On the Saturday November 18, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show, we meet Nick Broomfield, director of the new documentary “The Stones And Brian Jones,” now playing in theatres. With candid interviews and never-before-seen footage he reveals how Brian Jones, the founder of the Rolling Stones, was left behind in the shadows of history.
Broomfield props the film up with first-hand accounts, particularly from former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, whose enthusiasm for the music, and Jones’s contributions to it, is infectious. The old stories are bolstered by the addition of new, fresh interviews but it is the focus on Jones as a brilliant musician and not simply another rock ‘n’ roll casualty, that elevates “The Stones and Brian Jones.” The story has its sordid moments, but Bloomfield emphasizes the very heart of Jones’s being, the music.
We’ll also get to know Chelsea McMullen, director of Swan Song, a documentary that takes us inside the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 legacy-defining new production of “Swan Lake,” choreographed for the first time by the company’s artistic director Karen Kain, who famously debuted in the ballet in 1971. The film’s intimate, character-driven approach chronicles creative conflicts, devastating injuries and personal sacrifices amongst its subjects who, in various ways, confront ideals of race, class and body standards as they navigate a tradition that has historically valued uniformity and compliance.
Then, John Carney, the Irish musician and director of Flora and Son, a new Apple TV+. comedy about a mom, played by the fabulous Eve Hewson, who tries to connect with her rebellious son with music. The director of the Academy Award winning film “Once” tells me about his music saved his life and why he didn’t include my favorite Dublin pub in the film.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
A month after the release of “Hackney Diamonds,” the latest record from The Rolling Stones, comes a documentary about the largely forgotten musician who started the band. “The Stones and Brian Jones,” a new film from Nick Broomfield and now playing in theatres, examines the man who posted the want ad in “Jazz News” that got the Stones rolling in 1962.
“He was the heart and soul of the Rolling Stones,” says Broomfield in the film. “Yet, most people today haven’t even heard of him.”
At age 14, Broomfield, director of music docs like “Kurt & Courtney,” “Biggie & Tupac” and “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” had a brief, chance encounter with Brian Jones on a train. Jones was then a superstar, the guitarist of the Rolling Stones, the dangerous alternative to the clean cut Beatles.
Six years later, the director attended the famous Rolling Stones concert in London’s Hyde Park, a tribute to Jones who had been found dead less than a month after he was fired by the band he began. “If anyone was going to die; Brian was going to die,” Jagger said. “He just lived his life very fast. He was kind of like a butterfly.”
A light that burned brightly, Jones was an innovative multi-instrumentalist with a love of the blues, who embodied London’s Swingin’ Sixties, but harboured a troubled soul. With a mix of new they-were-there interviews from folks like former Stones bassist Bill Wyman, Animals’ singer Eric Burdon, model/singer Zouzou and singer Marianne Faithfull, plus archival footage and interviews from Mick jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, among others, Broomfield builds a portrait of Jones as the bad boys band’s most rebellious member.
Raised by straightlaced parents, an aeronautical engineer father and church organist mother, Jones displayed antagonism toward authority early on, rebelling against his family and getting suspended from school. Obsessed with blues artists like Elmore James and Robert Johnson, he got his first acoustic guitar at aged seventeen and began performing at blues and jazz clubs. He was s womanizer—”He just uses people,” says teenager Valerie Corbett, mother of his first baby.—a wild child, uninvited to art college after being labelled an “irresponsible drifter.”
The story of the beginning of the Stones is more familiar. Jones put the band together, gave them the name, cribbed from “Rollin’ Stone Blues,” track five, side one of “The Best of Muddy Waters,” taught Jagger to play harmonica and roomed with his bandmates in a grungy apartment on Edith Grove in Chelsea as they developed the intertwined guitar sound that would characterize their music.
With fame, came musical exploration—Jones played everything from slide-guitar and harmonica to recorder and Appalachian dulcimer—but also a change in the band’s dynamics. As Jagger and Richards moved the band’s sound further away from the blues Jones loved to a more mainstream rock ‘n’ roll vibe, Jones found himself indulging in two-thirds of the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll stereotype. “Drugs destroyed his discipline,” says filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, “and you can’t be an artist without discipline.”
As for the sex, Broomfield details Jones’s chaotic relationship with actress, artist, and model Anita Pallenberg, who left Jones for Richards. He also dives deep into the decision to remove Jones from the band and his passing, called “first drug/alcohol casualty of our generation.”
Much of the biographical information is familiar, but Broomfield props up this section with first-hand accounts, particularly from Wyman, whose enthusiasm for the music, and Jones’s contributions to it, is infectious.
A note of pathos comes near the end when Bloomfield reveals a personal note from Jones’s father expressing regret for not being more supportive. The formality of the writing hides a deep well of emotion and acceptance, which, for the musician, came too late to ease his troubled mind.
The old stories are bolstered by the addition of new, fresh interviews but it is the focus on Jones as a brilliant musician and not simply another rock ‘n’ roll casualty, that elevates The Stones and Brian Jones.” The story has its sordid moments, but Broomfield emphasizes the very heart of Jones’s being, the music.
Helmut Newton, the provocative photographer and subject of the documentary “Helmut Newton: The Bad and The Beautiful” now on virtual cinema, often said that there are “only two dirty words”: “art” and “good taste.” The sentiment rings true in context of his work and that his word count is off is also telling; he was a provocateur but a playful one.
Newton, whose nudes make up a vast portion of this doc, called himself a “professional voyeur,” someone interested in the surface, his model’s bodies. How can you photograph a soul, he asks? His subjects, the women who fell under his male gaze for decades, have answers. Bold faced names like Isabella Rossellini, Grace Jones, Claudia Schiffer and Marianne Faithfull among others, sing his praises, most describing the liberating effects of standing in front of his camera. His love—or is it obsession?—of the female form is roundly applauded in the film, as it was during his career, but in the #MeToo era photos of naked women with their faces obscured or reduced to an assortment of body parts, or wrapped in chains, don’t sit as well as they once did.
Of all the famous women in the film only Susan Sonntag, appearing on a French language panel show with Newton, addresses the negative undertones of his work.
Director Gero von Boehm assembles archival footage, new interviews and lots and lots of Newton’s nudes to illuminate the life and influences of the man who signed off letters with the inscription, Your Naughty Boy. It moves along quickly, painting a picture of a charming eccentric consumed by his work. There is nothing terribly revealing (other than the photos), just hagiographic stories about working with the man on set. Some are funny—“Helmut loved chickens. He loved to photograph chickens,” Is the lead in for a story about the famous photog snapping pictures of a chicken in high heels for Vogue.—but most settle for talking about what a pleasure it was to work with the man.
More interesting is a look back at his influences. As a German of Jewish descent, he and his family fled Berlin in 1938, but not before he had soaked up some very specific influences. German Expressionism gave him the idea of photography as an outlet for expressing his inner ideas while Nazi sympathizer Leni Riefenstahl’s films like “The Triumph of the Will” influenced his use of what he thought of as idealised human forms.
This is as close as the film gets to digging deep or placing Newton’s work in any sort of social context.
“Helmut Newton: The Bad and The Beautiful” is a snapshot in time at one of the people who helped define the high fashion look of an era. That it doesn’t dwell on the art or its ramifications is something Newton may have liked but the lack of social context leaves the documentary lacking.
“Helmut Newton: The Bad and The Beautiful” is streaming now via virtual cinemas at Hot Docs; the Vancity; Cinema Moderne (Mtl) and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
In the Swingin’ Sixties Michael Caine had much luck with the ladies. Perhaps you already knew that. If not, it’s about the only thing you’ll learn from “My Generation,” a new peppy but unnecessary documentary.
“My Generation” starts off well enough, painting a vivid picture of drab post-war England. Grey, class conscious and run by stiffed-shirts London was far from the hip vortex it would become with the advent of Bibi, mini-skirts, the Beatles and Pop Art. Caine, who acts as host, along with new and archival interviews with John Lennon, Marianne Faithfull, David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton and other luminaries, describe the beginnings of a cultural revolution. They talk about shattering the class divide that kept working class men and women from breaking into public life, the country’s sexual awakening and Paul McCartney’s appetite for LSD. In short, how sex, drugs and rock n’ roll made London the coolest place on the planet for much of the 1960s.
From there it becomes a greatest hits look back, a K-Tel collection of interviews and footage. It’s fun to hear some of these stories rehashed—Why Faithfull was naked when the police burst into Keith Richard’s home in 1967?—and see the sights but these are fuzzy thumbnails, not full resolution pictures.
Most of “My Generation” is engagingly told and Caine is a charming host but it often feels more like the nostalgic musings for a long ago time than insightful commentary.