The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (2010)

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• Project Phase: Completed
• Release Date: 2010-06-30 - NY and/or LA
• Distributor(s): 
• Film Genre(s): Documentary
• Country: United States
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SYNOPSIS

This is a portrait of the legendary pop music genius/record producer who created “the wall of sound”: a unique musical soundscape that defined some of the greatest hits of the 1960s. These are songs forever imprinted on the brains of everyone whose teenage years spanned that tumultuous decade: Be My Baby, He’s a Rebel, Da Doo Ron Ron, You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, to name but a few. Today he is imprisoned -- serving 19 years-to-life for the murder of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson. It was during his first trial (resulting in a hung jury) that the reclusive Spector gave unprecedented access to Jayanti, delivering a rare, no-holds-barred interview, filmed at his Los Angeles castle (mansion would be too prosaic), seated before the white piano which he bought with John Lennon for Imagine. Jayanti features sensational trial footage as well as fascinating clips from the archives of rock ‘n’ roll: The Teddy Bears (1958), with a 17-year-old Spector on guitar, singing his hit single, To Know Him Is to Love Him; performance footage of Spector songs sung by Ike & Tina Turner, The Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, and more.

Spector lucidly holds forth on his life and work: his father’s suicide when he was a child; the process through which he achieved his distinctive sound; his friendship with Lennon; and his case that, despite objections from Paul McCartney, he salvaged the Beatles’ album, Let It Be. Then there is Spector’s curious enmity toward Tony Bennett, Martin Scorsese, and Buddy Holly (“he got a postage stamp even though he was only in rock ‘n’ roll three years”), and a grandiosity that has him likening himself to Bach, da Vinci, Michelangelo and Galileo. And, there is an endless parade of Phil Spector hairstyles (Jay Leno cracked, “He looks as though he’s already been electrocuted”).

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