TOUGH GUYS | Dir. Jon Dieringer | FORMAT TBD | 111min | 2012| USA | English
This is Mean Streets with the pop songs ripped out replaced by amateur cover versions from YouTube—25 in all directly corresponding to the original. The result is a wholesale dismantling of auteurism, cinematic space, and the intellectual propriety of The Rolling Stones, Ltd., whose songs—and music of other genres including early rock, soul, doo wop, rhythm and blues, Cazone Napoletana, opera and salsa—are now performed variously by wayward narcoleptics, fried teenagers, amateur tenors, Polish pre-teen beauty pageant contestants and people testing out new keyboards, among others. It is a joyous paean to egalitarianism and the enduring, irrepressible folk underpinnings of tight-assed corporate culture. The Scorsesean 'needle drop' style of scoring with pop music established a whole new branch of the film industry—a mammoth bureaucracy of rights, licensing, music supervisors, clearance coordinators and entertainment lawyers and attendant opportunities for marketing and brand synergy between corporate film and music; Tough Guys is a modest attempt to send it reeling.
WATCH THE TRAILER
Q&A following with Director Jon Dieringer and Miriam Bale