Watching Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone at 14 Pews in Houston, you get the feeling you're in the right place to watch this particular movie. The church-converted movie theater is a beautiful venue with warm, red planks of wood lining the walls and ceiling as well as artwork displaying oil spills in vibrant contrasting colors.
Five minutes prior to screen time, though, the venue is less than quarter-full and on the same day the media were falling over themselves singing the praises of the soon-to-be-open Sundance Theater downtown, you also get the feeling that more people really ought be here to appreciate a fine independent film and local art house. You can't help feel the same about Fishbone.
The film is essentially a tribute to unfulfilled promises, or as Angelo Moore characterizes in the film, "famous but not rich." On some level, this film could have been about any brilliant, genre-challenged African- American band pre-2K, like Living Colour or Bad Brains. It just happened to be about the craziest.
Central to the film is the relationship between Moore and Norwood Fisher, with Fisher at times debating between Moore's hyper-creativity and sometimes overbearing disruptive behavior, and Moore talking about every damn single thing he can. While the film mostly portrays the two separately in interviews, it's when the two are together fighting over the future direction of the band that you get a true sense of how much admiration and enmity exist between the two. It's a scene virtually every band or family plays out, but the shared history and stature of the two make the familiar argument more significant. It's like the first time you realize your father is human after all.
However, the arc of the movie hinges on Kendall Jones. The events surrounding his tenure in and out of the band as well as the band's efforts to reach out to their friend bring an unexpected emotional pull from a seemingly care-free, everyone-else-be-damned band. It's here where I have my only criticism of the film in that Jones's account of events feels unfinished and unresolved.
Still, as the film closes with the title song of the film, you get an understanding of what makes this band really great. It is and always has been in the performance. Sitting in the pews of the once-church with the gospel-inspired coda of the song bouncing against the walls, I could imagine a history of what this former place of worship might have been and what it could be with just a little promotion and recognition. In seeing the band on screen performing one of its best known, you could say the same for this collection of individuals both blessed and cursed by their unwillingness to do anything less than what they want for themselves and their art. And in leaving that night under a slight rainfall, I found myself rooting and hoping that a little sunshine would fall both on Fishbone and the neighborhood movie house.
