Duran Duran: Unstaged is a concert film sponsored by American Express and directed by David Lynch. Initially it was streamed live over the internet, but then was subsequently released on home media too. It's from a concert they had in LA to promote a new album for the band at that time, All You Need Is Now, which was produced by Mark Ronson and featured guest performances by Kelis, who both also performed on-stage for a couple songs at the concert. Through the film, Lynch layered other footage, animation, and effects over the performers to enhance the experience in a way only he could.
This was an interesting experience, but I really enjoyed it. Initially it was disruptive to have Lynch's imagery fading in and out over the band, because my experience with concert movies to that point was that the band was front and center, and seeing them was paramount; but as it went on, my brain adjusted and I got into it. We also had the guest performers, which, beyond Kelis and Mark Ronson, included Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, and Beth Ditto from Gossip (a band and singer I'd never heard of), who were great as well, especially Kelis's inclusion in "Come Undone" and Mark Ronson's arrangement for "View to a Kill," both of which were during the encore. Speaking of "Come Undone," that might have been the most Lynchian of them all, where we had layered over the performance images of someone at a charcoal grill full of hot dogs rhythmically smacking a spatula on it, and small hand puppets of mice and dogs appearing as Kelis sang. Why Lynch thought that went with that song is beyond me, but it worked in a way I wouldn't have expected, and maybe that's something I can say about this concert film overall, it worked in ways I wouldn't have expected.
This might come as a surprise, but I actually haven't seen many of David Lynch's films. Blue Velvet was one, Lost Highway another, and then if I'd seen Wild at Heart it was so long ago I barely remember it. Then of course there's The Elephant Man, which was on The Movie Loft on TV38 in Boston when I was a kid, and my dad thought it would be good for me to watch it with him. It wasn't. And maybe because that's stuck with me all these years that that paltry list plus a few Twin Peaks episodes is all I'd seen of Lynch's work to this point, but I've always appreciated who he is and what he's meant to film. He hasn't directed a feature-length film since this--unless you count him repurposing footage that had been edited out of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me into Twin Peak: The Missing Pieces in 2014, which Wikipedia not only doesn't count, but they don't count this either, saying his last feature film was Inland Empire, only his tenth feature film overall, so he doesn't leave behind a huge filmography from a numbers standpoint, but from a legacy and influence standpoint, it's massive. Truly one of the greatest to ever do it, Mr. Lynch, saying you will be missed is an understatement. At the end of the film, Simon Le Bon calls Lynch on stage, but he doesn't appear, so Le Bon says "he's teleported to a parallel universe, much better than ours." Let's hope Mr. Lynch is in that parallel universe making more beautiful films for the people there.
Duran Duran is one of my favorite bands as well, but I hadn't really followed them much since 2004's Astronaut, so a lot of this music was new to me. My sense of them as a kid was that they were always the coolest people in the room, especially Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and John Taylor, and watching them here in their late 40s/early 50s still be the coolest people in the room was fantastic. Yes, a lot of the set list were songs off the new album, which I could've done with less of and more classics, but they did hit enough of the classics--and played them right, which is always important--that I enjoyed it. The other thing is, I don't know how many other bands would've embraced what Lynch was doing here. This was sponsored by American Express, and I do have vague memories of them advertising it as some kind of special night, so to have imagery like a person slapping a grill full of hot dogs with a spatula layered over Simon Le Bon singing probably wasn't the easiest sell--and maybe that's why this isn't as widely known as I think it should be, maybe American Express looked at the result and were like "what is this?" Or maybe not, maybe they embraced it too, but by 2011 we were at a point that Duran Duran's audience, like myself, weren't as interested as we should've been in a new concert movie from them. Hopefully, also like me, they'll discover this gem now.
I should point out here that I'm not much of a concert person, which also kind of doesn't make sense to me, because some of my greatest experiences were at concerts, like when I saw Iggy Pop at the Avalon in Boston in the early 2000s. Live sporting events are more my thing, especially now that I live in Philadelphia, a city that not only has all four major US sports of its own, but is also only a 100-minute train ride from New York City all the teams in their area, and a two-hour train ride from the Washington, DC/Baltimore area and all the teams they have, something I've really taken advantage of over the last few years. I have a friend who's a bigger Duran Duran fan than me who attends concerts the way I got to sporting events. When I go to game, part of the calculus is, am I seeing teams I've never seen before? Players? Venues? I never considered that you could do the same thing with concerts, but I remember he saw Duran Duran play in Boston when they were touring on their original line-up, but Andy Taylor was injured in a car accident and couldn't perform, so he drove to Connecticut to see him play with the band a few nights later just to have that experience. The closest equivalent to this with movies is being able to see a film in the theater, but unlike live music or pro sports, where the people involved eventually retire, or worse, pass away, removing your chance of ever experiencing them live, with movies, the hope is we always have an indie theater that will play films like Lynch's, even after he's passed, so people can say "yeah, I saw that in the theater!" when someone mentions one of his movies.
Finally, as I was preparing for this review, it did strike me as odd that I hadn't seen more of Lynch's work, so I tried to get a sense of why that was, and I had to come to terms with a certain reality about myself: I'm a Jim Jarmusch Man. You know the binaries from films like Pulp Fiction--for example, are you a Beatles Man or an Elvis Man? And even though I love a lot of Beatles songs, I'm an Elvis Man. I never considered it before, but maybe the binary with Lynch is Jarmusch. Though Jarmusch is six years younger, their first feature films are only a few years apart, and they have roughly the same number of them over the past 45 years or so. Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise are definitely more my speed than Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, even if I'm not sure Jarmusch has done anything as good as Robert Loggia in Lost Highway beating up a guy who cut him off in traffic while yelling at him to read a driving manual. I think what this film tells me is I need to get outside my comfort zone a bit and take in more of Lynch's stuff, even if I'm a Jarmusch Man.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not at the top of your viewing list when you're honoring Lynch this long weekend, but considering it's a free streamer, it's worth checking out, especially if you've seen all of his other films--or if you're like me and looking for a way to honor him on your site about direct-to-video movies.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2133214
And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment