LIFE S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

SWEET DREAMS is the title of a four-part series of individual documentaries due to be broadcast on RTE 1 on Wednesdays from February 12th through to March 5th at 8.30pm. Each film traces the real-life stories of performers who hold some personal aspiration or ambition in different aspects of the entertainment industry such as stand-up comedy, rock n roll and the circus. This series is the latest production from Graph Films, a young independent company who have already produced a number of documentary films dealing with subjects like emigration (The Morrison Tapes) and marriage (Hallelujah, Love And Stuff).
Programme 1 deals with two eminent Elvis impersonators, Curtis King from Belfast and Ben Slick Summers from Coolock in Dublin. The opening scene is a striking one: footage of the King s funeral rolls by while Slick informs us via voiceover that Elvis had the unique ability of being Elvis . We re obviously in the hands of a pro here.
One thing that comes across in this first film is that the vocation of Elvis impersonation is nowhere near as weird a pursuit as it might at first seem, being in essence a cross between jobbing thespianism and bar-band musicianship. Slick (or Ben if you prefer) even refers to himself as a singing method actor at one stage. An apprentice megalomaniac, the only thing more disturbing about Mr. Summers than his ability to reproduce Elvis vocals to a T is his naked lust for money. Mind you, he did choose the big E as a means of escape from the crushing banality of his former life as a factory worker. At one stage the singer muses, I believe that no reality ever comes true unless you first dream it, into his shaving mirror, making him the least likely successor to L Ron Hubbard since David Icke. As we watch him prepare for a show in The Red Cow Inn (the Vegas of Dublin?), the tension builds to breaking point.
Curtis King, on the other hand, is a more affable class of Presleyite, being a husband, father of three and typewriter engineer by day, rock god and martial-arts fanatic only by night. After a hard day s work he likes nothing better than to get up on stage and sing your heart out and do a bit of karate. It s a good way of relieving tension and stress. It stops that heart attack comin on! It certainly looks like a hell of a lot more fun than a macrobiotic diet.
Curtis is a very visual performer. One can t but feel a primal thrill when witnessing his Elvis-ised figure mounting the steps and kneeling sidestage to pray before taking to the boards of the latest crummy ballroom as Also Sprach Zarathustra blares through the PA. More amusing, but no less rivetting, is the sight of a gaggle of giggling, shrieking females (not all of the blue-rinse brigade either) clamouring for autographs, rabid to touch the sequinned garment of their Saviour. Indeed, the scene where a fully-costumed King limbers up with some classic Elvis karate moves in his hotel room a full two hours before the show is nothing short of gobstopping, evoking Martin Sheen s infamous freakout-in-front-of-the-mirror scene in Apocalypse Now. The man s a trouper, right down to the studs on his specially-tailored cape. Elvis is tragic and comic, often all at once.
shitting bricks
Programme 2 is entitled Comedy and concerns itself with two performers in a state of transition. Eddie Bannon is already reasonably established on the domestic comedy scene and is trying to break into the English club circuit. Deirdre O Kane, on the other hand, is on the tail end of nine weary years as an actress and wants to swap Stanislavsky for standup.
An ex-freight forwarding company manager by the age of 26, Eddie grew tired of having his life mapped out for him and chucked it all away in favour of showbiz. A performance junkie since first experiencing the buzz of being onstage, he now spends frustrating hours on the phone trying to hustle up gigs across the water. Eventually he lands a date in the Up The Creek comedy club in London: One of the roughest gigs for comedians ever, anywhere . Deirdre, meanwhile, has taken the plunge and booked herself her an opening slot in the fabled Comedy Cellar above The International Bar. This is her first attempt at standup comedy and understandably, she s shitting bricks.
The camera follows the pair as they prepare for their trials by fire. As their respective D-days approach the irony becomes more pronounced: Eddie must leave the comfortable sanctuary of the Comedy Cellar to brave the unknown terrors of a London club while Deirdre must forsake her old drama haunts in order to confront her own deepest fears in the Comedy Cellar. One can smell the subjects gut-churning fear and sense the twin prospects of disaster and/or triumph lurking in the shadows.
The third programme in the series is the most poignant of the four. It profiles Barbarella, an all-female rock group from Co. Waterford with an average age of 17. The sense of innocence and ambition in the air when singer Molly relates the group s dream of being rich enough to renovate a local ruin and fill it with chandeliers, a huge high ceiling, a sitting room with a grand piano, and a big studio would sweeten the bitterest old pro. All the band are so heady with the self-belief of youth that one can only be in awe of them.
But, lovable as they are, they do have that old Misunderstood Teenager In A Small Town persecution complex in spades. Drummer Lia claims: Certain people are really objecting to the fact that we chose to dress differently to the norm and that we didn t listen to the same music as everyone else was listening to. Just the feeling that everywhere we walked by certain people we knew, there were bitchy comments being made. For no apparent reason. But therein lies the seed of the cardinal rule of rock n roll: fuck you.
Although Barbarella are not yet out of the traps musically, they have a characteristic common to all the greatest bands, male or female they are a gang. No less than Dennis Sheehan (U2 s road manager) has been giving the band the odd bit of advice. Barbarella approached me and I went to see them play and I was quite surprised at the originality of the material, he enthuses. I liked the idea that they were four young girls that seemed to have great motivation and enthusiasm and really believed in what they were doing.
Watching Barbarella negotiate the highs (playing their first really good gig at Davitt s, a local venue) and lows (abject panic attacks before their appearance at the open-air festival Spraoi 96) of their initiation into the music industry makes for great TV. If the band can stay together and stay out of jail long enough, who knows what awaits them? And you have to hand it to Molly when she states flatly We will be famous. The end .
The final programme in the series concerns itself with Duffy s Circus. An insight into the unbelievable hardships of circus life, it is sobering stuff for anyone who ever dreamed of running away from home as a youth to become a roustabout. David Duffy is the current ringmaster of one of the country s hardiest showbiz institutions, one that stretches back seven generations. Being the only son, the buck stops here, he testifies. If I don t make a success of it then basically it s gone. If we went off the road, I don t see a chance that we would get back on it.
The circus routine is one so gruelling and restless it would make the most itinerant rock band seem like soft-bellied homebodies. This is one strain of the entertainment industry where the line between artist and crew is non-existent. The party completes up to a hundred build-ups and breakdowns a year in as many different locations, often rising at four in the morning and not getting to bed until after eleven. It s tough on wives and children. I think the circus is an insane way to live, admits David, but you can still see the wanderlust in his eye. Gazing at an old family photograph, his father Tom reminisces: When we were all together like this we could do every act in the business. We were musicians, horseriders, trapeze artists, lion rings, jugglers . . . you name it, we ve done it all.
Sweet Dreams is a fast-moving, raw and honest piece of work. It allows its subjects to tell their stories with no interference: there are no interviewers, narrators or presenters and few captions. The editing is smart but allows the people involved to tell their tales at their own pace. In this case, the unadorned Real Thing turns out to be far more fascinating than any scriptwriter s idea of it. Recommended viewing. n