tim Burton (on a musical version of "Mai, the Psychic Girl") but neither one came to fruition.

 

Stardust (2007)

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Getting killed by pirates...heart eaten by a witch...meet Victoria--I can't seem to decide which is worse!"

Matthew Vaughn's film of Stardust is so far removed from his last film, Layer Cake, that it would take a Babylon Candle to bridge the two (Don't know what a "Babylon Candle" is? Then you'll have to see the film. You should anyway). 

Layer Cake (an updated aside—it's the film where, suddenly, Daniel Craig, managed to emerge from behind the furniture into a eye-catching starring performance) was a whooping, swooping kitchen-sink-and-Porsche's story of drug-dealing in contemporary London. And while some of the stylistic touches are the same for Stardust, the story couldn't be more different. For instead of modern-day Britain, he is spinning his camera through Neil Gaiman's Faerie-Land.

Gaiman's reach is all things mythical, from the twee to the atrocious--across the stars, underground, beyond the pale and underneath your fingernails. He borrows from all sources, and puts them through his own personal salad-shooter and spits them out with his own dressing. In his work you'll find echoes of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton, G.K. Chesterton and Jorge Luis Borges and the Brothers Grimm, Greek mythology and Roman gods, History and Urban Legend, The Arabian Nights and the Book of the Dead, The Bible and the DC/Marvel Multiverses. 

I've been reading Gaiman with delight (no pun intended) for years, starting with his "Sandman" saga, which dragged on for maybe a dozen more issues than necessary because he had so many stories he wanted to get to, but I also love his "Violent Cases," and much of his book-work. It is with some trepidation that one watches his forays into film--Jon Peters owns the film-rights to "Sandman," for instance, and Gaiman wrote the English translation for Princess Mononoke, and worked on "Mirrormask," and there's talk of filming "Good Omens," the book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett.* That's scary talk. For what it's done to the works of Alan Moore, Hollywood looks like a gold-plated abortion clinic, and one wonders if they could do any justice to Gaiman's work. Even to attempt to film his "Signal to Noise" would be to destroy it.

Stardust makes the transition fairly well, though it eliminates the faeries and sprites that populate Gaiman's world like smoke, dust and flotsam do in Ridley Scott's (they also serve as little "Rosencrantzes" and "Guildensterns"). They throw in a sock-o finale, and the film has none of the delicacy of Charles Vess' illustrations from the graphic novel that Gaiman expanded to book-length. In fact, it has the sensibility several refinements up from Monty Python-design. But it does retain Gaiman's special form of "myth-busting," the wink-and-a-nod to the "real" world that suffused The Princess Bride, but without the Borcht Belt cinched around its waist.

What's interesting is how Paramount is selling it...or not selling it, as the case may be. Looking at the poster, you'd think it was one of the endless string of pre-teen or teen fantasy novels adaptations that are filling the Previews, or as reverent as Chronicles of Narnia, when nothing could be further from the truth, (but there are enough spinning helicopter shots of big landscapes to reassure the Suits that it has a "Lord of the Rings" quality). It's frequently hilarious in surprising and snarky ways, especially in the casting. 

Michelle Pfeiffer may not be the best at holding an accent, but her comic timing, and willingness to play against her looks is delightful. Robert DeNiro makes an entrance and you worry that he's been put in the wrong movie, but then he comes through with flying colors. Peter O'Toole does wonders with his limited screen-time as the Lion-King of a family of blue-bloods, and Rupert Everett shows up long enough to tweak his image hilariously. It's a fun, fine, un-gooey fairy tale that charms and delights. It's not doing well at the theaters, so do yourself a favor and go. Don't wait for Paramount to get their act together to convince you.

* "Good Omens" was made into a TV Mini-series in 2019 on Amazon Prime.