I love the movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story starring John C. Reilly as a fictitious rock star. A spoof of musician biopics such as Ray (Ray Charles) and Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) it is different than most movie biopics in that the characters are portraying actors in a cheap movie about a famous musician rather than actually trying to come off as the musician.
One of the real interesting aspects of Walk Hard is that a front page article in the L.A. Times Calendar section not long after the film came out was about how badly the movie flopped. It is rare when a movie that fails at the box office gets a full page write up about failing. But the article thought Walk Hard was a great film, which it is, and was actually asking how did a film as good as Walk Hard bomb so badly?
This really didn’t surprise me as I’ve noticed over the years and in many, many examples that fans of Rock and Roll really don’t like people making fun of it. I remember a Rock and Roll themed issue of Mad Magazine getting trashed by its readers in the Letters To The Editor section of the next issue. The letters to Mad’s editors were usually insulting but the writers were trying to be funny. These letters were very serious. At first the editors responded with their usually smart ass replies but as the letters became more and more virulent the editors’ replies became more and more serious until their final response was; “Okay, we messed up!”
In the decades I’ve read Mad Magazine I’ve never seen such a serious and negative response to a particular issue. And over what? Jokes about Ozzie Osborn biting the head off a bat and the guys in Poison wearing womens makeup? This vividly illustrated to me just how serious rock fans are about not just the music but the whole Rock & Roll lifestyle.
I myself, must admit that when I first saw the movie This Is Spinal Tap I almost teared up in the theater. Not because I was being sentimental or that the film was sad but because it made me realize the Great Era of Rock & Roll was over. Now was to come the jokes and making fun of it. Once they build a museum to something, it’s basically done.
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