IN AUTEUR SPACE : Sparks at the movies
Sparks are the most visual of bands, and growing up 20 minutes from West Hollywood, the cinema has seeped into their work. Here’s the Sparks story in 11 directors.
Jean-luc Goddard: “We really immersed ourselves in French New Wave cinema as students at UCLA,” says Russell, “whether it was Goddard or Truffaut. And then there was Japanese cinema with Kurosawa or the Italian cinema of Antonioni or Fellini. Those were part of the vocabulary of film watching then. It was a much healthier situation with cinema than it is now.”
Jacques Tati: The French comedy giant cast Sparks in a movie that would have been called Confusion, though funding problems exacerbated by health problems meant his final scenario got left unmade by the time he died in 1982. “That regret is always going to be there,” says Ron. “Just the fact you had one opportunity to work with an artist like Jacques Tati and it didn’t work out.”
James Goldstone: Another regret is Rollercoaster, the 1977 James Goldstone disaster movie that was trounced at the box office that summer by Star Wars. On paper it looked great: George Segal as lead, Chilean maestro Lalo Schifrin scoring and Sparks performing songs from Big Beat… What could possibly go wrong?
Steve Martin: Sparks were so hot in 1982 that they were invited onto Saturday Night Live alongside Taxi’s Danny Devito. Subsequently, Steve Martin, at the height of his comedic powers, directed the sleazy video for I Predict, featuring a striptease from Ron Mael trussed up in a feather boa and fishnets. Eroticism at its most niche.
Tim Burton: The Edward Scissorhands director is the nearly-man in the Sparks story, having got on board to direct their musical adaptation of the manga cartoon Mai, The Psychic Girl before everything went pear-shaped in the early 90s. Regrets, they’ve had a few…
Tsui Hark: The Hong Kong movie master appears on a 1993 track that bears his name, introducing himself over an ambient house track. “I’m Tsui Hark, I’m a film director, I’ve made several films,” he tells us. Later, Sparks would return the favour, recording It’s A Knockoff for Tsui’s 1998 Van Damme vehicle Knock Off, which appeared on Balls two years later.
Ingmar Bergman: Fifteen years ago, the Sveriges Radio Radioteatern asked Sparks to participate in a production for Swedish national radio which became the Mael-penned audio drama, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman. It was released in its entirety as Sparks’ 22nd studio album in 2009.
Guy Maddin: The depths of the Maels’ romance with cinema is best exemplified by their relationship with Canadian “prairie surrealist” auteur Guy Maddin, who has assisted the group visually over the last 10 years. Sparks performed The Final Derriere in Maddin’s The Forbidden Room during a hallucinatory vignette starring Udo Kier.
Joseph Wallace: Maddin had also been mooted to direct the film adaptation of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, but now it’s in production with animator Joseph Wallace whose stop-motion puppet video for Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me) features a remarkable papier-mâché reproduction of Pigalle.
Edgar Wright: Sparks resisted documentary offers for many years, though that resolve crumbled when Cornetto-trilogy director and self-confessed “Sparks fan boy” Edgar Wright contacted the band via a Twitter DM. Resistance was futile given Wright’s pedigree, and it’s fair to say The Sparks Brothers has opened up a whole new audience.
Leos Carax: Another self-confessed fan boy (or maybe “garçon fanatique”), the French director included How Are You Getting Home? in his 2013 masterpiece Holy Motors. Mutual appreciation led to Sparks finally getting a musical film project off the ground. Ron: “[Being picked for the] opening night of the Cannes Film Festival meant the disappointment of the earlier French cinema failure [Tati’s Conversation] was replaced by an even stronger French cinema experience.”