So nicely managed, Shep
SUPERMENSCH: THE LEGEND OF SHEP GORDON (15)
MOVIES WITH the word “mensch” (let alone “supermensch ” ) the title don’t come around very often, so I leapt on this one, even though I’d never heard of Shep Gordon and thus had to be convinced of his status as a “legend”. That didn’t take long, as the documentary marking the directorial debut of comic actor Mike Myers quickly establishes Shep’s significance in the lives of a crowd of A-listers who are not to be sniffed at. I’m talking about the likes of Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, Mick Fleetwood, Willie Nelson and a host of others who all appear to sing Shep’s praises while delivering amusing anecdotes about his role in their lives.
Though it isn’t unusual for Hollywood types to extol the virtues of their own, they seldom have warm fuzzy things to say about managers, but Shep Gordonis that rare thing — a mensch in the music business. Not that he planned to be an entertainment agent. Through a series of quick-fire montages, photographs, enactments and interviews, we discover that New Yorker Shep was all set to be a probation officer. When that didn’t work out, he checked into an LA motel in the late ’60s and hooked up with fel- low guests Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, who suggested he might like to manage little-known artist Alice Cooper. Shep never looked back and from there on the name-dropping continues at a pace as we hear about his growing client list which included Pink Floyd, albeit for nine days. It was Shep who got Alice Cooper to sacrifice that chicken on stage in 1969 and it was Shep who shared a cat (not a euphemism) with Cary Grant in Beverly Hills.
With the absence of any detractors, Myers, who is a great friend, has produced a hagiography.
But it’s so entertaining, you won’t care and by the end I wanted to introduce the now-single Shep to a nice girl, so he can live out his twilight years in Maui in the way a supermensch deserves.