This little nobody got to live his star-struck dream

Friday, April 16, 2004

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

We must have reached the point at which all the truly famous people have been used up by theTV biography shows because, increasingly, feature documentaries tend to be about people we've never or barely heard of, like the Friedman family or porn star Ron Jeremy.

MOVIE REVIEW

MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP

DIRECTOR: George Hickenlooper

DOCUMENTARY

RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes

RATING: None

WHERE: Varsity

GRADE: B

"Mayor of the Sunset Strip," for instance, is the life story of Rodney Bingenheimer, a man who has been a long-time fixture of the L.A. rock music scene but has made no tangible contribution to the world and is virtually unknown outside of Southern California.

Still, while the want-to-see factor is low on a movie like this, it's fascinating once you're under its spell, and director George Hickenlooper ("The Man From Elysian Fields") does a particularly skillful job of portraying his subject as the Zelig of the counterculture.

The film opens on the fiftysomething Bingenheimer at a reunion concert of the band X, where he's shown to be a respected éminence grise and trendy backstage party focal point.

He came to L.A. in the golden age of the mid-'60s, when he went mod and auditioned for "The Monkees" television series. He didn't get the job, but he was hired to be Davy Jones' stand-in and was able to parlay that inside position into a career as a celebrity hanger-on.

An unthreatening, cute little guy, he was semi-adopted by Sonny and Cher and he got to know absolutely everyone in the Sunset Strip music world of the '60s. He became especially adept at introducing ambitious young girls to celebrities, and he eventually opened his own nightclub. Later, in the '70s, he became a legitimate music promoter and trendsetter, and then an influential disc jockey on L.A.'s KROQ, where he was instrumental in introducing and supporting many cutting-edge acts, from David Bowie to the Sex Pistols to Nirvana.

The film includes an eclectic array of celebrity interviews: Bowie, Courtney Love, Cher, Nancy Sinatra, Brooke Shields, Mick Jagger, Alice Cooper, Ray Manzarek, Joan Jett, Debbie Harry and many more. All view him through a haze of bittersweet, baby boomer nostalgia.

The movie ultimately has mixed feelings about Bengenheimer. Because he has no family or current partner in his life, never really made any real money out of his career and the times have passed him by, we see him as something of a sad character. On the other hand, there's room to view him as a phenomenal success story and great survivor. After all, with very few natural gifts, he's managed to spend his life doing something he loved among people he worshipped. At the end of the game, very few people can make such a claim.