PopTodd Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Really want to see this one!Searching for Sugar Man tells the incredible true story of Rodriguez, the greatest '70s rock icon who never was. Discovered in a Detroit bar in the late '60s by two celebrated producers struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics, they recorded an album which they believed would secure his reputation as the greatest recording artist of his generation. In fact, the album bombed and the singer disappeared into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome on-stage suicide. But a bootleg recording found its way into apartheid South Africa and, over the next two decades, he became a phenomenon. The film follows the story of two South African fans who set out to find out what really happened to their hero. Their investigation leads them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist known as Rodriguez.Anyone else heard anything about it? Looking to go? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Winston Legthigh Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Rodriguez is playing at Lincoln Hall in Sept. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
uncool2pillow Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 NPR did a piece on the movie. You couldn't invent a story that cool, I don't think. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
PopTodd Posted August 13, 2012 Author Share Posted August 13, 2012 Rodriguez is playing at Lincoln Hall in Sept.Wonder how fast this will sell out. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Winston Legthigh Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Wonder how fast this will sell out.June 29 and counting... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 Sounds like a great movie. Gotta see when the show is, It will sell out pretty quickly I would guess but at the moment tickets are still available. Kudos to Light in the Attic for snagging the reissues of his albums a few years back. LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
choo-choo-charlie Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 I just scored copies of those reissues....great stuff! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
-seven Posted January 29, 2013 Share Posted January 29, 2013 I just watched this last night. What an interesting story. Wow. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
PopTodd Posted January 30, 2013 Author Share Posted January 30, 2013 I'm sick at home. I'll have to see if I can finally Netflix this. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
suites Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 Looks interesting but most of it is bullshit. According to lefshetz Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Papa Crimbo Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 Looks interesting but most of it is bullshit. According to lefshetz Post a text quotation. I refuse to frequent his blog. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lost highway Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 I'm going to see him in concert in a couple months. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
suites Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Post a text quotation. I refuse to frequent his blog.why? And even a cursory read of Wikipedia tells you it’s not true. Hell, this is a guy who toured Australia with Midnight Oil!Did you watch the “60 Minutes” piece? I’m loath to write this because Rodriguez appears to be such a humble, good-hearted soul. But the bastards promoting this movie are not. Hell, they even duped CBS news.I haven’t seen the movie. I will. But from square one it smelled bad. You mean a guy was hit in South Africa and didn’t know it and labored in obscurity for decades, until some filmmaker in Sweden found out about it and made a movie?Let’s start there. With the filmmaker. He was looking for a story. That’s what studios do. They swoop down and buy the rights to books, to real-life events, all in the pursuit of cash. That’s why this guy made the movie, for his own personal glory. It’s not like this story was near and dear to his heart, he just needed a story!And then he gets it into Sundance, who knows what shenanigans he effected to pull this off, and the company that bought the film has been spinning tales for months, trying to get you to go to the theatre so they can get rich. They don’t care about Rodriguez, they just care about your cash.And you love a feel good story. So you spread the word. You’re doing their work for them. To the point where even weasels like me are afraid to rain on your parade, because of the tsunami of b.s. that’s gonna come down on me as soon as I hit send.This is old school marketing at its worst. This is why both the right wing and left wing can get away with excoriating mainstream media. “60 Minutes”… Did you just surrender to the hype? Did you do no personal investigation? Did you not want to ruin the arc of the story?This is no different from Jonah Lehrer. The truth is messy, it’s hard to compartmentalize, it twists and turns and almost never results in a perfect story. If “60 Minutes” said Rodriguez toured Australia with Midnight Oil, that his records were rereleased by Sony long before this movie came out, the story wouldn’t work. But what’s even worse is these facts are hiding in plain sight and “60 Minutes” didn’t even do the research. It’s kind of like my old friend Tony Wilson, who screwed up the football scores in his first TV news gig. His boss almost fired him, not because anybody cared about the results of this minor game, but if the station couldn’t get it right on this trivial matter, viewers wouldn’t trust them on the big issues.Kind of like the “New York Times.” When Judith Miller supported invasion of Iraq because she liked the access to the Republican brass. They snowed her, she got it wrong, and now even liberals take the “Times” with a grain of salt.Then again, there are numerous news outlets who refuse to fall on their sword, who won’t admit they’re wrong, like the “Times” did in that case.In the Internet era, you can’t mess with the facts. Lehrer’s book was in release for months before he got busted, not by a major news outlet, but an essentially unknown Dylan fanatic. The truth always outs. And self-satisfied old wave news outlets decrease in revenue and power when they refuse to search for truth and just publicize press releases.I love it that this guy made so much of the movie on his iPhone, but that’s probably a lie too…I love that Rodriguez is getting recognition.But I hate being manipulated.Call it fiction. Write a story from scratch. But when you do a documentary, when you do TV news, you’ve got to present all the facts.Or else you just become a laughingstock.Like “60 Minutes.”P.S. Hell, he was sampled by Nas back in 2001. “Sugar Man” was featured in the film “Candy,” released in 2006, starring Heath Ledger. This guy wasn’t hiding, he was in plain sight! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Beltmann Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Lefsetz raises important questions about whether the film has cherry-picked facts to enrich the fable, but his tone and observations seem rooted in willful contrarianism rather than a searching, accurate take on the film and its makers. The "obscurity" emphasized in the film is of course relative, and relatively speaking, I think the film correctly reports that Rodriguez's talent was virtually unknown among American ears for decades. A Sony re-issue, an overlooked sample, an overlooked indie film soundtrack, and minor Australian tours (the last in 1981) hardly suggest a notable North American awareness of Rodriguez. If that qualifies as being in "plain sight," I must be blind. It's true that the film skimps somewhat on Rodriguez's late-term career activities, but it also skimps on many areas worthy of exploration, including a cultural context; for example, there's little effort to connect his '70s albums with the vibrant Detroit scene of the era. Why? Well, it's not a full document of a man's life and career. The film chooses to follow a particular angle, the story of an artist's unusually outsized popularity in one part of the world, and the focus is strictly on that angle. While the movie could be fairly accused of over-emphasizing the neglect of Rodriguez for simplicity's sake, in a broad sense it doesn't fabricate and doesn't make the case that there was total abandonment of his musical career. In the film, the interviews with people who knew Sixto in America make it clear that he never completely vanished. In fact, when asked directly, one of his old colleagues knows exactly where he is living and what he is up to. Re-issues are acknowledged in the film and a 1996 South African re-issue is a pivotal point in the story. Lefsetz argues that the filmmakers imply that their efforts air-lifted Rodriguez out of his construction job to renewed celebrity via a series of late-stage concerts, saying, You mean a guy was hit in South Africa and didn’t know it and labored in obscurity for decades, until some filmmaker in Sweden found out about it and made a movie? This is a misrepresentation of the film. The director correctly places the South African concert series in 1998. In other words, the film clearly shows that Rodriguez learned of, and capitalized on, his South African popularity more than a decade before the director even began working on the film. The chronology seems to have escaped Lefsetz, perhaps, as he freely admits, because he hadn't seen the film. There is an element of mythmaking in the film that seemed to me a little too much like hagiography, and it's perhaps fair to charge the film with manipulation in its careful presentation of facts, ordered as a series of (expert?) reveals. Still, it's not a lie, and I think Lefsetz's main accusations--that the film is contrived and cartoonish--probably are better aimed at his own blog post. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
GtrPlyr Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 I was going to post about Lefsetz's comments but you nailed everything I was going to say quite nicely Beltmann. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Beltmann Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Would it have been valuable to mention the '79 and '81 tours? It would have added journalistic texture, certainly. But I'm not sure it's relevant to the actual story being told. The film is told from a uniquely South African point-of-view; you could convincingly argue that the two superfans who collaborated to conduct the search--from their own measly and amateurish vantage point--are the main subjects while Rodriguez the man is a secondary concern. For the superfans, the myth matters more than the vagaries of the singer's career spurts, which is why the film takes time to describe the legend as those two men saw it. Additionally, the comeback effort really was a non-starter; Rodriguez was essentially an after-thought on the Midnight Oil tour and it didn't spark revived interest. In terms of the overall arc of his career, it was a blip of almost zero impact. That explains why the superfans, situated in South Africa, had no awareness of the Australian tours. (Why would they know? And by extension, why should it be part of their story?) For Lefsetz to assert that such minor activity proves Rodriguez wasn't truly obscure is a distortion of reality--and ironically places Lefsetz's version of Rodriguez further from the truth than the movie's version. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
-seven Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Who is lefsetz and why is he writing such a lengthy review of a movie he hasn't seen? Weird. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Winston Legthigh Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 The best thing about Rodriguez's wikipedia page is that it makes reference to two club hits, Ecuador and Adelante - that feature another Rodriguez entirely. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
suites Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Who is lefsetz and why is he writing such a lengthy review of a movie he hasn't seen? Weird.He has a blog and write about music and stuff. I actually enjoy most of what he writes and agree with 75% of so of his observations. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Oil Can Boyd Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 I was going to post about Lefsetz's comments but you nailed everything I was going to say quite nicely Beltmann.I was going to say what a nice job Beltmann did in addressing the comments but GtrPlyr nailed everything I was going to say about what a nice job Beltmann said. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Shakespeare In The Alley Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 havent seen the doc yet but i bought both albums semi recently and love them, cold fact especially. thats one of the best things ive heard in a long time. if a slightly exaggerated movie gets more people into that music, thats not a bad deal at all. seems ridiculous to get that worked up about it Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Winston Legthigh Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 The best thing about Rodriguez's wikipedia page is that it makes reference to two club hits, Ecuador and Adelante - that feature another Rodriguez entirely.Today, the best thing about his wikipedia page is that the reference to those two club hits has been excised. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bleedorange Posted February 7, 2013 Share Posted February 7, 2013 Watched this last night and loved it. Went back through this thread and couldn't believe how off-the-mark Lefsetz was in his blog entry. The story of the film was just as much about South Africa as it was Rodriguez. Especially his music's importance to a part of the anti-apartheid movement, and the censorship and insularity that existed under the South African government. That's why the small blip of a tour in Australia in the early '80s means nothing to this story. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Beltmann Posted February 7, 2013 Share Posted February 7, 2013 Watched this last night and loved it. Went back through this thread and couldn't believe how off-the-mark Lefsetz was in his blog entry. The story of the film was just as much about South Africa as it was Rodriguez. Especially his music's importance to a part of the anti-apartheid movement, and the censorship and insularity that existed under the South African government. That's why the small blip of a tour in Australia in the early '80s means nothing to this story. Agreed. I re-watched the film last Friday with my wife, a few days after writing my earlier posts about Lefsetz. While watching, I kept one eye on whether I had been too generous towards the film. I think it's fair to observe that the film is skimpy on certain facts, and perhaps guilty of cherry-picking for simplicity's sake without acknowledging that more happened outside of the frame, but overall I think its omissions are justifiable--as you said, the story told is a particular one, and that story centers on Rodriguez's unique relationship to South Africa, not his entire career. It might be slightly (inadvertently?) misleading, but not in a nefarious way that undermines the intended story. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Oil Can Boyd Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Malik Bendjelloul, the director, committed suicide: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/movies/malik-bendjelloul-36-dies-directed-sugar-man-movie.html?_r=0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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