Band Boy Returns!

...due to lack of popular demand

As you know, I’ve been involved with making a film version of ‘Band Boy’, a musical I originally wrote as a stage play, for over 2 years now. I had a couple of screenings last spring, then went back to the drawing board (no, it’s not anime) to re-edit and tighten it up a bit.

Now, completely drained and totally lacking perspective, I have completed a version I’m ready to show.

Initially, I’d hoped to create a buzz by maintaining exclusivity. Buzzless, I now surrender, and am making it available for anyone to watch.

I’m still planning on submitting it to streaming services and festivals, but my ambition has waned along with my health. I can’t do all the things I considered doing to promote the film when I first started making it.

I should say this…I love this movie. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be. With a real budget, it might not have been as good.

It’s primitive, sometimes sloppy, sometimes just silly…much like me.

But just below the surface, for those who bother to dig, it’s amazingly sophisticated, moving, and intense. It requires the viewer to find those qualities, and that’s best done with repeated viewings. With today’s short attention spans, getting people to watch once is a challenge, so very few will really experience the full impact of what I’ve written and produced. That’s a bit sad for me, but audiences don’t owe me anything, even if they’re friends or relatives. (I do have a relative who owes me $10).

But even on a surface level, this film is a massive accomplishment for me. I have no experience making movies (although I was briefly a film major at Bard College in the early 70s). I envisioned a style that was a hybrid of live theater and filmic elements, and the finished product is exactly that. All the songs sound great (for example, this one, performed by the amazing Wanda Houston https://on.soundcloud.com/TjC1e) and actually function as they should in the context of a musical, which is different than just sticking songs in a movie. Each song is presented in a different way, visually…I realized early on that just showing the characters singing would be a bore on film, unlike in a theater musical. So I produced and recorded an album worth of songs, created music ‘videos’ for each, and made each an important element of the story. Gee, I’m tired.

I cast the movie myself. A few of the actors were friends and wives, but I searched all over for the right types, then trusted my instinct and crossed my fingers. Amazingly, not only were they all great to work with, they all came in prepared, brought additional dimension to the characters, and cooperated logistically to accommodate my ridiculous 5 day shooting schedule, which was all the shooting I could afford to do. 21 scenes, dressing sets (all in the same building, though you’d never know it by watching), and other various tasks had to work to the minute. It was an exhilarating experience, but soon after I was diagnosed with this lung problem of mine. Here’s the movie credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21965916/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_i_1

The ‘post-production’ experience was the opposite of the shoot. Dragging on endlessly, people flaking left and right, spending money I didn’t have, and frustration that added to my general malaise, made this last year and a half something of a nightmare.

I decided last spring I would complete the film, somehow, and let the chips fall where they may. I didn’t like where they fell. The screenings in June, while well attended, were received in a lukewarm manor.

While some of the feedback was positive, it sure didn’t set the world on fire (anything short of that was a flop in my book). I sensed people weren’t getting it. Some fairly intelligent folks were writing it off as amusing fluff (unlike, say, ‘Barbie’, which was amusing fluff imbued with a depth and message imagined only by bedazzled critics and gender-biased women….but hey, that’s my take, and no, I’m not anti-feminist…in fact, the joke is, the movie is…but I digress). I had to find out why they weren’t seeing what I knew was there.

So I pulled all copies of the movie offline, and set out to remake the film, via editing. The look and the sound of the production were tweaked and re-tweaked over the last 6 months. Several people I asked to help quit during the process, requiring me to learn how to use various software, which is not my forte.

I believe in this thing, is what it all boils down to. I’m still hopeful there’s an audience for it that I just haven’t found yet. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. It feels like it could be a ‘cult’ type film, someday. The world it creates is so real and yet so bizarre.

I’m not asking you to watch it…my ‘hat in hand’ days are over. I’ve created something I think is worthwhile, and no amount of cajoling will convince you of that. If you do watch it, please put some energy and thought into the experience. We’ve all become such passive viewers of entertainment, especially if someone doesn’t tell us why we should like it. Don’t bother telling me it’s ‘cute’…it may be your not-so-subtle way of damning with faint praise, but to me it says more about your unwillingness to understand the levels of complexity just below the surface.

This may be my last major project. Music has become a torture for me to create, as it comes with inevitable rejection, indifference, and lack of remuneration. I’ve written, since my last album with Fernando Perdomo, many songs I think are worth hearing, but will probably go unheard.

My book ‘Kid69’ would make a great movie…but I’m not writing it.

There’s talk of a new live variety/sketch comedy show, but for the most part I don’t have the energy for the work it requires. Maybe I’ll feel differently eventually, but right now the prospect is daunting.

Of course, the blog is on hiatus for now, so we’ll revisit that in the new year.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a review from a reviewer who, I think, gets it.

                                            Band Boy: The Return of the Ragamuffins

           In the wide-ranging genre of rock and roll films—from Rock Around the Clock (1956) to The Commitments (1991) to Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)—Band Boy may just be the most rock and roll of the bunch…as encapsulated in the name of the fictitious group featured: the Ragamuffins of Love. On one hand, it displays a gritty, seat-of-your-pants quality à la Don’t Look Back, the documentary about Bob Dylan’s 1965 concert tour of England. On the other, the film’s visual style reflects its subject from a completely diametrical angle—it utilizes the creative artifice that’s part and parcel of the entertainment world, most specifically the kind of reality-bending associated with the art of cinema from its inception. These include unexpected intercuts, sudden scene shifts that make perfect sense subjectively if not literally, the incorporation of found footage to establish mood and context, and the use of rear projection…or, more precisely, green screen, its modern-day equivalent. But writer/director Sandy McKnight takes it one playful step further. In one “rear-projection” sequence, where protagonist Eff Dupp is seen standing against a background of highway traffic, the scale of the projection is obviously mismatched with the foreground—the vehicles behind Eff are enlarged beyond all proportion. Besides offering a conspiratorial nod to the audience, the technique underscores the challenge facing a young artist seeking to raise his stature in the world.

          That being said, the most striking special effect in Band Boy is rooted, not in technological wizardry, but in the dialogue. Those familiar with Mr. McKnight’s literary and theatrical oeuvre will recognize his unique, da-da-esque use of language peppered with puns, pivots, and twists of phrase. To provide examples at this point would require the inclusion in this review of spoiler alerts, an approach to which this correspondent is not prepared to succumb. Especially in the case of a film as inventive as this one, the viewer is best left to his own experience.

          This is not the first iteration of his central creation…the Ragamuffins of Love have appeared before on long-playing record and in a short film, functioning as a sort of musical avatar and erstwhile doppelgänger for their creator. But this time they take center stage in a full-blown origin story that’s relatable to anyone who’s ever played in a rock-and-roll band…in fact, to anyone who’s ever done anything deemed by the establishment to be against the odds.

          Here, art imitates life to a tee—Sandy McKnight has long been regarded as a world-class triple-hyphenate (singer/songwriter/musician) who marches to his own drummer…in this case, literally. Whatever his imagination might churn up, his feet are firmly planted on a foundation of reality, though that foundation sometimes seems to consist of shifting sand, the “nature of the beats,” no doubt, for a diehard rock and roller.

          For Band Boy, McKnight did everything short of punching out the sprocket holes…a task fortunately not required with today’s technology. Besides serving as producer, director, and screenwriter, he wrote or co-wrote all twenty songs on the film’s soundtrack. Some are performed onscreen; others are employed in transitional sequences that support the narrative. Remarkably, every last one is a standout…no filler to be found.

          One song, however, represents a departure from the above motif. “Queen of R&B” is performed by soul-diva-supreme Wanda Houston in a surprise guest appearance. She sings it seated at a table in a club opposite Amadou, the Ragamuffin’s drummer. The lyric tells of her struggles to make it as a singer in the 1960s, that decade of turbulent change in race relations and American society in general. The presumably off-the-cuff performance is interspersed with news footage from the period, including the infamous but ubiquitous signs declaring “whites only.” Both the song and Ms. Houston’s performance are a tour de force. They present a life lesson and cautionary tale to Amadou as he pursues his own musical dream—while simultaneously lending both the Ragamuffins’ quest and the film itself a well-deserved dollop of gravitas.

          One would be amiss indeed to conclude this discussion without mention of a critical factor that has been the downfall of many a low-budget, non-mainstream film. Namely, the casting. It’s been said that in life nothing is perfect, but on this score the director comes damn near close. Like Harrison Ford in Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he chose wisely. And the players, for their part, return the compliment in spades. Marc A. Contento, Mary Liz Adams, Steven Sawan, and Sam Kombo portray the Ragamuffins, the interplay of their disparate perspectives comprising the heart of the story. Andrew Joffe and Sherman Howard are the hilariously out-of-touch manager and songwriter, respectively, who enter the band’s low-rent world with the glittering promise of a record deal. In addition, the actors who inhabit the smaller roles all have their individual moments in the sun while collectively providing the film with a reality base amidst the fanciful production design. As a living, breathing Easter egg for McKnight followers, Liv Cummins—his longtime collaborator on various projects and this film’s executive producer—contributes a comic turn as Eff’s addled, advice-rendering stepmother.

                      Those whose concept of popular music is defined by Taylor Swift videos would do well to spend some quality time with the Ragamuffins of Love. (No disrespect intended to the talented Ms. Swift and her vast legion of enthusiastic fans.) In its rough-edged exuberance, Band Boy provides tangible evidence that Marshall McLuhan was right: the medium is indeed the message, no auto-tune necessary.

• Dan Marcus, AMASS