Rodney Bingenheimer Movies
When Rodney Bingenheimer was just a teenager -- a diminutive, long-haired kid who was picked on a lot -- his mother, a divorced autograph hound, dropped him off in front of the home of actress Connie Stevens and essentially said, "Good luck." Stevens was on location shooting a movie and Bingenheimer says he didn't see his mother again for five or six years after that. The Mayor of the Sunset Strip, a documentary by George Hickenlooper (Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse), tracks Bingenheimer's rise from the 1960s, when he was a groupie -- eventually landing his first show-business job as a double for Davy Jones on The Monkees -- through stints as a successful club owner and influential DJ to his current status as a fading musical icon. The film takes us from the innocent pop of Brian Wilson and Sonny & Cher through the raucous heyday of L.A.'s punk scene and beyond. Hickenlooper also delves into Bingenheimer's relationships, showing him mourning his neglectful and unbalanced, but beloved, mother and visiting with his father, who never attempted to make contact with Bingenheimer after his mother abandoned him. He also pines for a close friend, Camille Chancery, and helps out a seemingly hopeless middle-aged wannabe rock star, Ronald Vaughan. While Bingenheimer used his skills as a consummate hanger-on and his genuine enthusiasm for rock & roll to become a central figure in the L.A. music scene for a couple of decades and is lauded in the film for his good taste and good nature by celebrities from Cher to David Bowie to Gwen Stefani, his current life is shown to be somewhat sad and lonely. The Mayor of the Sunset Strip is chock full of cameos and features a star-studded soundtrack. It was shown at the 2003 New York Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rodney Bingenheimer
- 2003
- Add End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones to Queue Add End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones to top of Queue
Filmmaker Michael Gramaglia's years-in-the-making biography of the legendary punk band the Ramones entitled End of the Century traces nearly all the various and sundry peaks and valleys which the seminal rockers experienced over the course of its 20-plus year career before disbanding in 1995. Beginning with the band's first concert performances in the mid-'70s, Gramaglia explores the eccentric and highly volatile band members -- in all the various line-ups that were presented over the years -- as the Ramones slowly gained fame for their high energy and high-tempo style of music that would later influence generations of punk rockers around the world. Mixing archival interviews with new interviews of the various surviving bandmembers, as well as interviews with a number of the Ramones' contemporaries, End of the Century encapsulates the East Coast underground music atmosphere of the 1970s and '80s that the band inadvertently shocked into existence. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, (more)
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello not only starred in the delightfully "retro" Back to the Beach, but also served as executive producers. Appropriately set 25 years after such drive-in faves as Beach Blanket Bingo, the film finds Frankie and Annette as husband and wife, living far from the surf 'n' sand in Ohio. Heading to California to visit their daughter Lori Loughlin, Frankie and Annette are appalled to learn that she has been keeping time with punker Tommy Hinkley. In time-honored fashion, our hero and heroine set about to make the beach safe for funlovers everywhere by driving out Hinkley's unsavory pals. Along the way, Frankie nearly bollixes up his marriage by dallying with Connie Stevens-one of several pop-culture icons appearing in Back to the Beach, including Don Adams, Bob Denver, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Dick Dale & the Del-Tones , Stevie Ray Vaughan, and even Pee-wee Herman! Back to the Beach is fun for a while, but its six-person writing team can't figure out a logical way to wind it all up. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, (more)
X was one of the finest and most widely acclaimed American rock bands of the 1980s. Rising out of the Los Angeles punk rock scene, X merged punk, rockabilly, blues, and country flavors into a revved-up sound that at once celebrated and deconstructed American pop culture, and the group's lyrics -- written by singer Exene Cervenka and bassist/vocalist John Doe -- used beat-influenced poetry to examine life along the margins in one of America's most privileged cities. X became a major draw in their hometown, and their first two independently released albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift, each managed the then-remarkable feat of selling over 50,000 copies each. However, as the group's popularity steadily grew and they began to expand the boundaries of the underground music community, the band found themselves faced with the question of how to bring their sound to the mass audience without compromising their music (or their principles) in the process. The Unheard Music is a documentary that combines live footage of the band and interviews with the four members (as well as their friends and families) with surreal music videos and montages of newsreel footage and vintage television commercials which help to illustrate X's uphill struggle against the music industry. The year The Unheard Music was released, guitarist and founding member Billy Zoom left the band, and X soldiered on with guitarist Tony Gilkyson before calling it a day in 1988. However, the group briefly reunited with Gilkyson in 1993, recording two albums (one studio, one live), and in 1998, Billy Zoom made his long-awaited return to X's lineup for a series of enthusiastically received live dates. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Exene Cervenka
Alex Cox's directorial debut was a wickedly funny and willfully bizarre story that became a major cult item once it began making the art-house rounds a year after its release (an initial run in a string of Southern grind houses and drive-ins, where it was billed as an action film, was a resounding failure). Having lost his job and his girlfriend, punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) meets a guy named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him $25 to drive his wife's car out of a "bad area." When a handful of angry people start chasing Otto, he realizes that something is up, and he discovers that Bud repossesses cars for a living. With few immediate prospects, Otto joins Bud at the repo yard and is soon "ripping" cars with the best of them. When an anonymous source posts a $20,000 reward for a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu, it turns out that what's valuable isn't the car itself, but what's in the trunk, which is very hot, glows brightly, and kills anyone who comes in contact with it. A vaguely surreal modern-noir science-fiction comedy with echoes of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man is packed with more incongruous sight gags than anyone can absorb in one viewing; keep your eyes peeled for the air fresheners, the generic newspaper box, and the watches without hands. Harry Dean Stanton gives a superb comic performance as the intense but laid-back Bud, Emilio Estevez delivers perhaps the best work of his career as the petulant but goofy Otto, and Tracey Walter is hilarious as the spaced out repo-yard man Miller. Iggy Pop wrote and performed the theme song and The Circle Jerks appear as a lounge band. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, (more)
Then professional potheads Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong teamed up for Cheech & Chong: Up In Smoke, which features the drug-addled duo on a road trip throughout California; that is to say, a road-trip they hope will culminate in finding some quality weed. Instead, a series of mishaps result in their respective deportations to Mexico. Desperate to get back to the states so they can perform in their band's gig later that night, Cheech and Chong unwittingly agree to drive a very unique car across the border -- rather than steel and various metal bits, the vehicle is constructed entirely out of marijuana. Back in the States and accompanied by two extraordinarily out-of-it female hitchhikers, the stoned group meanders about in an attempt to get their musical performance together, and narrowly escapes from local law enforcement agencies on numerous occasions despite their complete inability to realize they were being tailed to begin with. The incredibly low-budget movie surprised critics, grossed millions, spawned a series of lesser follow-up films, and cemented Cheech & Chong's cult-status among potheads across the globe. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
- Starring:
- Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, (more)
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