Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 13, 1994 TAG: 9405130079
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MAL VINCENT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This is the setting for "Backbeat," the aptly titled new movie that deals, partially, with the early days of the Beatles. Actually, it's about friendship, love and, most of all, with a time of life when important decisions have to be made - decisions that can't be changed later.
Stuart Sutcliffe, an intense art student who was John Lennon's best friend, is at the center of the film. Now, 30 years later, he evolves as an authentic pop culture hero or martyr - a rebellious intellectual who walked away from fame and riches for a romantic ideal. Even his death is shrouded in mystery.
Stu is the "lost Beatle" - the bass guitarist with the James Dean look who wasn't much of a musician but was a focal part of the mystique that became the Beatles. His passionate love affair with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr threatened to break up the band, or at least end his friendship with Lennon.
Even to those who extensively research the Beatles, Sutcliffe remains something of a mystery. That is the appeal of "Backbeat," which opens in Roanoke today.
The role is likely to make a major star of 21-year-old Stephen Dorff, the American who was chosen to play Stuart Sutcliffe over hundreds of British actors.
"This little, low-budgeted movie is the buzz of Hollywood right now, and it looks like it's happening," Dorff said during an interview recently. "Stuart Sutcliffe died at 21, but he was trying to get away from it. A lot of us try. This business is like a drug. If you follow it up with another drug, you're in real trouble. That's why we lose people like River Phoenix."
Ian Softley, the 37-year-old British director of "Backbeat," said he chose Dorff "because he, quite simply, was the best for the role. He had the look - the cool look."
Softley worked on "Backbeat" for 11 years. "There was something about this story that got under my skin," he said. "I didn't want it to be just nostalgia. I purposefully avoided using any of the McCartney-Lennon songs."
He admits that there are inaccuracies in the film "but only those needed to keep the drama going."
And what a drama it was. John Lennon was a loud-mouthed, obnoxious 18-year-old with notable musical talent and ambition when he met Sutcliffe at art school in 1960. They became best mates. They dressed alike, and Lennon clearly envied Stu's "cool." Lennon was already playing with Johnny and the Moondogs, re-christened the Silver Beetles for a tour of Scotland. Shortly afterward, Pete Best joined the group as drummer and the band was renamed the Beatles. Eventually, Ringo Starr replaced Best.
Sutcliffe joined the group in 1960 as bass guitarist and immediately established a style. On stage, he wore sunglasses and had a dangling cigarette in his mouth. The girls went wild. Paul McCartney claimed that Sutcliffe had no musical talent, which was close to the truth, but Lennon, the driving force of the band, stated, "If Stu goes, I go."
In Hamburg, where the five played the sleaziest strip dives in the city's red-light district, Stu met Astrid, who ran with a Bohemian crowd. She introduced the musicians to Rimbaud's poetry, to the influence of Cocteau and to the idea that a rock band could also create art. She cut Stu's hair to resemble her own; thus was the moptop haircut born. She influenced the band's look and style, but most of all, she became the lover of Stu - which drove Lennon into fits of jealousy.
Astrid also persuaded Sutcliffe to leave the rock band for a higher commitment to his art. On April 10, 1962, at age 21, he died after a brain hemorrhage. Just two months later, the Beatles recorded "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You," and Beatlemania began.
They became the most popular group in pop music history, but they became the Fab Four, not the Fab Five.
As Sutcliffe, Dorff wears his pretty-boy good looks as if they were a challenge. He went to acting school at age 9, appeared in commercials and received good reviews for TV movies.
The real Astrid still lives in Hamburg; for three decades, she has remained silent about her relationship with Sutcliffe and the Beatles. "I went to Hamburg to visit Astrid, knowing that it was all-important that she accept me," Dorff said. "When I entered the room, she was sitting there, dressed all in black. She promptly left the room. I didn't know what to think. Ten minutes later, she came back. She said, `You have his eyes.' Then we talked for eight hours - eight hours straight. I know that Astrid and Stuart loved with such a passion that I wondered if it could be played. She never loved anyone else as she loved him and, yet, he was taken away at 21."
Astrid is played with cool, blond charisma by Sheryl Lee, who is best known primarily for playing the often-dead Laura Palmer in David Lynch's TV saga "Twin Peaks."
Dorff first wanted to play Stu Sutcliffe when he saw one of Astrid's 1960s photograph of him. "It was uncanny," Dorff said. "I felt I was looking at myself. He does look like me."
The actor was worried, though, that, unlike the other Beatles, there are no films of Sutcliffe.
"I have heard his voice and seen his photographs, but I would like to have known how he moved," Dorff said. "Unlike the others, though, I had it easy because they, too, don't know him. No one knows his mannerisms."
The movie hints at a homosexual relationship between Sutcliffe and John Lennon.
"They loved each other," Dorff said. "What does it matter? The '60s was an era in which sexual choices were more thwarted even than now. Stuart was very daring. Astrid had him wear her tight leather pants and dress like her. That was daring then. It would be nothing now. John, on the other hand, was very rigid. He wouldn't have done the things Stuart did.
"John could never bring himself to tell his best friend that he loved him and, yet, months after Stu's death, he was singing `All You Need is Love' to millions.
"Personally, I'm tired of the homophobia in our society," Dorff said. "This is a rare movie about two heterosexual men who loved each other. That's it. You can't even give a buddy a hug."
by CNB