7/25/2023 0 Comments Bee gees documentary hbo maxWhat would you say is the secret to a good documentary? Zappa Review: Alex Winter’s Documentary Profiles a True Mother of Invention By Tony Sokol ![]() We’ve kind of been dabbling in them and then Kennedy/Marshall, about five, six years ago, started really making them. I directed my first short doc about 10 years ago and I really loved it, but it was only 50 minutes and it was a very specific subject. I’ve never really had the opportunity to do them just because they take so long and they’re so involved, and I’ve had my day job. Well, Marty’s kind of an inspiration for whatever you want to do. What inspired you to do a film about the Bee Gees? You worked with Martin Scorsese on The Last Waltz, which is a very different film, but in terms of how to make a great music documentary was that an inspiration? We were doing The Warriors, and I remember hearing about a little disco movie. I love that portion of the documentary where it comes out that some of the execs at Paramount at the time were looking down at the “little disco movie” and had no idea what it was going to become.Ĭertainly, at that moment I happened to be at Paramount when that was going on. Then to find out later, when I’m doing this doc, that none of it was planned, that’s incredible. The songs were all different and really fit to the movie. That was my first realization that they were pop superstars. I was shooting The Warriors, which was also at Paramount, and so it was a big deal to have this movie soundtrack suddenly become such a giant success. When I thought back I knew their early songs because I grew up obviously in the ’60s, ’70s, but they really didn’t have an impact for me until Saturday Night Fever. ![]() So there was a lot of connective tissue that went into this. He was actually under contract at Capitol Records. ![]() My dad was a guitar player and conductor and composer. That was the connection here, that I grew up in a musical family. I read that your father was a musician and you play guitar yourself, so music has always been an important part of your life. This was such a great journey of discovery and so I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s what I love about documentaries, you don’t know where you’re going, unlike my day job where I know everything I’m doing that day. I came out of it wanting to get all those early albums and just fascinated by their whole story.įrank Marshall: Well, thanks. The film is directed by Frank Marshall, the legendary producer whose own track record with Amblin and his own Kennedy/Marshall Company includes films such as the Indiana Jones series, the Back to the Future trilogy, Poltergeist, the Jurassic Park/World saga, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Arachnophobia (which he also directed), The Sixth Sense and many more.ĭen of Geek had the privilege of speaking with Marshall about his own view of the Bee Gees, working with Barry Gibb and the families of the other brothers, their place in pop culture and more.ĭen of Geek: I went into this film not being a particularly huge Bee Gees fan, but certainly knowing who they are and knowing certain parts of the legacy like Saturday Night Fever. Now the entire story of the Bee Gees has been chronicled in an excellent new documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, which premieres this weekend on HBO in the US and Sky Documentaries in the UK. They also experienced one of the most vicious backlashes in pop history as the tide turned against disco by the end of the 1970s - a backlash that may have been fueled by racism and homophobia as well as the oversaturation of the market. ![]() Generations of music fans know the Bee Gees - British-born, Australia-based brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb - as the musical act that created the songs for Saturday Night Fever, the 1978 movie that made John Travolta a star and catapulted what was known at the time as “disco” music to the forefront of pop culture.īut not only did the Bee Gees create indelible dance staples like “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “More Than a Woman,” but they had an entire career before Saturday Night Fever, one which was launched in the 1960s and yielded pop classics like “How Do You Mend a Broken Heart,” “To Love Somebody,” “Massachusetts,” “I Started a Joke,” and more, before their gradual turn toward R&B and dance with hits such as “Jive Talkin’” and “Nights on Broadway.”Īlong the way, the Bee Gees broke up, battled each other and various addictions, went through dizzying career ups and downs, wrote hits for other artists and succumbed to tragedy, with Robin, Maurice, and younger brother Andy (who started as a solo act before joining his siblings in the Bee Gees) passing away in 2012, 20 respectively.
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