(Rodney Bingenheimer, the subject of MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP, and Andy Warhol, above.)
Filmmaker George Hickenlooper passed away on October 29, 2010, at the way too early age of 47. This is an interview I did with George in 2004, around the release of his documentary Mayor of the Sunset Strip, which I consider one of the very best films ever made about the entertainment industry and one of my Top 20 Films of the past decade. Hickenlooper's last film, Casino Jack, starring Kevin Spacey, has just been released. This article originally appeared in Venice Magazine.
With Mayor of the Sunset Strip, George Hickenlooper takes us on a tour of the modern history of celebrity, via the life of legendary pop music impresario Rodney Bingenheimer.
BY TERRY KEEFE
Filmmaker George Hickenlooper clearly loves the dreamers that drive the entertainment industry, but he's also very familiar with how Los Angeles can eat them alive. Many of his best works have at their center the conflict between the dreams that drive so many to this city and the price those dreams exact. Hickenlooper first came to prominence in 1991 with his documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, on Francis Coppola and the legendarily difficult shoot of Apocalypse Now, in which Coppola loses and regains his sanity a number of times while dealing with monsoons, rebels in the hills, and Dennis Hopper. That same year would also see the release of another Hickenlooper documentary on a different American auteur, Peter Bogdanovich, entitled Picture This: The Life and Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer, Texas, which chronicles the difficult production of The Last Picture Show. As the '90s wore on, Hickenlooper became a noted narrative feature director as well, with films such as The Low Life (1995), a very underrated gem about a struggling Los Angeles screenwriter, played by Rory Cochrane, and the tragedy which befalls his roommate, played by Sean Astin, who is heartbreaking as a lonely guy who ultimately is too soft for Hollywood. Then in 2001 came the release of Hickenlooper's The Man from Elysian Fields, which stars Andy Garcia as a failed novelist who is forced to go to work at a male escort agency run by Mick Jagger. Although Garcia's character lives in Pasadena, the dark fog of broken dreams which hangs over the film is the same one which drifts through the Hollywood of both reality and celluloid. And if the characters in any of Hickenlooper's aforementioned films turned on the radio during their struggles, they might have heard the voice of famed Los Angeles disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, the central character in Hickenlooper's new documentary, Mayor of the Sunset Strip.
(George Hickenlooper, with President Barack Obama, above.)If you grew up in Southern California anytime between the mid-seventies to the early nineties, you undoubtedly heard Rodney's famous nasally voice on KROQ-FM at least once. And if you were part of his target audience, he may have changed your life forever. Rodney joined KROQ in 1976, when the station was broadcasting from Pasadena with barely 1000 watts and with no money to pay the DJs. The station had no musical identity and was essentially playing everything and anything. But Rodney would quickly provide that identity. In 1976, no one in the United States was playing The Sex Pistols, until Rodney did. Over the next two decades, he would also be the first to play records by The Clash, The Cure, The Smiths, The B-52s, Duran Duran, Dramarama, Joan Jett, Nirvana, and even Van Halen, amongst many other notable names. He essentially pioneered the market for what would become the entire genre of alternative music on American radio, in the process also making KROQ one of the biggest and most powerful radio stations in the United States today. But Rodney himself is now relegated to a graveyard slot on the station, granted only a few late-night hours on the weekend. The empire he created allows his famous voice only a very narrow window of expression these days, although it once spoke to an entire generation of music lovers. In Mayor of the Sunset Strip, KROQ disc jockey Jed the Fish poses the question of how Rodney could have started so many careers but not be one of the most powerful music moguls in the world today. It's a question which the film answers in a general sense, as it becomes very clear that Rodney's career has been fueled largely by his pure love of the music, as well as by his love for celebrities and fame. And what a list of celebrities he has been friends with. He has lived an incredible, Zelig-like life, demonstrated most profoundly by the montage of footage and stills in the film which reveal Rodney as a trusted friend of everyone from Elvis to Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, another band which Rodney helped propel. What also emerges is a man whose very life force seems to be sustained by the aura of the celebrities whose careers he has helped to such a great degree. And in relation to that, there is also a sadness to Rodney, perhaps because fame is the type of lover whose charms can be fleeting.
(Rodney with the King, above, and pair of Runaways, Joan Jett and Lita Ford, below.)
I went to college in Southern California in the late-80s, so the voice of Rodney Bingenheimer on KROQ is inseparable from my memories of that time.
George Hickenlooper: That's fantastic. I remember that period also. I'm from the Midwest, but I went to school at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. And one of my suitemates was a fellow named Trevor and he was from Pasadena. He used to record Rodney's show and bring tapes and play them on the boombox in our suite. Because, you know, Rodney played all the best music. So I was very familiar with his whiny, unprepossessing, childlike voice which is very unlike the chocolatey timbres that you usually hear on FM radio. But I didn't really think of it much past that, other than that I remember Trevor referring to him as 'Rodney on the ROQ.' Then when I moved out here, I remember making the connection because I would listen to KROQ, and I would hear him on Saturday and Sunday nights, if I had the radio on. But I didn't really think more of it than that.
But your level of interest in him obviously changed at some point.
In 1996, Chris Carter from Dramarama approached me (regarding doing a documentary about Rodney). I met with Chris and he told me some more about Rodney and it sounded interesting. But it didn't pique my interest enough in terms of thinking it could sustain a feature-length documentary. I thought it would be a really compelling music documentary for a very specific music audience. But as a filmmaker, your goal is to reach the largest audience you can. I agreed to sit down with Rodney though, and we met at Denny's and he was very quiet. Very shy. Which I found ironic, considering that he did have something of a personality on the radio. But we went over to his apartment afterwards and Rodney transformed as soon as he was in front of all these photos of himself with all these celebrities and pop stars, and all these gold records and memorabilia. He became a different person; he became luminous. And that was what piqued my interest. Because here was a guy who, for some reason, found some type of warmth and comfort in all of this [celebrity]. It didn't strike me until later that evening that Rodney reminded me so much of myself. I started thinking about my own desires and my own needs to come to Hollywood. We're all sort of intrigued by celebrity. As Lance Loud says about celebrity in the film, everyone pretends they're not [intrigued by it], but everybody is, of course. So then I said, 'This is not just a story about Rodney, and not only does he remind me of myself, but this is sort of an everyman's story. This guy is universal. He's a metaphor for where our culture has come.' I started thinking more about celebrity. I read Leo Braudy's book The Frenzy of Renown, and how he writes that often when our culture becomes fragmented, with the divorce rate skyrocketing and the breakdown of a lot of traditional moral values, those gaps and cracks are filled with celebrity. Which, I think, is one of the reasons that, in the last 30 years, celebrity has just exploded. So I thought that Rodney's contribution to music was significant and interesting, but with his interest in celebrity, I saw him sort of as a metaphor for our culture. And then the more I got to know about Rodney, the more I thought that the theme of our film was that celebrity was just an extension of the human need to be loved. And there I saw a really universal theme and that's when I decided to make the picture.
Is that sadness in Rodney, which is undeniable in the film, readily apparent when you meet him or does that emerge over time?
It comes out over time. You know, the thing about Rodney, people say it [his story] is sad but his story is very indicative of most people who come to Hollywood looking for the dream. The arc of Rodney's life... his coming from obscurity, the fact that he was an outsider, then he came to Hollywood and rose to prominence, then started to fade... is very typical and epitomizes the Hollywood experience for most people. Hollywood is simply kind of a metaphor for life. You know, we're born, we do something with our lives at one point, and then we fade away. So people say that Rodney's story is sad, but the reality is that Rodney's story is everybody's story. Whether you're in Hollywood or not. We're all born alone and we all die alone. The message perhaps that's different [in Rodney's story] is that it's more important to be loved by another person than it is to chase this sort of transcendental dream that we think will fulfill us, but doesn't really exist in the material world at all. I mean, Hollywood is a promise, it's a lie, it's a false god. It's something that we chase, but it's never something we can make part of ourselves, because it doesn't exist. And that's sort of how our culture has run amuck in the last 30 years, become sort of out of control and decadent. It goes back to the Old Testament, chasing the Golden Calf. But I don't find Rodney's story inherently sad, because his experience is so similar to that of many people who come to Hollywood. In this world of pop music or movie stars, you have this sort of hierarchy. And here Rodney pedestalizes a lot of these people, whose careers he's helped launch, but the one common denominator that they all share is this common thread of loneliness. And so, in many ways, they're all very much the same.
You bring up the question of money with Rodney in the film. He hasn't made as much as it seems like he should have with the great success of KROQ. Is that something that bothers him?
I think the thing about Rodney and money... he would like to have money obviously, he says so in the film. He does have an incredible memorabilia collection, which he could retire on if he wanted to put it up to auction. But I think one of the reasons Rodney hasn't benefitted from huge sums of money is because Rodney is a very selfless individual. He really likes people to be happy and he really likes the family atmosphere [that he has with his friends]. I think that when money becomes an issue between friends, you lose that unconditional love that is so important to Rodney. And also another reason Rodney hasn't been more financially successful... in the last 20 years, post-Howard Stern, and I like Howard Stern, I like his honesty, but the kind of sewer culture and decadence that has permeated the radio... those DJs do very well because they're very adolescent and crude. And Rodney doesn't have a crude bone in his body. Rodney has a lot of integrity in that sense. He has a lot of taste. Those other guys don't have taste.
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