chaplin

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Hanging on in quiet desperation

I'm developing a strange fascination with Geri Halliwell. Actually, I was looking on You Tube for the brilliant documentary that Molly Dineen made about her in 1997. No luck. It appears to have been driven underground. This will please Geri, who felt it was too candid. However, I did find "There's Something About Geri", a self-produced promo puff from 2005. The thing about Geri is that she's so desperate for attention that she's somehow doomed to look absurd. All the accoutrements of the 21st century pop diva on the wane are on display in this film: the fleet of black cars, the lap dog, the studio engineers who must be laughing at her, the woolly talk about developing as an artist and the inclination to take her clothes off at the slightest excuse. You should watch this clip for the bit where she goes into Virgin's head office and tells the entire team how important they are to her record. How these people resist the urge to yawn, scratch themselves or leave the room is beyond me.
I love these films where you see the music business trying to behave. There should be a channel devoted to them. Cal it "Phew! Rock And Roll!". I'd watch it all the time. I want to find the one where Boy George went to New York to restart his career and had the meeting with the A&R man who played his demo at deafening volume. Also the brilliant film about Status Quo from about eight years ago where they were on tour in Scotland and they stepped out of their sweaty denims in the hotel corridor every night and then went straight to their room service dinner.
If anyone's got any clues where I can find these I'd love to hear.

3 comments:

  1. I think I might have found you a copy of the Dineen doc...

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  2. Bloody hell - she's David Brent.

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  3. She's very wise in a 'Peter Andre' kind of way ...

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