USA,
1980, 119 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
-
Taylor Hackford
- prod
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Gene Kirkwood, Howard W. Koch Jr.
- scr
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Edward Di Lorenzo
- cam
-
Adam Holender
- editor
-
Neil Travis
- mus
-
Jeff Barry
- cast
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Ray Sharkey, Tovah Feldshuh, Peter Gallagher, Joe Pantoliano, Maureen McCormick, Olympia Dukakis
- source
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Swank Motion Pictures, Inc, 201 S. Jefferson Ave, St Louis, MO 63103. FAX: 314-289-2192. EMAIL: motionp@swank.com.
-
COMMENTS
Lifetime Achievement in Directing Award recipient Taylor Hackford in person for a tribute and onstage interview with journalist David D’Arcy. Hackford’s spouse, actor Helen Mirren, in attendance.
OTHER
If you enjoyed the performances and musical milieu of Ray, or merely enjoy filmmaking at its energetic best, then The Idolmaker is for you. Taylor Hackford’s directorial debut mirrors his recent Oscar-nominated success, both in how it captures the verve and style of 1950s music and in the star-making turn of its lead actor. Winner of a Golden Globe, Ray Sharkey is the sharply dressed Vincent Vaccari (“the role he was born to play!”—Newsweek), a brash music fan and small-time entrepreneur who turns record producer. A fan first, a fanatic next, Vincent pours his energies into turning nobodies into stars, as long as they have that one unfathomable quality: A pretty face (Talent? Hah!). With his well-greased boots, better-greased hair and assortment of natty threads, Vincent is living a rock Svengali dream, busy shaping other people’s destinies and nearly forgetting his own. Loosely based on the life of Bob Marucci (who orchestrated the Fabian and Frankie Avalon hype machines), The Idolmaker is both an unashamed musical excavation of the dubious pleasures of bubblegum teenage pop and an intense character study of what drives a man to graft his dreams onto others. It’s also refreshingly tongue-in-cheek and frequently hilarious in its jibes at the music industry’s vanity (and vapidity). As the well-nicknamed “Caesare,” a clueless busboy with eyebrows as thick as his head, Peter Gallagher (Sex, Lies and Videotape; The Player, SFIFF 1992) made a memorable screen debut. Whipped into a Fabian-like lather by the obsessed Vincent, he’s a terrified dreamboat—until he becomes a star.
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
