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Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
****
Dir: Steve Sullivan
Starring: Frank Sidebottom, Chris Sievey
(UK, 15, 1hr 40mins)
A cult figure from before my time, Frank Sidebottom nevertheless permeated pop culture as a low-key fringe figure – once seen, never forgotten – and left this young mind forever wondering just who the ever-loving fuck was he? The 2014 film Frank, starring Michael Fassbender as the eponymous character and co-written by ex-band member and Cardiff boy Jon Ronson, didn’t do much to answer my questions; that was more of a sideways look at the trepidations of trying to create music that was honest and true to oneself without giving into the machinations or pressures of finances or industry. Finally, Being Frank, directed by Steve Sullivan and crowd-funded with support from Ffilm Cymru, answers my questions.
It turns out that Chris Sievey, the man underneath the paper-mache head, was something of a creative polymath. Musician, comedian, storyteller, artist, craftsman; there were few ideas that popped into his head that he rejected. Given access to the astonishingly large and comprehensive archives – full of VHS tapes, doodles, records, bits and bobs of songs – there emerges an image of Chris as a restless and instinctive creative who refused to be dampened down by adult expectations. But there’s a slightly tragic side to, where the fully excellent singer/songwriter who leads the New Wave band The Freshies becomes upstaged by his own creation, the madcap Frank Sidebottom. Eventually, Frank takes on his own life, as if a form of schizophrenia – one talking head recalls that you could never talk to Frank and get Chris, nor vice-versa. Once the head was on, that was it. Into that split personality also came drink and drugs, and a spiral away from the limelight.
The archive footage provides a multitude of laughs. If his only creation was Frank, Chris Sievey would still be remembered as a uniquely talented performer and comedic improviser, a clear inspiration for the likes of Ross Noble and Johnny Vegas (both talking heads here). But then you count his work in The Freshies, the homemade music videos, the computer-programmed B-sides of records, the comics, the unrelenting doodling, the side-job as a stop-motion animator on Bob the Builder and Pingu. His total creative output is mind-boggling. Even more so when you consider how much of it has never seen the light of day. How many other ideas have been lost in the shuffle or simply lost down the rabbit-hole of obsolete technology and disintegration?
Being Frank is an immensely charming and at times genuinely sad story of a cult genius who never rightly got his due outside of a coterie of hardcore fans. At times, Steve Sullivan perhaps loses the chronological thread of the film (it’s not always clear exactly how many years pass between the major events of Sievey’s life). But in pulling together all the archival material and articulate talking heads, he’s done a great service to the man’s brilliance.
words Fedor Tot
Out now in cinemas. Info: www.beingfrankmovie.com/