Spinning out
Chris Vognar
Spinning Gold, the tone-deaf, amorphous blob of a biopic about Casablanca Records honcho Neil Bogart, manages to pull off an impressive trick. It makes sex, drugs, and ‘70s excess seem brutally banal and boring, a parade of famous names and faces squeezed into a fawning piece of hagiography. This might be the least rock ‘n’ roll chronicle of rock ‘n’ roll ever committed to screen.
The featured artists, including Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, KISS, and the Isley Brothers, deserve much better; they certainly deserve more than the warmed-over cover versions of hits performed here. Fittingly for a movie about a guy who struggled to pay his bills, the filmmakers, including Bogart’s son, writer/director Timothy Scott Bogart, couldn’t afford the original music.
Neil Bogart could actually make for a compelling protagonist, a fast-talking Brooklyn kid who moved to Los Angeles, started a wildly ambitious independent record label, and kept betting big and losing until he finally won. Played by Jeremy Jordan, he addresses the camera with a glint in his eye and essentially narrates every minute detail and broad stroke of Bogart’s rise, fall, and rise.
Like a rock skimming water’s surface, Spinning Gold skips from one episode to another, doubling back on this one, forgetting about that one, returning always to the idea that this Bogart guy was really something. This isn’t paint-by-numbers filmmaking; it’s a big, blotchy mess, a series of really unfortunate decisions that encompass screenwriting, casting, directing, and, with a few exceptions, performance. With all that going for it, the film also somehow manages to be deathly dull, not even bad in a fun/cringey way (except for a few unintentionally laugh-out-loud moments, especially near the end).
In other words, it’s not even the genius 2007 joke music biopic Walk Hard, although it does boast some genuine groaner lines. “People love their music,” the protagonist tells us. “It’s not just what they listen to. It’s who they are.” Copy that. Or, when someone asks Bogart if anyone has ever told him “No”: “I’ve always been a much bigger fan of ‘Yes!’” Zing. Musicians have long referred to foul musical notes as “clams.” Spinning Gold has enough clams to stock a seafood restaurant.
The casting is curious at best and sometimes trainwreck-horrific. Pink Sweat$, who plays Casablanca signee Bill Withers, looks and sounds nothing like the man who made mournful blues of “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Ditto for Ledisi, who does her best as Gladys Knight, and Tayla Parx as Donna Summer. Wiz Khalifa makes the most of the mess with a gonzo take on George Clinton. If Spinning Gold feels like a paste job, it kind of is. Samuel L. Jackson was originally cast as Clinton — one can only sadly dream of the possibilities — and Neil Patrick Harris was slated to play KISS manager Bill Aucoin (a role that ultimately went to Michael Ian Black). But the project reportedly ran out of money, and the would-be stars skedaddled. One of the movie’s producers, Alex Habrich, is suing Timothy Scott Bogart for contractual fraud.
Some of the strangeness actually works to the film’s benefit. Casey Likes plays KISS leader Gene Simmons as a sort of lonely goth kid rather than a lewd lout. There’s a game-recognize-game scene between Jordan and Likes on a tour bus, in which these two lower-class strivers tentatively bond over shared dreams. It feels like it belongs in a different film, but it’s easily the most compelling moment in this one. With some of the other talented actors caught up in the carnage, including Michelle Monaghan as Bogart’s wife, Beth, and Jay Pharoah as Casablanca co-founder Cecil Holmes, you just want to reach out and offer your condolences.
Spinning Gold is one of those movies that prompts you to sit back and wonder: How in the world did this thing ever see the light of day? The armchair psychology answer would be that a son wanted to make a movie about his famous father, got in over his head, and just kept plugging forward. The treacle that drips from the film is made worse by its bad-boy posturing that wraps sentimentality in rock ‘n’ roll hedonism. Not a frame of Spinning Gold feels dangerous. The most overtly sexual scene of the movie, in which partygoers paw each other to the strains of Summer’s epic, orgasmic “Love to Love You Baby,” could be a Saturday Night Live sketch. The parts of Spinning Gold that mean to be funny are not, while the rest of it can be quite funny.
But not funny enough. In an ideal world, Spinning Gold might gain a second life as a “Can you believe this?” piece of kitsch, a music industry version of The Room. But it’s just not enough fun for that. In the end, this is just another bad movie that will spin its way into oblivion. If you want to rock and roll all night, you’d best look elsewhere.
Chris Vognar is a culture writer living in Houston.