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SOME PEOPLE HAvE AN ADDICTION TO COCAINE AND
SOME PEOPLE HAvE AN ADDICTION TO rICK SPrINGFIELD.
DIrECTED AND PrODUCED BY FILMMAKEr SYLvIA
CAMINEr, THE rOCKUMENTArY, AN AFFAIr OF THE HEArT,
ExPLOrES THE ENDUrING FAN BASE OF EIGHTIES' rOCK
IDOL rICK SPrINGFIELD.
Words kara martineZ-backman
this touching and funny film has just been released on
DVD after receiving excellent reviews at film festival screenings
around the world. The topic of Springfield may seem to some
a bit unusual for a serious woman filmmaker; Sylvia won an
Emmy for her directorial work on the Discovery Channel series,
Great Hotels. However, in Sylvia's hands, this has a depth that is
unexpected for the rock documentary genre.
springfield, a pop rock idol during much of the 1980s,
primarily in the US may seem an unlikely subject for Sylvia, who
admits the rockumentary was new territory.
"i had not been involved with this type of documentary,"
she says. "It's a lot harder in many ways because of all the licenses
and technicalities, especially when you're doing a documentary
independently. You want to capture the music and its essence
live, and make sure it's gonna rock when you finish the film." As
could be expected from a serious woman filmmaker, Sylvia was
not content to let it become nothing more than a simple biopic
or concert film. In her hands, it becomes a piece that embraces,
yet also questions the validity of this type of fan worship.
"it really is a story. It happens to have a lot of music in it,
and we wanted the music to be the thread that tied every story
together," she said.
entertainment pr professional and executive producer
Melanie Lentz-Janney believes that Sylvia was coming from the
perfect perspective for a rock feature. She suggests that the
director had enough affection for her subjects to feel engaged
but enough distance to be objective.
the two women met back in 2001, when Melanie was
executive director of Women in Film and Television for the Florida
chapter. Because Melanie had been a lifelong fan, a Springfield
project seemed like a natural subject. Melanie describes how it all
came together.
"i knew that i could not be the one to knock on the door.
First of all, I had never made a film before, and Sylvia had won
Emmy Awards and had been doing this for twenty years, so she
really needed to be the one to make the intro to rick's team.
Fortunately, I had been studying rick and his team for so long, I
kinda knew what the right route would be. So she picked up the
phone and called and they said, "this sounds really interesting.'"
melanie describes the first meeting that she and Sylvia had
with Springfield. "He just wanted to kind of get to know us as
people, which is very cool, because that's when I think he realised
we were people he could trust to tell the kind of story that we
wanted to tell. And he was amazing. He gave us full access and let
us create the story we wanted to do," she said.
as a former longstanding cast member of the daytime soap
General Hospital, Springfield is familiar with being in front of the
lens. Sylvia feels that this helped her subject to feel comfortable:
"When we did interviews, he was very...you know...raw."
They Still Wanna Be
Rick's Girl