Telstar (2008)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Nick Moran

Writers:

James Hicks (writer)
James Hicks (play)

Release Date:

19 June 2009 (UK)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | Music

Plot:

A music-infused drama about Joe Meek, the flamboyantly gay, tone deaf, songwriter-producer behind the '60s hits "Have I the Right," "Just Like Eddie," "Johnny, Remember Me" and "Telstar." |

Plot Keywords:

Recording Studio | 1960s | London | One Word Title | Store

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Con O'Neill	...	Joe Meek
Kevin Spacey	...	Major Banks
Pam Ferris	...	Mrs. Shenton
JJ Feild	...	Heinz Burt
James Corden	...	Clem Cattini
Tom Burke	...	Geoff Goddard
Ralf Little	...	Chas Hodges
Sid Mitchell	...	Patrick Pink
Mathew Baynton	...	Ritchie Blackmore
Shaun Evans	...	Billy Kuy
Callum Dixon	...	John Leyton
Tom Harper	...	Alan Caddy
Jon Lee	...	Billy Fury
Nigel Harman	...	Jess Conrad
Carl Barât	...	Gene Vincent

Runtime:

119 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Holloway Road, Holloway, London, England, UK

Company:

Aspiration Films

Hellstar

Telstar takes its name from the galaxy-conquering instrumental composed by maverick pop producer Joe Meek and performed by his in-house band The Tornadoes - the first British group to have a US Number 1. One listen to 'Telstar' should confirm the obvious. It is the product of a sick mind. It sounds like a sharpened Stylophone being dragged across the teeth. A death trap of a fairground ride, whirling murderously out of control. A rictus-grinning glassy-eyed zombie of a hit, which absolutely will not stop, ever. It's Margaret Thatcher's favourite tune.

Appropriately, 'Telstar's' tone-deaf creator made Phil Spector or Factory's Martin Hannett look the very zenith of psychological fitness. This former RAF radar operator and electronics genius's revolutionary approach to studio engineering saw him transform his flat above a leather goods shop in North London's Holloway Road into an unlikely hit factory. A spaghetti junction of wiring and knobs and mysterious electronic devices, giving rise to striking sounding records, drenched with echo, reverb, 'compression' and God knows what else; a very English, kitchen sink approach to hit making.

But Meek's tale is tragic. The hits dried up; the biggie, 'Telstar', Joe's tribute to the first communication satellite, had its royalties frozen in a drawn-out plagiarism case; he was arrested for cottaging, then implicated in the murder of a rent boy found dismembered in a suitcase. Already nuttier than a crate of cashews, he sunk further into speed-freaked, pill popping paranoia and alleged Satanism, before shooting his landlady, then himself, with a shotgun on February 3 1967, the eighth anniversary of his hero Buddy Holly's death.

With raw ingredients like that, you'd have to try quite hard to serve up a dull Joe Meek biopic. Or be an actor-turned-director with a self-penned script and a cast that resembles what might tumble out if you shook an issue of 'Heat' magazine upside down.

"It's not supposed to be like this!" protests the doomed Meek (Con O'Neill) as the gears of his life grind to a halt, and you can't help but agree. There's really no polite way of putting this: Telstar is an embarrassing farrago, an amateurish, incoherent pantomime of a piece, stuffed with interchangeable characters, a sketchy, largely unsympathetic leading role, and - betraying its stage play origins - unspeakably stilted dialogue. Pity the lucked-out actor forced to spout utter toss like: "With his gadgets and witchcraft he's a proper facking Nostradamus!" Well, cor blimey Guvnah, 'ee's in a right two and eight and no mistake!

James Corden (playing Tornadoes drummer Clem Cattini) is rapidly becoming the one-stop shop for charmless farts who swear a lot and are fat. While Ralf Little (playing a young Chas Hodges, of Chas & Dave fame) should have a bit of a think about getting a new agent round about yesterday. Tom Burke as Meek's weird songwriter-cum-spiritualist Geoff Goddard is probably the best thing here, save for Kevin Spacey as Meeks' financial backer, the fittingly-named Major Banks who shames the lot of them every time he appears in his ginger walnut whip of a hairpiece.

There's the nagging suspicion that big, important lumps of this film have been left in the edit and, at times, it's tricky to work out what the heck is going on. We're never properly introduced to Meek so never develop any empathy for him. We're shown nothing of his strange childhood (his mum dressed him as a girl); how he first secretly stamped his sonic style on Frankie Laine's classic 'Green Door' - or even how he came to be at No. 304 Holloway Road in the first place.

The composing and realization of mega-hit 'Telstar', harking back to the guitar instrumentals of the 1950s, while anticipating the garage pop of the 1960s and the trash aesthetic of the 1970s, should have been the movie's big beating heart - it's the film's title after all - but is also afforded scant dramatic weight. Instead, every other scene seems to feature Meek angrily kicking someone downstairs or flashes forward to his breakdown, diluting the tension by increments.

The whole sorry saga is told much better in BBC2's excellent 1991 Arena documentary 'The Strange Story Of Joe Meek'. Fifty minutes shorter than Telstar, it also includes an audio recording of Joe in a graveyard in the dead of night talking to a cat that has a human voice. Well, we say human voice. It's much more like a miaowing kind of voice. It's just that every time it miaows, Joe has transcribed it as saying "Help me."

Yet Telstar does boast one powerful scene near the end, as bailiffs gatecrash the flat and lever off the boards that the screaming-mad Meek has nailed to the windows. As light pours in for the first time in months, Joe writhes to the ground like the vampire he's become, a seedy bloodsucker whose self-destructive streak took more than a few down with him. All involved in Telstar might like to reflect on this next time they sign up for another vanity project.