| 27th February 2006 08:09 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Friday, February 24, 2006
Sex, Death and Rock'n Roll
Much like the Rolling Stones’ bleeped out Super Bowl halftime show, filmmaker Stephen Woolley had to skip over some of the juicy bits for his new drama Stoned
By Mike Szymanski
FilmStew.com
For Stoned director Stephen Woolley, it wasn't the subject matter of his new drama that was necessarily the most difficult issue to deal with - he bought up the rights to just about every book on the subject. Nor was he necessarily daunted to be investigating the possible murder of one of the most colorful musical talents of the 1960s. What was most frustrating in the dozen years it took to make Stoned for Woolley is that he wasn't able to get anywhere near the people in the band that the movie involves.
"The Rolling Stones are incredibly protected,” he marvels during a recent interview with FilmStew. “I could never get near them. They have a hugeness that is great. It is perhaps good for the film that they are still so popular, that they still sell out concerts and played the Super Bowl."
In other words, Mick Jagger and co. didn't try to stop Woolley from getting satisfaction; but they didn't help him, either.
Stoned is not about the Stones so much as it is about Brian Jones, the colorful former front man of the band. He's the one who helped run the band in the early days, gave it the lip-smackingly good name and launched its bad boy reputation. But Jones, a flamboyant bisexual, died mysteriously in his swimming pool July 2nd, 1969, just as the Stones were becoming as big as the Beatles. And that's the story that fascinates Woolley.
"It's not about the band," insists Woolley, a Brit who looks as if he could have been a former band member himself. "It's not about Mick and Keith anymore; they have become a big machine. They believe they have gone on 44 years and Brian was only with them seven of those years. So, as far as they're concerned, Brian has been air brushed out of the picture. For them, it's like ancient history."
But, as Woolley's pseudo-docudrama shows, Jones was the catalyst and inspiration for the band. Without him, there would today be no Stones. In the movie, Woolley uses hardcore facts to base his conclusion that Jones was murdered by a handsome handyman, Frank Thorogood, who made a deathbed confession decades later that he drowned Jones in the pool after one too many sexual advances. Woolley mixes interviews with the people at the house, Jones' girlfriends and coroner's reports to draw his conclusions.
"I kind of feel that in the movie I show Brian was killed, murdered, and give the motivation," suggests Woolley, who holds back on saying that the married Thorogood actually had an affair with Jones. He thinks it may be possible, but didn't put it in the film. "I think Brian was just being too much; he egged it on, he was being too provocative."
Famous friends of Jones, including Richards and Jagger as well as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, are shown in quick cameos of the raucous 1960s music scene. "All of his friends - Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin - they all died within a year of him and all at same age, 27," Woolley points out. "I think that Brian would have been incredibly fortunate to survive longer than that. If it wasn't Frank, I don't know what would have happened to Brian."
Woolley worked with Jones' last known girlfriend, sourcing her book Death of Brian Jones, and tapped into two other tomes written about the mysterious death. He also made Stones strongman Tom Keylock, who is depicted in the movie, the film's consultant. Up-and-coming star Leo Gregory (Green Street, Tristan and Isolde) stars as the omnivorous and selfish musical genius, while Paddy Considine (Born Romantic, Cinderella Man) portrays Frank the handyman, David Morrissey (Hilary and Jackie) co-stars as Keylock and Sleepwalker starlet Tuva Novotny is the girlfriend, Anna.
As a producer, Woolley has previously toyed with the theme of bisexuality in films such as The Crying Game, Interview with a Vampire, B. Monkey and, most recently, Breakfast on Pluto. He has also dealt with music of the era, having produced Backbeat, with the Beatles as a backdrop.
"I think bisexuality is a youth thing, it's something you kind of experiment with when you're not sure of your sexuality,” Woolley observes. “And certainly, that form of experimentation is what people were embracing in the '60s and '70s. They were not sure about their sexuality or where they are coming from, and it's a reflection of youth. It was about experimenting with drugs and sex at that time."
In his research, Woolley uncovered many rumors and stories about Jones that he couldn't use. "I found out things like if Brian would come in with two tabs of acid and you turned it down, he would take both, and that it was the same with sex. It wasn't one guy, but two guys." Woolley says he found out that Jagger's uncle, a Christian man who worked as Jones's chauffeur, quit his job because of the shenanigans in the back seat not only with girls, but with boys his age. "I couldn't put all the rumors in!"
But Woolley did get permission to film at the former home of A.A. Milne, who wrote Winnie the Pooh, which Jones optioned at one time because he revered the author so much. Now, screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who adapted Billy Elliot for the screen and wrote two James Bond films (The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day), have created a compelling script that intertwines the stories about Jones, the music and his death.
Documentary footage never released shows Jones and his handyman in a very comfortable home life situation. "Frank cooked for Brian, and seemed very involved in his life," Woolley explains. "It very much reminded me of The Servant, which was a big influence on me, with Dirk Bogarde and James Fox. There was so much sexual tension [in that film], and yet nothing is shown."
Jagger's own starring opposite Fox a year after Jones' death, in the 1970 film Performance is, essentially, Jones. "The director [Nicolas Roeg] told him to play Brian, and he was very bisexual, on the edge, fascinated with violence and the power from a violent act and that was really Brian," Woolley maintains.
As to what might have happened with Jones’ career had he not succumbed in 1969, Woolley thinks he quite possibly could have reformed the Rolling Stones with other people, or moved on to some sort of other musical endeavor. “Brian was working on music scores for Volker Schlondorff's films, who went on to do The Tin Drum, which won Best Foreign Language film,” he muses. “So Brian could have done a score for an Oscar-winning film."
"Ultimately, Brian was glam rock before it was even invented,” he adds with a sigh. “David Bowie would have liked him. Brian had everything in his palm, he had the world. He just couldn't hang on to it.”
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| 27th February 2006 08:33 AM |
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| Break The Spell |
Sounds interesting, might have to check it out. In one part he seems to think Brain might have put together a new version of the Stones, I guess there would have been a big legal fight as to who had rights to the name. I lean on the side of him just doing his own music under his own name. |
| 27th February 2006 09:13 AM |
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| glencar |
This'll play in about 5 theaters across the nation. |
| 27th February 2006 10:48 AM |
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| BlackKat |
I hope not. I'm looking forward to seeing it. |
| 27th February 2006 10:55 AM |
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| Jumacfly |
quote:
glencar wrote:
This'll play in about 5 theaters across the nation.
my bets are on 1 theatre here!
for me the file is closed, and it s the same for the Stones. |
| 27th February 2006 11:00 AM |
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| glencar |
There's always DVD... |
| 27th February 2006 03:01 PM |
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| Jumping Jack |
Brokeback Mountain on acid? Hollywood should love it!!! |
| 27th February 2006 06:05 PM |
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| stonedinaustralia |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
As to what might have happened with Jones’ career had he not succumbed in 1969, Woolley thinks he quite possibly could have reformed the Rolling Stones with other people,
this is meant as joke,right?? |
| 27th February 2006 06:38 PM |
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| Soldatti |
I want to get a DVD, I didn't see it on torrents still. |
| 27th February 2006 09:17 PM |
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| GhostofBrianJones |
Wasn't that movie "Ode To Billy Joe" about a guy who was
finding his sexuality and had had bi-sexual affairs and then thought he was gay and jumped off of that bridge, or am I mistaken? Brian may have been AC/DC for a while (?) but I think
he was basically straight. |
| 28th February 2006 06:58 AM |
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| Break The Spell |
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
this is meant as joke,right??
This was my reaction too, could you imagine the Stones without Mick, Keith and Charlie? There's no way he could really think this may have happened. |
| 28th February 2006 09:34 AM |
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| stonedinaustralia |
you'd like to think he ws joking but i have an uncomfortable feeling he believed what he was saying
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| 28th February 2006 11:15 AM |
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| Mathijs |
Maybe I must out bigtime for the last 25 years, but since when was Brian bisexual?
Mathijs |
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