Martin Sharp Movies

Luna Park is an aged amusement park located in an area of prime real estate in Sydney Australia. Tiny Tim, at the time of this documentary, was an aged entertainer, who mined all of popular songwriting history for his performances. Both of them came together in 1979 for Tim's first attempt to set a world record for non-stop singing. Without attempting to comment on the eccentric singer's life or seek a deeper meaning in it, this documentary screens moments from his entire career as a celebrity, going back to his marriage to "Miss Vicky" on the Johnny Carson show. Tiny Tim was a curiously charismatic, gawky, beak-nosed man who played a ukelele, sang in a falsetto voice, and had extremely long, wavy hair. He was also an unparalleled scholar of popular music going back to the mid-nineteenth century, with a repertoire of tens of thousands of songs. In fact, so extensive was his knowledge that he was much sought-after by scholars and musicologists around the world. Despite the limitations of his persona and performance technique which would normally have resulted in his being only a novelty act, he had an astonishingly long and successful performing career. The other focus of this documentary is Luna Park, which was for Sydney residents what Coney Island is for New Yorkers. At one point it was closed as a result of a series of well-publicized fatal accidents, probably caused by sabotage arranged by unscrupulous developers who coveted the land it was on. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi