Some projects are apparently so damn British we don’t even hear about them until they’re completely over in North America.
We were pretty psyched almost two years ago when news of a Joe Meek biopic hit the interwebs.
Ex-Darkness singer Justin Hawkins and ex-Libertine / current Dirty Pretty Things found Carl Barat, were said to appear in the film, but Meek — a kooky, strange ’60s rock music producer known for his equally strange productions, his flamboyantly proclivities and tone deaf ears — isn’t exactly a household name (and remains obscure to this day, he was kind of the British analogue to Phil Spector in many respects — nutty genius record producer).
So when talk about the project persisted, we weren’t actually sure the project was going to happen. Sure enough, not only did it happen, the film — titled “Telstar” after the biggest “hit” song produced under Meek’s aegis by a group called The Tornadoes — is coming out in theaters in the U.K. on June 19 according to a U.K. poster for the film. Damn, just right around the corner.
Perhaps the reason we’ve heard little about it is that the cast and names are small. The film is directed by Nick Moran (an actor turned filmmaker who starred in “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” this is his feature-length debut) and stars British actor Con O’Neill as Meek (he’s mostly known as a TV actor in the U.K.). The biggest star in the film is Kevin Spacey, who plays ‘Major’ Wilfred Alonzo Banks the toy importer, who acted as the financial backer for Meek’s production company known as RGM Sound Ltd (later Meeksville Sound Ltd), but it appears that he has a very small role.
Hawkins and Barat were supposed to play the roles of Alice Cooper-like rocker Screaming Lord Sutch and American rock pioneer Gene Vincent in the movie, and by the looks of the trailer (below), they’re actually in the picture.
Meeks was known for creating the “freakbeat” sound — pop/rockabilly/merseybeat rock bands ostensibly meant to be Beatles also-rans, but turned into strange oddities when put through the Meek filter. Will we see the film in the U.S. anytime soon? Let’s hope so, but it feels niche and maybe we’ll have to wait for DVD.
Watch/Listen: The Tornadoes – “Telstar”