Won't Anybody Listen

Won't Anybody Listen, is a surprisingly fresh documentary about an aspect of the music industry I have never seen or heard about before - how to cope with the realization that your dreams are NOT going to come true. After almost two decades of blood, sweat and tears (literally), the members of NC-17, and more heartbreaking, those close to the band (family, friends, wives etc) deal not with final, triumphant success, but, with the painful, sobering reality of failure. As a struggling writer myself, I completely identified with their journey. In pretty much all societies, (but, especially, America) no one is loved more than a winner, and there is nothing more leprous than a LOSER. However, the reality of life is for every winner, there are countless losers. For every successful rock band, there are tens of thousands that fail. For every successful spec screenplay sold, millions never see a dime - you get my drift. The most profound gift of Dov Kelemer's documentary is how it works like an 80 min therapy session. For anybody who is actually struggling to achieve something in life but facing the growing awareness that success is seemingly less and less likely - Won't Anybody Listen promises a real Catharsis. So little in society helps us cope with failure. Yet, so many fail everyday. The band, NC 17, may have failed, but, they have succeeded in showing that life goes on, we pull up our bootstraps, we soldier on. These people may not have got the record contracts, the limo rides, the millions. But, these 'losers' have something a lot of those 'successful' guys believe they have - integrity and strength. Kurt Cobain is considered a Grand Winner as far as superficial success is concerned. Perhaps, he should have stuck around a while longer and watched, Won't Anybody Listen, to realize he had nothing to justify blowing his head off.

"Won't Anybody Listen" is a must see for any aspiring artist or any artist for that matter. This film captures seven years in the life of the little known Orange County, CA rock band named,"NC-17". The result is as painful a documentary as I've encountered. Like "Hoop Dreams" before it, "Won't" is a compelling tale documenting the passionate hard work of talented individuals struggling for acknowledgment. Unlike a doctor, lawyer, or carpenter, a musician has no entitlement to make a living at their profession. All talent aside, hard work will indeed carry you far in this life. Unless you're in a band, then the nearly concrete rules of success in business seem give way to entropic nothingness.

One of the great things about this film is its ability to be equally effective whether you love, hate or are indifferent to the music of the subject. One doesn't need to watch it to know that talent often has little to do with success in music. We're reminded of that nearly every time we turn on a radio or watch any of the latest music videos. This film isn't able to inform what will make a band successful, but that's an unknowable equation, anyway. The documentary is actually about an ill-fated journey. The subjects run afoul of no less than and an unscrupulous Hollywood manager preying upon the naivete of the transplants from Michigan, and of course, the A & R execs. The band suffers still other numerous, faceless, shipwrecks: The loss of "air time" to lip-syncers Milli Vanilli, and audits from the IRS.

Ultimately, the experience of being dashed against the craggy rocks of record labels proves fatal to the dream. The business model employed by the companies that we receive our popular music from is clearly a damaged bureaucracy. This experience puts faces on the casualties of that ill system.