Full disclosure: we’re friendly with Josh Brown the co-director of “The Man Who Would Be Polka King” (director John Mikulak helped shepherd the project initially).We bumped into Brown at SXSW and realized then that he had actually finished his new film and it was screening at the festival. It’s playing this weekend, for those that live in New York, at the Brooklyn International Film Festival (it’s too bad these guy at BKIFF don’t ever reach out to us). It’s an interesting-sounding doc.
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE POLKA KING is an irreverent look at the rise and fall of Grammy-nominated polka music superstar Jan Lewan, whose defection from Poland to the West in the 1970’s led to fame, fortune and an international Polka Empire. For over 30 years, the flashy showman wowed polka fans the world over, headlining massive concerts and hobnobbing with powerful figures like Donald Trump, George HW Bush and even Pope John Paul II. But when the King was hit with a beauty pageant scandal and a subsequent personal tragedy, Lewan’s empire collapsed… and the polka world was stunned to learn of the greatest polka-related financial crime in history.