One-Trick Pony

This reminds me of another movie involving intricate characters, great music, and a radio station. It was called "Choose Me" (1984), and was I have to say a much better-coherent-film.

One Trick Pony starts off promisingly, but falls short as some sequences seem to be extended in order to accomodate Paul Simon's excellent music (ie, long pans across city scapes as Simon and his band ride from gig to gig in their van). It also looks as though large chunks were edited out, in order to cut it's running time down; Such as when Simon meets Mare Winnigham (Saint Elmo's Fire) after a gig, then ends up sleeping with her, then is seen leaving her house without as much as a goodbye...Maybe that was the point, to show us his ephemeral lifestyle on the road. But I dunno though, as Simon's acting also leaves a lot to be desired. But then, he's a singer.

Blair Brown (Altered States)is good as his ex wife who he seems to sleep with whenever he's depressed about something(???). But otherwise it's an atmospheric (due to the music) but unremarkable film, and could''ve been so much more.

Having read the other comments about this film, one thing is quite evident:

If you are or ever been a professional musician ( as I am ), you'll react quite differently to this film quite differently than if you are a Paul Simon "fan" or a movie buff ..

Granted, the movie has some production "warts", but the overall milieu of "the road" and the " music business" Simon has conveyed, and the sharp characterizations of all the actors are really extremely realistic to those who've been there..( I especially would cite Rip Torns wonderful roman-a-clef of Clive Davis and Allan Goorwitz' dead-on impression of the radio programmer as exceptional.

Also, even though they're basically playing themselves, the "band" ( Tee, Gale, and Gadd in particular ) acting is basically unmannered and realistic.

Having spent my working life in the music industry as an arranger /composer /producer for over forty years, I still watch my worn out old VCR copy about once a year ..and it really wears well ..and brings back many memories ..both good and bad!

Perhaps encouraged by his brief appearances in the Rutles "All You Need Is Cash" and probably more pertinently Woody Allen's "Annie Hall", Paul Simon returned to the music industry five years after his last studio album with a new record and this film, which he wrote and acted in. I must admit I didn't see the latter coming, but at.least he doesn't set himself up as the director too.

Simon plays Jonah Levin, a one-hit-wonder with a folk/hippy anti-Vietnam war song from 1967, still on the road today with his band playing small clubs and hoping for a record deal for his new batch of songs. His personal life is a bit of a muck-up, separated from his too-long suffering wife Blair Brown who lives in New York with their kid son on whom he dotes, we first see him in a very Woody-type situation, sharing a bath, a joint and almost certainly a bed with a very young-looking girl and later scoring with the attractive but frustrated middle-aged wife, played by Joan Hackett, of his shallow manager played by Rip Torn. Clearly Simon adheres to the "Good to be Woody"-school of movie screenplay writing.

The narrative, such as it is, entails Jonah having some minor musical differences with his band out on the road, being set up with Torn, who in turn introduces him to, of all people, a very uncomfortable-seeming Lou Reed as a hipster record producer who all but adds a disco beat to Jonah's latest otherwise earnest and low-key material to try to get him back on the charts even if it means dropping hia band from the recording session.

We also see him at a "Salute to the 60's" television special alongside Sam and Dave and the Lovin' Spoonful, both of whom it was nice to see, each singing one of their biggest hits.

Otherwise, bar a few ups and downs with Brown, some goofing around with his kid in Central Park and of course some live musical performances of a handful of the soundtrack songs, there's not what you'd really call a significant story-arc here. Simon's dialogue for himself and his characters rarely seems natural with its cleverness drawing attention to itself, while the interplay with his band-members and his new manager and producer is bogged down by clichés.

The music is nice, not exactly riveting, rather like the movie itself, although the songs are neatly worked into the action, all ten of them not including the 60's protest-song spoof and the guest-shots mentioned earlier. On that subject, it sure was strange to see Simon's band warming up for the B-52's of all people at the beginning.

Undoubtedly something of a vanity project for Simon whose acting is unsurprisingly somewhat self-conscious throughout, he lacks the skill or presence to carry off the lead role here. As a movie, it's a bit of a moribund viewing experience, enlivened, although I'm probably overstating it, by the soundtrack material.

Very definitely one for fans of Simon, although Brown, Torn and Hackett each do a professional job in support.

This movie is an okay time-killer, particularly if you like Paul Simon's music and/or you are a fan of Blair Brown. Sam and Dave, the B-52s and Lovin' Spoonful don't hurt either. Joan Hackett does a good job in her role. At the risk of sounding heretical, while I aways admired Paul Simon's songs, I have always thought Art Garfunkel has a better voice. One Trick Pony proves that Art's a better actor as well. Average at best.

First things first: Paul Simon is a brilliant songwriter, but a lousy actor. He was absolutely dreadful in "Annie Hall," but at least that was a brief performance, clearly done as a lark for Woody Allen.

I'm not sure what, exactly, this movie was supposed to be. Was it a straight drama? A satire on the music business? A conjecture as to what Simon's career would have been like had "Sounds of Silence" been his only hit? All of they above? In any case, it's not a bad movie. Simon's scriptwriting is actually quite a bit more astute than his acting. But mostly, it's a formless vanity project, mostly a vehicle for Simon to show off his formidable guitar playing/songwriting skills...and, it must be said, his 40-year-old body (through plentiful shirtless and open-shirt scenes), which I have to admit is quite impressive, especially given his short stature.

Simon is actually quite sexy in this movie: the sad-sack, world-weary persona he affects (or maybe it's genuine) somehow really works for him. And I loved the inside joke of his character encountering a poster for "The Empire Strikes Back," aka the movie that Simon's then-girlfriend, Carrie Fisher, was starring in around the same time "One Trick Pony" was being filmed.

Blair Brown is perfectly decent as the Simon-equivalent's ex-wife, although Ms. Brown has subsequently said she dislikes the movie and doesn't wish to discuss it.