Quote:
Originally Posted by BohemianGraham
Just this dumbed down, oversimplified explaination:
The Monkees were initially created as a pre-fabricated group, to capitalise on the success of the Beatles in North America. Many groups at the time employed session musicians and had others write songs for them, but didn't admit to it. The Monkees were open about this, which made people dismiss them artistically, even though they were guilty of the same practice. the Monkees decided that they wanted to play their own instruments and write their own songs, because all the group members had come from musical backgrounds, and were more than capable musicians. The fought, and won, the right to play their own instruments, produce their own work, and write their own songs. However, personality clashes between the band members, and the inability to escape the stigma placed on them from their earlier session musician records, the band broke up. Head was created as a means to try to destroy the "false" image people had of the Monkees, but was a bomb, because no one could disassociate the "manfactured image, with no philosophies," of the group, and the teenybopper fans couldn't understand what the hell the film was about.
The Monkees seem to be held in higher regard today than they were back in the 1960s.  |
They were (or had) good songwriters--
There were no shortage of made-for-kids-TV rock groups in 1967 but the mix of Boyce & Hart, Carole King, Neil Diamond and Mike Nesmith songs gave them a much more distinct sound for the pop 60's than we would have expected from the Archies, the Partridge Family, or any other group Don Kirschner tried to pre-fabricate.
(Among other things that made Nesmith legendarily punch a hole through a wall was that Kirschner did want them to record "Sugar, Sugar'.
)
But this's a Bob Rafelson set, and Rafelson was the "revolutionary" party pooper.
Obviously, the director of "Five Easy Pieces" didn't want to be stuck to a kiddy-show gig, and spent most of his time either complaining about the show's "manufactured" image--and how the screaming teens were too "suckered" to tell the difference between the Real Beatles and the Fake Ones--or sarcastically dumbing the TV show down to a deliberately sub-moronic level as contemptuous abstract self-satire.
The other TV episodes, directed by James Frawley ("The Muppet Movie") and written by Gerald Gardner & Dee Caruso (who wrote practically every comedy in the 60's including Get Smart) let the semi-improv performers cut loose and gave the show an innocent Marx-esque sense of humor....
But no, Rafelson was crabby counter-culture, and when he got fellow "revolutionary" Jack Nicholson to write the "gags" for the movie, the self-contemptuous messaging was thick, heavy, and well-fumigated.
(Like I said before: Hated your job, Bob? Bite us--We liked the songs.)
To answer the poster's question however, yes:
The complete
real TV series came out on two boxsets from Rhino, "good" episodes included (
), and it helps to have some background knowledge of the series and early songs to know that don't worry, they were a lot better than THIS.
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The first half of the movie is all character and story build up for the second half which is basically one long climax. It truly is one of the greatest movies of all time. At least watch the whole thing once.
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