Episode 12: Pop Star Movies, feat. Patrick Ripoll of Tracks of the Damned

Okay, this one is a little hard to explain: Gabe and Patrick are looking at films featuring rock, hip-hop, R&B, and reggae artists. Not concert movies or movies where a pop star plays someone else, but movies in which they essentially appear either as themselves or a slightly fictionalized version of themselves. Obvious examples include The Beatles in Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) or Prince in Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain (1984).   But we’re also not talking about those two very popular films – we’re talking about some slightly less popular titles with strong cult followings, including Bob Rafelson’s Head (1968), starring The Monkees, Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come (1972), starring Jimmy Cliff, Allan Arkush’s Rock ‘n Roll High School (1979), starring The Ramones, and Reginald Hudlin’s House Party (1990), starring Kid ‘n Play. The fellas wrap things up with shorter discussions of Prince’s movies, Bob Spiers’ Spiceworld (1997), Tetsuro Takeuchi’s Wild Zero (1999), and a few others.   00:00 – Intro 07:07 – Head 31:21 – The Harder They Come 51:32 – Rock ‘n Roll High School 1:19:36 – House Party 1:45:09 – Wrap up