Stoned

I was looking forward to this one (despite the negative reviews it got) because of its subject matter - the mysterious death of Rolling Stones guitarist, Brian Jones. However, apart from good central performances - Leo Gregory (Brian Jones), Paddy Considine (Frank Thoroghgood) and David Morrissey (Tom Keylock) - and a couple of attractive females, I have to say I was let down by it. There really is little depth to the characterizations: Jones, especially, is portrayed as a pill-popping, egotistical snob who beats up his girl and enjoys needling the meek Thorogood but he is shown to lose interest in his band's activities far too early (in 1966!) which is negated by history given that he still exerted some control over the Stones' musical direction in unusual sounding songs like "Lady Jane" and "Paint It Black". First-time director Stephen Woolley (Neil Jordan's frequent producer) overdirects most of the time and, apart from Jagger and Jones, none of the rest of the Stones look anything like the real people. To add insult to injury, three of the classic songs of the era are only rendered via bland recent cover versions rather the originals which, at least, would have given it an air of authenticity.

No, one should not expect a fictionalization of the Stones' story, but one does expect a reasonable attempt at a depiction of Brian Jones' time with them. As it is, the Stones are peripheral characters in the screenplay. Apart from a few bluesy jams, their own music is absent entirely. The story focuses on the relationships between Jones and his foreman/com-padre Frank Thorogood, out at the rock star's country estate. The large house is conspicuously the movie's prime set. Fine, 'Stoned' had a low budget. Then again, it's from a real-life story which was basically made up of people talking, fighting and falling over. Not so fine is that 'Stoned' had to be so bad. One of the hardest things to swallow about 'Stoned' was the casting of Leo Gregory as Jones. He does little characterization beyond a 'fatalistic' smile, and although 27 years old himself (Jones' age at the time of his death), on screen he looks ten years older and wears a risible array of mail-order hairpieces to represent the varying Jones eras. At times he looks like a young Jon Pertwee in a fright wig. The direction by Stephen Wooley is wildly erratic and at times laughable. Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' underscoring an acid trip scene is the hack cinematic equivalent of the 'city/pretty' hack songwriting rhyme. It took Wooley ten years to put this botch-up together? Looks more like it was desperately cobbled together late Sunday night and breathlessly handed in by the Monday 9AM deadline. Another Bad Movie Night contender.

It has taken Stephen Woolley ten years to get this on to the screen, which allowed him plenty of time to do his research. He began by acquiring the film rights to the book, 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' and added the rights to the deathbed revelations of Frank Thorogood; then the rights to the book by Anna Wohlin, one of Jones' two current girlfriends. He topped this by hiring a private eye to find Janet, the other girlfriend, to get her confirmation about the size of the Stoned lifestyle and some of the details of Jones' death. He was also able to find a few original cameras including a vintage Bolex, to match the ancient film clips slotted into parts of the story. Getting any film made has to be an obsession, and a major one at that, if it takes ten years. What kept Woolley going was having been too young to be a hippy, the realisation that he had bought (as we all did) the PR stunt depicting the leather-clad speed-freak drunk-rolling Beatles as nice fluffy chaps and the middle-class cricket fans from Kingston-upon-Thames as the evil and dangerous Stones, ' Jagger was at the London School of Economics', and seeing Brian Jones as the only band member who was a genuine bad boy; 'the missing link' to the decadent bohemian world. He links this to the dichotomy between Brian, the studiedly effete and spoiled brat, and Frank (Considine), a real bloke, an ex-soldier, with whom Woolley found himself identifying. He says he screened 'Performance' for the cast before shooting began, to get them into the zeitgeist, (We of the hippy generation realised that we could measure the effect of the encroaching years and our possible maturity by noting how we moved from identifying with Turner to 'being' Chas), and in fact the shooting of the gun scene from that gets a quote here. There are many little bits of contemporary reference intercut, and all so nearly subliminal that the audience could miss them if it were not well-acquainted with them from the first time round and/or didn't posses a certain amount of quick-fire intelligence. It's pleasurably flattering to be a member of an audience which is assumed to have these qualities. When you can say it in twenty frames, why milk it? The opening scenes establish Brian (Gregory) as the kingpin, getting a gig by phone while the rest of the band waits outside the red box. Although not much later Andrew Loog Oldham sells himself to them as manager, most of the subsequent story dispenses with a strictly chronological narrative. The general situation moves on, but in bunches of flash-back, present and flash-forward. Time's tooty-fruity. What happened after the Stones got Big was a gift to a film maker: Frank is taken on as a builder to tart up Brian's little mansion and, in spite of the huge gaps between their respective cultures, becomes part of the Stone's world. The parallels between this reality and the fictional scenario of the contemporaneous Cammell-Roeg film, are fascinating and should form the basis of a PHD for some 'sixties-fixated student sooner or later. For the camera-work, colour, montage, in purely visual terms 'Stoned' is worth seeing, although it would have been well worth Gregory putting on several extra pounds to cover his taut, well-toned musculature - Brian was quite chubby in real life - in fact all the band members could have added a little more puppy-fat. One obvious failing in 'Stoned' is its lack of bloody marvellous soundtrack; but there's hardly a film out now without a bloody marvellous soundtrack, and there are plenty of precedents; Orson Welles' 'Touch of Evil', for instance. For lasting power a film has to stand as a film rather than an extended marketing device. As a film, this cuts it. CLIFF HANLEY

I'm afraid that 'Classic Rockher' has completely missed the point! Director Stephen Woolley has spent well over 10 years researching this film so as to paint as accurate a picture as possible of the suspicious death of Brian Jones. I know it may be difficult for die-hard fans to accept, but The Rolling Stones was founded by Brian Jones!!! Keef and that art school student poser, Mick Jagger, were recruited into the band by Brian. Brian's love was for 'the blues' of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Elmore James ... and hence the lack of over played 60's Stones tunes in the film. Stephen tracked down the likes of Anita Pallenberg, Brian's ex girlfriend who had disappeared back to her native Germany many years before, to make a film about Brian's death NOT a film about the Stones. One theory is that he was killed by his builder/chauffeur/gopher, Frank Thorogood, who was sacked the morning of Brian's death and has himself since died in 1993. I believe this film portrays the most accurate view on the last sad days of genius Brian Jones. 'Classic Rockher' come on - wake up and smell the coffee!!! Bob the Binman

Stoned tells us about the life and early death at 27 of Brian Jones who founded and actually named the group. I do remember it back in 1969, that there was such controversy around it I did not know. It seems as though the Stones went on without any pause or at least that's how it appeared in America.

Part of the problem with this film is that Brian Jones is not presented as an especially likable figure. It seemed to me that his love of all kinds of hedonistic pleasure took over and ruled him. What started as creative differences between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Jones just eventually came down to the fact that Jones would rather party than work. Not that those two guys ever lived like monks, but you do have to please the public with your music and that requires working on it and on a product to please said public. It's why the Rolling Stones are still a hot act in almost 50 years of performing and not on the nostalgia circuit either.

Leo Gregory plays Jones and some really good casting was done with him and those who played the rest of the Stones. Paddy Considine is Frank Thorogood, Jones's estate builder and general factotum who was fired the day Jones was found in his pool. Whether he had help from Thorogood or anyone else is still fodder for speculation.

I agree with another reviewer who said the sound was of bad quality. That that reviewer was from the UK says something because I would be tempted to blame it on their accents. I well remember when the Beatles first came to America they were unintelligible with their Liverpudlian speech pattern which was not something American ears heard that often. But here it's just bad sound recording.

Maybe it was his hedonism over all way of life, but I could not develop a rooting interest in Jones as I could with say Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin and I'm not really into that music.