He has visited the scene before in Velvet Goldmine (1998), a biopic of a fictional glam rocker, and, sort of, with I’m Not There (2007), which, whatever it is, is not a biopic of Bob Dylan. Todd Haynes, the auteur of Cold War sexual repression and florid Sirkian angst, seems a congenial fit for a band drenched in both. Bowie and Ronson gave Reed want he always wanted-a jukebox hit, “Walk on the Wild Side,” rock and roll stardom, and, ultimately, even heavy rotation airplay on MTV. The big spike came from acolyte David Bowie, who covered their songs and copped their riffs, and who in 1972, with sideman Mick Ronson, swooped in and produced Reed’s breakthrough solo album Transformer. The stature of the band-now stratospheric-is almost entirely retrospective, a pantheon reputation accrued incrementally, sending out sound wave upon sound wave of inspiration and influence. Recalling a royalty check for $2.79 from his first band in high school, Reed semi-jokes that the amount “is more than I made from the Velvet Underground.” From 1967, when their first LP, The Velvet Underground and Nico (known to devotees as “the Banana album,” after the Andy Warhol cover art) was released, to 1970, a mere three records later, when founding member and front man Lou Reed bolted, the VU profile barely cracked cult status, much less the Billboard Top 40, or Top 100, for that matter. The Velvet Underground skipped the second act-no meteoric success, arena playdates, or chart-topping singles. The three-act rise and fall is sometimes capped with a coda featuring the surviving members at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or on a back taxes-mandated reunion tour, reflecting ruefully on their glory days-if only we had not been such egomaniacal, drug-addled assholes. VH1’s Behind the Music series and its trademarked tagline (well, according to The Simpsons), “But backstage, things were falling apart,” pretty much sums up the trajectory of the rock biodoc-hardscrabble struggle, platinum-plated success, and bitchy disintegration. ![]() Produced by Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn, and David Blackman written and directed by Todd Haynes edited by Afonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz cinematography by Edward Lachman music supervision by Randall Poster featuring John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Jonathan Richman, Mary Woronov, and Merrill Reed-Weiner.
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