The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

What's Left? - Get Crazy!

As the year draws to an end, I look forward to spending New Years Eve watching one of my favorite rock n roll movies. Then I pull out the second-generation VHS copy I have, and sigh. Get Crazy, hard enough to find after it's brief VHS pressing in the 80's, continues to not exist in the age of DVD. It's a shame, because there's really no better movie to watch on New Year's Eve.

Get Crazy is told through the eyes of Neil (Daniel Stern), a newly hired stage manager working a New Year's Eve show at a Fillmore-like rock club. The club's beloved manager, Sammy Fox (Miles Chapin), has brought together a great lineup of stars to play the show, and it's going to be an amazing show. But there are complications, the biggest one being Colin Beverly (Ed Begley, Jr.), the embodiment of 80's corporate capitalist scumbags. Beverly wants to buy the club out so he can build a highrise in it's place, and he's willing to stoop to any villainous lengths to get it. He is aided in this by two yes-men who follow him around, played by washed-up pop stars Bobby Sherman and (I think) Fabian.

Like a lot of comedies, Get Crazy is a bit lackluster in its first half-hour, as it sets up the plot lines and character arcs. But once the bands start arriving, it starts to come alive. There's an ancient blues legend named King Blues (delighted to hear every other performer of the night covering his hit "Hoochie Coochie Man"). There's a Go Go's-ish all-girl new wave group who also serve as the backup band for Piggy (Fear's lead singer Lee Ving, basically playing himself), a punk singer so violent that he must be restrained until showtime. Captain Cloud (Howard Kaylan of The Turtles) is the leader of a Grateful Dead-inspired band that travels with an army of blissed-out hippies, and Lou Reed is Auden, a reclusive, Dylanesque folk singer. The main attraction of the night is Reggie Wanker, a huge British rock star played by Malcolm McDowell.

There's also Electric Larry, a mysterious drug dealer who looks like the grim reaper floating around, and by the end of the night most of the participants are pretty dosed up. Reggie Wanker even appoints his dick to be his new manager. Seriously, do I even have to sell anyone on this movie? Malcolm McDowell plays a rock star who has a long conversation with his dick! OK, this isn't the sort of sophisticated satire of something like This Is Spinal Tap. It's closer to the anarchic silliness of director Alan Arkush's earlier film Rock n Roll High School. It's a movie to put on at a party and just have some good cheap laughs.

What's even more amazing to me than Get Crazy not being on DVD is that Arkush's previous movie, the disastrous flop Heartbeeps, is! How the hell can Heartbeeps have a DVD, and not Get Crazy? Come on, guys, give us Get Crazy in time for the next New Years Eve! Don't leave us hanging!