Copeland releases debut documentary
Fri Jan 13
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Add "filmmaker" to drummer Stewart Copeland's list of credits. His documentary, "Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out," will debut January 22 at the Sundance Film Festival.
The 74-minute film is culled from Super 8 movies Stewart shot from the band's early days in the mid-'70s through the early '80s.
The project started as a love letter that he intended to share only with his fellow Police-men, Sting and Andy Summers, as well as a few close friends.
But more people viewed the footage, and, as Copeland puts it, "My little toy escapes from the playpen and becomes a monster."
Final Cut Pro and other software programs helped him see the project to completion. "This Super 8 film sat for 20 years in shoeboxes while I waited for a good medium to download it," he says.
The images, including lots of performance footage, are accompanied by a voice-over from Copeland that gives a firsthand view of what it was like to go from nearly empty in-store appearances to 60,000-capacity sold-out stadiums in a few short years.
QUIT WHILE YOU'RE AHEAD
More important, the film shows how getting everything you wished for can be wonderful and deeply disturbing at the same time. Perhaps, he suggests, once you've reached the stratosphere, it may be time to quit before the inevitable decline begins. "It got to the point where there was no more up to go."
For Copeland, visiting his past brought many thoughts to mind. "It's very cheerful," he says of the footage. In fact, when he looked for scenes to accompany his narration about the band's demise, he could not find shots "of us looking pissed off at each other."
However, he admits that "I put my camera down the last year or two. I felt like I should be living it instead of shooting it."
Looking back was bittersweet. "I wish I'd enjoyed the ride more," he says. "The concerts where I was playing with the best band in the world -- we were given the biggest gift in the world -- why am I not cracking a smile?"
Also, he says, as the band was disintegrating, he regrets all the arguing. "We could have been nicer about it ... there was a lot of shouting."
None of that comes across in the documentary. Summers seems like a lovable scamp, and Sting appears playful and pleasant, but often preoccupied. Copeland says the pair have seen the documentary "and are very keen on it," but that he never planned to include narration from them.
"If I'd made it partially their documentary as well and we'd all gotten together, it would have been, 'Why don't we record another record?,' and since that ain't going to happen, I guess the band movie isn't going to happen, so I just made it on my own."
While there may never be a new Police album, there may be some new interpretations of vintage Police material. "Everyone Stares" includes what Copeland calls his "derangements" of Police songs, seven mash-ups of sorts that he created using the original multitracks of the songs.
Copeland is in talks with Universal Music & Video Distribution about releasing the soundtrack, which would include the derangements, and the DVD.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060114/music_nm/police_dc;_ylt=AsLTxw2G1VgRa8y44cWAtC.VEhk...
