Stayin’ alive
Bee Gees back in the spotlight in HBO documentary
As a Hollywood heavyweight, producer-director Frank Marshall forges into new territory, debuting his very first documentary Saturday on HBO, a career chronicle of one of the most successful pop groups in history, “Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
“It was a little over four years ago. I was talking to Steve Barnett, who was the CEO of Capitol Records. We’d just started a documentary division in our company,” the “Jurassic Park” franchise producer began, “and they had just bought and were interested in reinvigorating the catalog of the Bee Gees.”
Barry Gibb, the trio’s sole surviving member at 74, is the focus. “He was always very gracious and reflective. There were sensitive things, some sad times for him. He misses his brothers. But he also wanted to celebrate their legacy and was willing to talk about everything.”
The Bee Gees’ hit parade began in the mid-’60s. Familial squabbles broke them up. Eventually they reunited and with the soundtrack for 1977’s “Saturday Night Fever” became a world-wide phenomenon.
“This is looking at what it’s like to work together as a family. It can be a great gift, but also a curse,” Marshall, 74, noted.
“I thought that it was really their longevity that was the most remarkable thing about them. I do feel that they wouldn’t have lasted if they weren’t brothers, because you know even when you break up, you still have to come back and see each other at Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever.”
To that end, Marshall spoke with “musicians who were really influenced by their music, like Justin Timberlake, and the brother bands Nick Jonas was a part of and Noel Gallagher.”
He also spoke with Barbra Streisand, whose “Guilty” album Gibb wrote and produced.
“She loved working with him because Barry is a perfectionist, like she is. She sent me a couple of her own personal photos that nobody’s ever seen before that are in the movie.”
After being on top with “Saturday Night Fever,” there came a virulent disco backlash.
“The Bee Gees were obviously surprised — because no one had been through it before. As Barry says in the movie, ‘We thought we would always be loved.’
“But the world changes. There’s social changes, there’s political changes. They also didn’t create disco,” Marshall emphasized. “They were an R&B band with all these different musical styles.
“That’s what I was trying to show over all these decades. That they were capable of changing with the tastes and the styles and the social trends that were happening.”