the shaggs - the movie

A Jandek doco, a Shaggs movie - what a treat for lovers of that kind of thing.

http://www.susanorlean.com/articles/meet_shaggs.html

Women are the hope for the future of music BECAUSE THEY CANNOT PLAY!!! Wooo!

This sort of thing makes me so angry that I want to throw my monitor across the room. You know what the end result of articles like this is? Bands like Valerie - yeah, no fucking coincidence that the last word of the article is their name.

Articles like this make me wish I was male in a way that menstral periods and being unable to piss in the woods or write my name in the snow never do...

just a'wonderin'...

; - )

I think they're better as a myth than they are as music. But that said, I haven't heard the record in quite some time. I might change my mind on it yet again.

Anybody have any links to the Tom Cruise's option of the story?

The record is fascinating. You listen to it and the music is played so badly that it gives you a disorienting feeling.

And this is different from a thousand demos sitting in a pile underneath my bed, how? I don't understand the fetishisation of incompetence. It irritates me.

If something is so good that it transcends incompetence, that is a different matter. But loving something *because* it is inept seems to me incomprehensible.

.. But it isn't good because it's incompetently done - it's good because the rhythms are so interesting.. They're a result of incompetence, but interesting nonetheless.

There are plenty of other incompetent bands that totally suck - so I wouldn't say people like the Shaggs because they're incompetent.

They did what they did quite well, they were not incompetent. Though certainly there are certain things they don't do, when I'm listening to them I don't need those other things because what they offer you can't readily find elsewhere.

i don't know how i feel about that more subtle point and it still disturbs me somewhat.

of course this raises interesting issues about the constraints placed on creativity by standards of competence etc. but, well, it's not THAT interesting. bangs's article aside i don't image that the shaggs have really changed anyone's vision of music or the world in some drastic sense, though they have given me a lot of pleasure. so a fluke then.... a rather tragic one, though, once you read the new yorker piece and know the background.

i wonder whether any movie based on that article--which was a great article, but failed to quite communicate the unique and alluring (to many) nature of the music--would make the music incidental and the family drama central. that would be hollywood fashion. i think putting the music front and center and the family drama around that, would be more daring and interesting.

ever?

http://www.avclub.com/articles/dakota-and-elle-fanning-reportedly-considering-doi,52709/

According to an exclusive report from Vulture, the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, are considering teaming up to play two-thirds of infamous sibling rock band The Shaggs in a biopic. Beloved by record store clerks looking to annoy their customers, championed by fans like Kurt Cobain, NRBQ, and Frank Zappa (who famously called them “better than the Beatles”), The Shaggs were comprised of four New Hampshire sisters under the Svengali direction of their father, Austin Wiggin, who pulled his daughters out of school and forced them to submit to daily music education, all because a palm reader once told his mother that her son would sire a famous girl group.
The Shaggs’ resulting sole album, 1969’s Philosophy Of The World, was beyond primitive, something like the sound of a lost civilization who’d discovered guitars, drums, and a Monkees album in the jungle, then attempted to cut their own record about an hour later. Naturally, Philosophy Of The World came to be regarded as a proto-punk landmark, its charmingly determined ineptitude and astounding, absolute shunning of all musical convention—though completely accidental—making it a touchstone for all bands predicated on not giving a shit.
A biopic has actually been in the making for over a decade now under the direction of Katherine Dieckmann, a former creator of music videos for groups like R.E.M. and Throwing Muses and director on The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, and the person who recently helmed the Uma Thurman pic Motherhood (which was its own example of determined ineptitude). Shaggs fans probably shouldn’t get too excited yet: There’s been no official announcement of production, and of course, it seems odd that Dakota Fanning would want to star in yet another proto-punk rock biopic so soon after The Runaways. (Not to mention that both Fannings would need to pack on some serious pounds to properly portray the hefty Wiggin sisters.) But hopefully this rumor—as well as the upcoming off-Broadway musical The Shaggs: Philosophy Of The World debuting this summer—will finally spur someone to get rolling on this wonderfully awful story after all these years.

(Not to mention that both Fannings would need to pack on some serious pounds to properly portray the hefty Wiggin sisters.)

Has any film ever struggled with the idea of needing to portray fat people as actually fat?

Apart from "Shallow Hal", obv.