Starsuckers, More4 | reviews, news & interviews
Starsuckers, More4
Starsuckers, More4
Shock-horror expose of corner-cutting journalism
Tuesday, 06 April 2010
That fame, and the pursuit thereof, is hurtful to the soul is the unexceptional if, I suppose, ever invaluable message of Starsuckers, the Chris Atkins documentary given genuine ballast by the details it selects with which to argue its case. Though overlong for what it is, and often veering off on tangents worthy of separate movies in themselves, it makes you laugh and wince in equal measure. Anonymity has rarely seemed a healthier place to be.
It's also emphatically not the status wished for by a celebrity-mad society whose varying levels of rot are anatomised via Atkins's eclectic enquiry, which encompasses precocious American children and the depredations of the UK tabloid press, the inadequate dispersal of the money raised by Live Aid and the apparently complete link in Lithuania, of all places, between showbiz and politics. Hey - didn't Ronald Reagan, Glenda Jackson and Arnie (among others) get there first?
Still, if Atkins's terrain isn't exactly new, there nonetheless remains ammunition aplenty to fuel not just this particular film but, one imagines, countless others. The story of little Rudy, a six-year-old from Nevada consciously being groomed for stardom by his actually rather sweet-seeming parents, is as old as the hills: Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne wrote a stage musical about it called Gypsy. On the other hand, that 1959 Broadway landmark never ventured as far as "baby boozers", a sequence captured on film by Atkins whereby American kids are asked to feign drunkenness in pursuit of the odd buck. One wonders how long it will be before those same pre-pubescents are knocking back the real thing.
Starsuckers is particularly strong on the collusion between the worlds of media and PR in an age of information overload coupled with dwindling journalistic resources. (The solution: take a press release and merely reprint it in full, adding someone's byline.) It's not just because I worked one summer during university as that uniquely American phenomenon, a magazine fact-checker, that I paid particular note to Atkins's chronicling of the complete irrelevance of facts to the task at hand - namely, selling papers. That, too, won't surprise those of us who recall David Hare and Howard Brenton's 1980s smash, Pravda
. More startling is footage of an English PR, Neon Management's Dave Read, who is seen assaulting an especially buxom client in order to generate headlines, his chosen "weapon" a half-dozen eggs.
The public has long been asked to provide showbiz pages with more and more copy in the absence of paid employees, which makes for a remarkable sequence in which various papers are seen responding cold to phone calls from Atkins and his team reporting this or that falsehood, inevitably involving Sarah Harding, Amy Winehouse and the like. The sobriety of various editors' official bleatings about the Press Complaints Commission is tellingly contrasted with the deeply casual approach taken by their underlings to verifying - hah! - scoops with one or another stranger over drinks. All on expenses, one assumes.
Not all Atkins's anger carries equal weight, and one tends to be rather more galvanised by his account of the failure of much of the Live Aid money to reach its intended Third World recipients than by a made-up tale of "flamey Amy", with reference to an entirely fictitious mishap involving you know who's flowing hair.
As always with such things, narratives are begun that are then left dangling. So where is Kev "the pap" (the film's phrase, not mine) now, and what does he do for fun when not trawling Soho's Dean Street through the night? As for that pint-sized Vegas wannabe Rudy, one wonders how he'll look back on a childhood spent trying to imitate LL Cool J at his parents' behest.
Most tantalising of all is extended footage of Max Clifford in which numerous key names are bleeped out from the discussion, as are relevant financial figures, all presumably to keep the libel lawyers at bay. Starsuckers is a smart account of the deadening pursuit of dreamed-of glory that leaves us wondering how much else Atkins knows that the very system he is criticising won't let him tell.
Still, if Atkins's terrain isn't exactly new, there nonetheless remains ammunition aplenty to fuel not just this particular film but, one imagines, countless others. The story of little Rudy, a six-year-old from Nevada consciously being groomed for stardom by his actually rather sweet-seeming parents, is as old as the hills: Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne wrote a stage musical about it called Gypsy. On the other hand, that 1959 Broadway landmark never ventured as far as "baby boozers", a sequence captured on film by Atkins whereby American kids are asked to feign drunkenness in pursuit of the odd buck. One wonders how long it will be before those same pre-pubescents are knocking back the real thing.
Starsuckers is particularly strong on the collusion between the worlds of media and PR in an age of information overload coupled with dwindling journalistic resources. (The solution: take a press release and merely reprint it in full, adding someone's byline.) It's not just because I worked one summer during university as that uniquely American phenomenon, a magazine fact-checker, that I paid particular note to Atkins's chronicling of the complete irrelevance of facts to the task at hand - namely, selling papers. That, too, won't surprise those of us who recall David Hare and Howard Brenton's 1980s smash, Pravda
. More startling is footage of an English PR, Neon Management's Dave Read, who is seen assaulting an especially buxom client in order to generate headlines, his chosen "weapon" a half-dozen eggs.The public has long been asked to provide showbiz pages with more and more copy in the absence of paid employees, which makes for a remarkable sequence in which various papers are seen responding cold to phone calls from Atkins and his team reporting this or that falsehood, inevitably involving Sarah Harding, Amy Winehouse and the like. The sobriety of various editors' official bleatings about the Press Complaints Commission is tellingly contrasted with the deeply casual approach taken by their underlings to verifying - hah! - scoops with one or another stranger over drinks. All on expenses, one assumes.
Not all Atkins's anger carries equal weight, and one tends to be rather more galvanised by his account of the failure of much of the Live Aid money to reach its intended Third World recipients than by a made-up tale of "flamey Amy", with reference to an entirely fictitious mishap involving you know who's flowing hair.
As always with such things, narratives are begun that are then left dangling. So where is Kev "the pap" (the film's phrase, not mine) now, and what does he do for fun when not trawling Soho's Dean Street through the night? As for that pint-sized Vegas wannabe Rudy, one wonders how he'll look back on a childhood spent trying to imitate LL Cool J at his parents' behest.
Most tantalising of all is extended footage of Max Clifford in which numerous key names are bleeped out from the discussion, as are relevant financial figures, all presumably to keep the libel lawyers at bay. Starsuckers is a smart account of the deadening pursuit of dreamed-of glory that leaves us wondering how much else Atkins knows that the very system he is criticising won't let him tell.
- Watch Starsuckers on 4oD
Add comment
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more TV
Dept. Q, Netflix review - Danish crime thriller finds a new home in Edinburgh
Matthew Goode stars as antisocial detective Carl Morck
The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, BBC Two - boom and bust in the lingerie trade
Life in the fast lane with David Cameron's entrepreneurship tsar
Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality of deaf people's experience
Rose Ayling-Ellis maps out her muffled world in a so-so heist caper
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisation of the horrific Lockerbie terror attack
Six-part series focuses on the families and friends of the victims
theartsdesk Q&A: Zoë Telford on playing a stressed-out psychiatrist in ITV's 'Malpractice'
She nearly became a dancer, but now she's one of TV's most familiar faces
The Trunk, Netflix review - stylish, noir-ish Korean drama wrapped around a beguiling love story
Unusual psychological study of a stranger paid to save a toxic marriage
Malpractice, ITV1, Series 2 review - fear and loathing in the psychiatric unit
Powerful return of Grace Ofori-Attah's scathing medical drama
Fake, ITV1 review - be careful what you wish for
Australian drama probes the terrors of middle-aged matchmaking
Formula E: Driver, Prime Video review - inside the world's first zero-carbon sport
F1's electric baby brother get its own documentary series
Flintoff, Disney+ review - tumultuous life and times of the great all-rounder
John Dower's documentary is gritty, gruelling and uplifting
Your Friends & Neighbors, Apple TV+ review - in every dream home a heartache
Jon Hamm finds his best role since 'Mad Men'
MobLand, Paramount+ review - more guns, goons and gangsters from Guy Ritchie
High-powered cast impersonates the larcenous Harrigan dynasty
Comments
...
...