Series Site
Every pop star is a great actor—until they have to, you know, act. Perhaps that’s why, on the big screen, pop musicians are often at their most revealing, consciously or not, when playing a role that looks and sounds just like them. After all, it’s the thing they’re already best at. While today’s stars might be as readily accessible as a social media live feed, pop luminaries of the past turned to the cinema to extend, complicate or renovate their public personae: whether driven by a desire to sell records, burnish newly minted myths, or cheerfully send up their own iconography. This series surveys a disparate selection of cult figures, visionaries, punks and pop supernovas who took to the screen to play some kitty-corner, squint-and-it-could- be-the-real-thing version of themselves, where—with apologies to Ringo Starr—all they gotta do is act naturally.
Series curated and program notes written by critics Luke Goodsell and Anwen Crawford.