Confusingly for some “Saturday Night”, maybe most confusingly for Billy Crystal followers, this film has the identical title as Crystal’s 1992 Anatomy of An Previous-College Standup film, an arguably fascinating self-laceration underneath the guise of a laceration of an alter-ego. This film, a documentary directed by John Maggio, a part of HBO’s Invoice-Simmons-produced “Music Field” collection, is a nearly fully laudatory work, celebrating just a few of the best coups within the profession of music supervisor and movie producer Robert Stigwood.
The “Saturday Night” of the title is “Saturday Night Fever,” an early foray into the film world for Stigwood, who previous to the 1977 launch had been operating issues for the likes of Cream and the Bee Gees. And that was really the one approach the person could possibly be characterized as a “Saturday Night” type of man. The Australian-born Stigwood was, on the first peak of his music profession success, was described by the BBC as “diffident” and “awkward.” Early in his profession, he connected himself to Brian Epstein, and by the mid-60s the Beatles brainiac was prepared at hand over the reins to his total music kingdom to Stigwood. However the Beatles themselves balked, so Stigwood ran off with the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton (Cream having imploded) and arrange a store in New York.
Maggio’s’ film describes the unprecedented deal Stigwood made with rising TV star John Travolta, locking him up for 3 motion pictures. The supervisor then needed to concoct the film. An assistant introduced {a magazine} function by rock journo Nik Cohn to his consideration, about disco tradition in farthest Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (which Stigwood characterizes as “a ghetto” in an archival interview).
Stigwood, intrigued by the R&B instructions through which the Bee Gees had been then pushing their music, compelled them to jot down for the soundtrack earlier than a foot of movie was shot. Maggio’s film, not content material to cope with Stigwood’s precise achievements, tends to make huge offers out of little or no. One interviewee speaks as if it was exceptional to make main movement photos out of journal articles, which is a delusion so wafer-thin you possibly can crack it with a thirty-second Google search.
However, the film does supply some neat anecdotal goodies. The primary director for “Fever,” John G. Avildsen, determined he didn’t need the Bee Gees songs in his image. The account of his near-instant firing is fairly humorous. It’s gratifying, too, that in wresting creative management of the image from Paramount, Stigwood grew to become a thorn within the facet of Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, two of probably the most odious figures in Hollywood’s government class.
“Robert had an unprecedented intuition,” says Nik Cohn in an archival interview. Because it occurred, in motion pictures he solely had it twice. With “Fever” and its follow-up “Grease.” However because it additionally occurs, twice was sufficient: these photos yielded him and the Bee Gees what they name untold wealth. There’s a number of overlap right here with final yr’s Bee Gees documentary “How Can You Mend A Damaged Coronary heart” and possibly many different accounts of ‘70s music. Maggio’s remedy of the childish, homophobic and racist anti-disco motion is temporary however pungent—he reveals a repulsive TV clip of rock belter Meat Loaf quoting a homophobic Ted Nugent remark, approvingly.
Like “How Can You Mend A Damaged Coronary heart,” this film additionally participates in blatant “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band” erasure. Not the album, which Stigwood had nothing to do with. No, the film musical, an infamous bomb, starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, produced by Stigwood. Maybe this Distinctive Object was Stigwood’s revenge on the Beatles for them not permitting him to take over their administration. Who can say? Not this film.
The film additionally, in the end, doesn’t illuminate Stigwood himself to any nice diploma. There’s some dialogue of what used to euphemistically be termed his “confirmed bachelor” standing—like his mentor Epstein, Stigwood was homosexual—however no actual exploration of how his publicity to the disco subculture affected his life. It’s additionally irritating that there are not any new interviews with Travolta—this account makes it clear that he owes his profession to Stigwood. The film provides fairly good showbiz lore however not a lot of depth.