Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Two years ago this month (were we ever so young?), Not Coming to a Theater Near You brought you — or someone like you — a round-up of eleven extravagant musical vanity projects, for which we proposed the blanket term “Rock Follies.” Films by, or featuring, unlikely auteurs like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Monkees, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Paul Simon, and Arlo Guthrie.

Of course, we knew upon concluding the series that we’d only scratched the surface; the plan was to make this an annual occurrence, like Coachella, or the Oscars. Well, we missed last year, but Rock Follies has finally returned. This time around we will examine work by world-class cinematic dilettantes like the Sex Pistols, Bob Dylan (again!), Vanilla Ice, Anthony Newley, Outkast, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson, and others; for our climax (and never has the term been more fitting), we will essay the entire filmic oeuvre (to date) of The Once and Future Prince.

As we said last year, no particular claim is made for the quality of a Rock Folly: sometimes they’re so bad they’re good, sometimes so bad they’re terrible, sometimes legitimately interesting or successful in their own special-snowflakey way. We didn’t make the law that says that every mildly successful musical artist – from the Incredible String Band to the Insane Clown Posse – gets to make a film. We just describe the crime scenes.

By Leo Goldsmith, Thomas Scalzo, David Carter, Evan Kindley, Adam Balz, Sam Bett, Rob Weychert, Jonathan Foltz, Tyler Wilcox, and Josh Bell   ©2012 NotComing.com