Slamdance ’19: Dons of Disco

Milli Vanilli got off easy. Sure, they have been mocked and humiliated, but at least they were not pulled into a blood feud with their “ghost-singers.” “Blood feud” might be a slight exaggeration in the case of Tom Hooker and Stefano Zandri, but only slightly so. The face of Den Harrow, the supposedly American Italo-Disco star took umbrage when the voice started taking credit for his vocals. Jonathan Sutak chronicles a very strange and very Italian show business story in Dons of Disco (trailer here), which screens during the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Both Hooker and Zandri would probably agree the 1970s were quite a time in Italy. Disco was most definitely the thing and super-producers Miki Chieregato and Roberto Turatti were quite adept at manufacturing hits, but Den Harrow was their greatest invention. According to his legend, Harrow hailed from Chicago, but he was really Zandri, an Italian model and party-boy, who lip-synched the vocals of Hooker, a genuine American. He had a legit Italian chart-topper, but his career suffered when his vocals for Harrow became too value to dilute with releases under his own name.

Hooker had more-or-less accepted his ghost status, successfully forging a new career, until he was outed on social media. He decided to own up and reclaim his voice, which did not sit well with Zandri. Hooker, now known as Thomas Barbey even launched a comeback attempt with the help of Chieregato, whereas as Turatti essentially sided with Zandri.

The Den Harrow story is “stranger than fiction” and Sutak does it justice. However, whether it was his intention or not, Hooker has the clear advantage throughout the doc. In the 70s Zandri might have been the better looking one, but in the 2010s, Hooker/Barbey is much more charismatic on-screen. He has a sense of humor, whereas Zandri acts like a poor man’s Franco Nero. Plus, Hooker can actually sing.

There are a number of genuine surprises in store for viewers at various points during Dons. It will also be wildly nostalgic for the disco generation. Sutak has a solid handle on Harrow and his legion of fans. If viewers are not careful, they could even find themselves infected by Harrow earworms, like the ultra-of-its-era “Don’t Break My Heart.”

The ultimate irony of Dons is just how much superior the current circumstances of Hooker/Barbey are compared to those of Zandri. Apparently, the Face had tax problems—that’ll do it every time. It also explains the vehemence of Zandri’s response—he needs to be Harrow more than Hooker. Regardless, their story is certifiably nutty, but there is a general love of music shared by Sutak, his subjects, and his talking heads that is quite appealing. Recommended for nostalgic fans of disco music and related forms of cheesy music, Dons of Disco screens again on Thursday (1/31), as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Tribeca ’18: Studio 54

That storied disco club did something rather remarkable. It caused many elite New Yorkers to turn against the enforcement of tax laws. After all, for club owners like Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, all those tax code regulations could be so complicated—and doesn’t everyone keep large containers of cash in their drop ceilings? Especially for small change, right? Rubell and Schrager only owned and operated the famous club from 1977 to 1980, but they had quite a run. Matt Tyrnauer chronicles their glory years in Studio 54, which screened during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.

Tyrnauer makes a convincing case Studio 54 came along at just the right time to catch the wave of burgeoning interest in tabloid-style celebrity pseudo-journalism. In fact, their former publicist still has her bonus rate card for placing Studio 54-related stories and photos. Naturally, the front page of the New York Post was the biggest get—and she got a lot of them. Rubell also shrewdly positioned the club as a haven for LGBT patrons. Somehow, that combination of the privileged and the marginalized created a buzz everyone wanted to experience.

Of course, there was also the exclusivity factor. We do indeed hear plenty of stories revolving around the velvet rope. Oddly though, there is little talk about the actual music. Nile Rodgers is one of the few musicians interviewed in the film, but he mostly discusses his experiences as a patron. For those interested in disco as a musical phenomenon, Record Man, the profile of disco-era producer Henry Stone is probably still the best doc out there.

Frankly, Tyrnauer’s 54 follows a very predictable beat sheet—rise, fall, legacy—while employing very conventional techniques. It is fitting that the film carries the imprimatur of A&E, because it has the look and feel of something cobbled together for cable. Still, it is hard to resist pop culture nostalgia, especially when served up in bulk quantities. Tyrnauer does a nice job of evoking the tenor of the time. You will hear names you haven’t heard for decades, like Bianca Jagger, the Kardashian of the 1970s. At the time, she was one of their prime publicity-generating regulars, along with Liza Minelli and Truman Capote. Honest, all this really happened.

Nevertheless, the film’s fast-and-loose skim of the legal case brought against Rubell and Schrager is conspicuously sympathetic. The film also ignores the building’s fascinating history before and after the Rubell/Schrager era. Currently, it is a Broadway theater, but it has also served as an opera house, a WPA theater, a New Wave club, and CBS soundstages.

Maybe you just had to be there, but how could you, if Steve Rubell wouldn’t let you past the velvet rope? In fact, you can hear some of the talking heads sounding a bit wistful for the time when they were the cool kids with access. It must have been fun at the time—and some of the dishy reminiscences capture that spirit. As a diversion, it holds the audience’s attention, but there is nothing earth-shaking here. Recommended primarily for fans who were there, Studio 54 had its New York premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival (and it also screens today 4/29 at the Montclair Film Festival).

Big Sky ’16: The Record Man

With the passage of time, you might be ready now to admit you own some of the records produced by Henry Stone—maybe a lot of them. Initially, he mostly oversaw R&B sessions, but he enjoyed spectacular but brief success as the original disco producer. When times were good they were booming, but the bust came on hard and fast. The late, great Stone looks back on his colorful career in Mark Moormann’s The Record Man (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

After serving in an Army band that included the likes of Sy Oliver and Jimmy Lunceford, Stone made some hard, levelheaded choices as a good but not great trumpet player. He opted to move over to the business side of the music industry, a decision his future right-hand man, almost teen idol Steve Alaimo would also make. At one point, he sold platters out of the trunk of his cars (earning the nick name “Record Man”), but he quickly moved into distribution and production at a more professional level.

Stone ran an appealingly loose ship at TK Records, where eager kids like Harry Wayne “KC” Casey and Richard Finch could fool around in the studio after finishing their gopher work. Eventually, their collaborations blossomed into KC and the Sunshine Band. It took them a bit of time to catch on, but when they did, Stone was practically minting money, at least until the phrase “disco sucks” entered the public consciousness.

Through Stone’s reminiscences, Moormann gives viewers a pretty robust history of disco. Maybe you knew George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby” is considered the very first disco record ever, if you are a dedicated aficionado. However, the professional rivalry he developed with his wife and fellow TK recording artist Gwen McRae could be the basis of its own film.

Moormann scored interviews with most of the surviving TK artists (including Casey, George McRae, Timmy Thomas, Benny Lattimore, and the smooth-jazzish Bobby Caldwell) who describe Stone as old school, in mostly a fun to be around, only slightly roguish way. There is also a third act triumph-over-adversity angle to the film that sort of hides in plain sight from the audience during Stone’s initial on-camera appearances. There are also some real world music business survival tips to be gleaned from his experiences, like always be leery when a cat like Morris Levy calls.

For the most part though, Record Man is a lot of breezy, nostalgic fun, even if you are not a huge disco fan. Highly recommended as a slice of American cultural history, The Record Man screens this Saturday (2/20) and Sunday (2/21) as part of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the following Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday (2/28, 2/29, 3/2) at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

The Double Secret Disco Revolution

For about ten seconds in 1998, Whit Stillman had the world loving disco again with his wry The Last Days of Disco, but then Mike Meyers had everyone hating it again when Studio 54 came out two months later.  Jamie Kastner tries to make the music cool once more, but he wildly overstates his case in The Secret Disco Revolution (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Essentially, Kastner argues discos were a unique melting pot in American cultural history, becoming the first place where people of all races and sexual orientations danced the nights away in a hedonistic orgy of tolerance.  There might be a kernel of something to that, but he inflates it into a bizarre mock-secret history, in which the disco kids battled the forces of the reactionary, rock & roll loving, racist establishment.  That’s right rockers, you’re just the tools of the man.  In doing so, Kastner draws heavily from the work of former deejay turned professor Alice Echolls, who often sounds like a caricature of publish-or-perish academia in her many talking head segments.

Still, there are some sharply telling interviews with the artists and producers who defined the disco era, including Harry Wayne “KC” Casey, Robert “Kool” Bell, Maxine Nightingale, and super-producer Tom Moulton.  However, original Village People band-member Felipe Rose really steals the show, responding to Kastner’s questions with increasingly animated incredulity.

Rather than merely looking back on disco with nostalgia and affection, Kastner is clearly trying to use it as a salvo in the culture war, even though reality often does not fit his theories.  It was an inclusive time we hear, except for that velvet rope at Studio 54, which became the epitome of class division.  Time and again, the performers and hangers-on deny there was any political subtext to the music.  Often, they explicitly contradict Kastner’s narrative, asserting disco was a non-political sphere to get away from the stagflation, malaise, and urban decay of 1970’s New York.

To an extent, Village People co-founder and co-producer Henri Belolo plays ball, likening the spontaneous “disco sucks” movement to National Socialist book-burning, but such hyperbole is not persuasive.  After all, Casablanca Records’ Larry Harris slyly confesses the label rather enjoyed the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, because they had to buy records for it.

Kastner’s gimmicky dramatization of the “mysterious masterminds” supposedly behind the disco revolution hardly bolsters the film’s credibility.  Nor does the wildly over-the-top narration help much either.  The simple truth is musical tastes changed in the 1980’s.  Tiring of records released by studio creations rather than bands, people began to prefer authenticity in music.  Ironically, Punk would outlive disco, eventually going relatively mainstream.  Wynton Marsalis launched a neo-classical return to jazz’s bop-based acoustic roots, while old school rockers like Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen would release the biggest hits of their career in the 1980’s.  There was nothing racist or homophobic about such developments.  In fact, for musicians who rely on live gigs to pay the bills, this was all jolly good news.

Despite its strange excesses, Secret has its entertaining moments.  It is nice to see the performers finally get the music documentary treatment.  Unfortunately, it comes with Kastner’s baggage-heavy polemics.  Knowingly eccentric and erratic, The Secret Disco Revolution is recommended only for die-hard disco fans when it opens this Friday (6/28) in New York at the Quad Cinema.