On this special Richard Crouse Show Podcast we talk to “Oscar Peterson: Black + White” director Barry Avrich. “Oscar Peterson: Black + White” is billed as a “docu-concert,” featuring rare concert footage as well as interviews with family members and musicians who performed with Peterson.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
From Paul Myers, author of A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio:
“Everybody knows that My Aim Is True is a classic album, but now Richard Crouse makes the definitive case for Elvis Costello’s landmark debut, with a narrative that’s as fast-paced and literate as the album he celebrates. With all the toe-tapping passion of a true music fan, Crouse demystifies the man behind the mystery dance, while simultaneously allowing himself to play the enlightened fan boy. Going in, I thought I knew a lot about Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and the audaciously brilliant world of Stiff Records, but Richard’s book proved to me that I clearly knew less than zero!”
From Barry Avrich, director of The Last Mogul and Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story:
“As a film director who has chronicled the famous and infamous, Richard had me at hello with this book. Elvis pioneered a sound and style that was the alchemy of hip, attitude and talent. This book is an extraordinarily entertaining autopsy of a great career. This book is the new king of music biographies.”
From Justine Lewkowicz’s NewsTalk 1010 Bookends review:
SYNOPSIS: This is the story of how Elvis Costello got his start, and the story of the making of his critically-acclaimed debut album My Aim is True.
His real name was Declan MacManus. His mom worked at the Selfridges department store. His dad was a trumpeter and singer.
Declan worked as a computer operator.
It sounds like any bland life of a typical 9-to-5er. Except that this was a man with a talent.
Richard Crouse details how Declan MacManus convinced an indie record company to believe in him, how they created Elvis Costello, and how a hit album was recorded in just 24 hours.
MY THOUGHTS: Crouse says he loves Costello’s story. Well, he makes you, the reader, love Costello’s story.
Here was a guy with a boring day job who had dreams of something bigger. But what would have happened if he had not decided, while riding the tube one day, to call in sick and keep going an extra couple of stops to drop off a tape at this newly-opened Stiff Records? What if he knocked on the company’s door six months later?
Crouse puts it all into context and asks the “what ifs.” He not only tells Declan MacManus’ story, but also explains the 1970s environment that helped push him forward.
There’s also a personal aspect to the book. It’s a topic that Crouse is passionate about because he grew up listening to My Aim is True… in a tiny room with a shag carpet. It’s something you can relate to no matter who your musical inspiration was in your teenage years (memories of boy bands and 90s punk rock flooding back…).
MY RATING: 4 out of 5
“Richard Crouse, a critic who covers every possible medium in film criticism from television to print and online to radio, agrees. ‘Mini-reviews are often posted on Twitter before the end credits have stopped rolling, and for big critic-proof movies like Transformers: Age of Extinction, good or bad, those comments generate audience engagement…'” Read the whole thing HERE!
The producer and star of the TIFF film “Red Alert,” Sloan Avrich, tells Anne Brodie of Monsters and Critics about the film and working with Richard, who talks about Hollywood’s flame haired stars in the short film. Read the article HERE!
See the movie here:
Red Alert at TIFF:
Public Screening 1: Sunday, September 7, 3:45PM @ Isabel Bader Theatre (Isabel Bader)
Public Screening 2: Wednesday, September 10, 2:15PM @ The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Press & Industry 2: Thursday, September 11, 1:00PM @ Scotiabank 11
“I love being a redhead” – Sloan Avrich
“I wish I had red hair.” – Richard Crouse, film historian, author
Known for his revealing and controversial feature length docs on media moguls, director Barry Avrich embarks on a new direction with Red Alert, a 9 minute short inspired by his daughter Sloan, that will have its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF14) in the Discovery program.
In Red Alert, Sloan, a 10 yr old redhead, is distraught when she discovers on the internet that red hair will be extinct within one hundred years. She sets out to make a documentary on the subject and debunk the myth so she and her fellow gingers can relax with the assurance that their legacy is not under threat.
Red Alert is the first film collaboration by father, daughter team Barry Avrich and Sloan Avrich. One day while working in his home office Sloan asked him why he always made films about subjects she either didn’t know (Lew Wasserman, Bob Guccione) or wasn’t interested in (Harvey Weinstein, Garth Drabinsky). Barry challenged her to come up with her own ideas of what she’d like to see and proposed that they make a film together. Sloan had recently run across an article online stating that redheads would be extinct in 100 years , and, rather alarmed, she decided she had to get to the bottom of the matter to see if it was really true.
Thus Red Alert was born. Sloan began researching the subject, unearthing footage and online articles about Kick A Ginger Day, an anti-ginger episode from South Park and a 2007 NBC The Today Show interview with Steve Warrington redhead activist and founder of online community https://www.redhedd.com. Along the way Sloan finds arguments for and against the future of red hair and learns to not believe everything you read on the internet.
Sloan also researched, selected, recruited and prepared interviews with experts including film historian and critic Richard Crouse, who reveals how redheaded stars like Lana Turner and Myrna Loy became even more famous during the transition from black & white to colour film when their glamorous locks registered with audiences. Geneticist Amro Zayed explains the science behind red hair, and celebrity hair stylist Daniel Fiori, model Lucy Liberatore and fellow gingers give their best tips for redheads.
“Red Alert” is a World Premiere in Discovery at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2014
