In 1966 Embassy Pictures released one of the great bombs of all time, The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd. This film, Spinning Gold, does to the music industry what The Oscar did to the motion picture business. Written, produced and directed by it seems every living member (and one dead presence) of the Bogart clan, it flies in the face of the basic motion picture mantra, "show, don't tell". The film is narrated by the subject himself, Neil Bogart, who has been dead for almost forty-one years. It is a hagiographic gloss on the career of the Bogart patriarch, full of superficial accounts of the fall and rise and fall and rise again of the intrepid creator of Casablanca Records, while even tacking on the cliche of Bogart's purchasing a home and automobile for his long-suffering parents.
Jason Isaac, utilizing some form of an American/New York accent, is wasted in this film, as are the women who flock around the Bogart character to little effect. For a 140 minute film (that's right!), including a tacked on tribute within the tribute, the supporting players are never developed beyond the hanger-on stereotype we have seen in countless films pretending to be biographical accounts of historical figures.
The Bogart family, I am sure, will make an annual ritual of screening this film on Neil Bogart's birthday, reliving the "glory days" of Casablanca Records. For the rest of us, this vanity project will disappear quickly into the great maw of of streaming television's insatiable need for "product".
Jason Isaac, utilizing some form of an American/New York accent, is wasted in this film, as are the women who flock around the Bogart character to little effect. For a 140 minute film (that's right!), including a tacked on tribute within the tribute, the supporting players are never developed beyond the hanger-on stereotype we have seen in countless films pretending to be biographical accounts of historical figures.
The Bogart family, I am sure, will make an annual ritual of screening this film on Neil Bogart's birthday, reliving the "glory days" of Casablanca Records. For the rest of us, this vanity project will disappear quickly into the great maw of of streaming television's insatiable need for "product".